KYRGYZSTAN – I find freedom in the coolness of a nomadic yurt, by a swelling river eating couscous and cucumber, in a thunderclap of an alpine snowstorm ripping through the sierra, in the inky scrawls of a tattered map.

I am in the mountains of Kyrgyzstan, the hiking capital of Central Asia, and I walk untethered. Nestled in the Tian Shan and Pamir mountain ranges, the country is geographically isolated from the region. When I walk, I feel alone, tucked behind a crag of a mountain, far from unbroken, planar horizons.