Yurts seem to me to be about portable comfort, temporary hibernation and regeneration spots. Perhaps I am inspired by yurts today as it is quite cold outside today...
This yurt is on the steppes of Mongolia. Ever since my mother and I read about the steppes of Central Asia when I was a child, I have always wanted to visit this desolately lovely place. My mother and I always dreamed of travelling on the trans-siberian railroad together. Sadly, she died when I was a teenager, before we could make the trip a reality. That railroad generally starts in Moscow, ends in Novosibirsk, if I recall correctly, and goes straight across the steppes all the way through the former USSR. I still hope to make the trip, a
lthough I will hope to travel on the trans-mongolian railway instead (see link to the right, for a website with great photos from a trans-mongolian journey). This trip starts in Moscow, meanders through Russia and Siberia, dips down through Mongolia via Lake Baikal and then winds it's way up to Beijing. Someday. I studied Russian in high school and college, and still have the ability to read the Russian alphabet easily, although I have only a few words left of Russian, so would pick up the basics fairly fast as Mongolian uses the cyrillic alphabet.
A yurt party: In high school, my friends S. and B. and I made a yurt-wannabeeout of sheets and blankets in B.'s college dorm room in Montreal, which was amazing. It did not look like the party in this yurt, in Mongolia, to the left. I miss that creativity and zest for life - ah for carefree youth. I think we had a picnic of cheese and crackers, and seltzer water before going to a dance where we were introduced to reggae, for the first time. Came home and sat in the yurt together and life felt magical, limitless. The world was our oyster, as they say. Not quite sure about that analogy in my queasy about oysters way...More from Wikipedia on yurts:
"A Yurt is a traditional felt home of the nomads who live on the cold, barren steppes of Central Asia.
Yurt or yurta is a Turkish word for these portable traditionally felt dwelling places, borrowed as a loanword into many languages, including English. The Kazakhs, who use them, call them Kigizui and the Mongolians call them ger. The Russian obsolete name is "kibitka" (although nowadays "yurta" is used) whilst the Afghans call them "Kherga" or "ooee". However, yurt is the best known word.
Wooden poles or uuks in Kyrgyz connect the lattice-work walls on the bottom of the yurt to the crown or shangrak (the hole in the middle of the tent for the smoke to escape and light to enter). This wood frame (kerege) is then covered with felt and then sometimes with canvas.The crown itself is emblematic in many Central Asian cultures. In old Kazakh communities, the yurt itself would often be repaired and rebuilt, but the shangrak would remain intact, passed from father to son upon the father's death. A family's depth of heritage could be measured by the accumulation of stains on the shangrak from generations of smoke passing through it. A stylized version of the shangrak forms the main image on the flag of Kyrgyzstan. Its cultural iconography is also represented in the tubeteika, a traditional Central Asian skullcap which bears a resemblance to the yurt.
In the modern Turkish language, the word "yurt" is often used synonomously with "homeland," rather than in reference to a particular structure. Many modern enthusiasts, mostly based in the U.S., have used the name "yurts" for some of their round huts as well. Although those structures may be copied to some extent from the originals found in Central Asia, they have been greatly changed and adapted and are in most cases very different."
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