A few days on early February was a very special time for me. I stopped my journey temporarily since my family from Malaysia came to visit me here in Kyrgyzstan. When I heard the news I quickly descended the mountains, rushing back to Bishkek with a marshrutka and waited for them right at the airport. It feels so good to see the smiling familiar faces again appeared from the front door on the arrival hall after a year being on the road living the nomadic life. The smiles of the faces of my family melted my heart like a chocolate. The smile that is carved on the face of the person we love is something powerful, very warm and able to melt the cold heart. It is something some of us take for granted and sometimes we forget how powerful it is when we get it everyday, but if we get it only once in a while, we start to realize how powerful it is and unable to ignore the power of it.

took my family to my home here in the mountains and captured the moments into my camera

It feels special to hold the familiar faces again and speak the same language I always speak since my childhood… the same language that I always use in my heart. Whenever Im alone in the wild making any decision, I will automatically create two person inside me and start discussing whether I should pitch my tent at the higher ground to get a better view of the mountainscape or at the lower ground to protect myself from the strong wind. It is like these two persons that I created inside me are discussing and debating on where to pitch my tent. I myself will speak on behalf on person one suggesting that I should pitch the tent at the higher ground and at the same time will also speak on behalf of person two to pitch my tent at the lower ground… and the language that these two persons inside me use to communicate is the language that I speak since my chilhood which is Malay. Whenever I learn something from the exterior world, I will talk to myself explaining the thing that learned inside my interior world using this same language too. This same language that was taught but my mother when I was very young is the best language to express my emotion and my thoughts. It is known as the mother tongue… the most natural. And able to finally speak this language after a long time being on the road, I feel like Im back to my nature, just like a tiger is back to his jungle after spending a long time in a strange desert.

shadow of my younger brother in front of the last light of the day

I also felt so good that I was able to eat my kind of food cooked by my mom. It is also like a tiger that is a carnivor… finally able to eat some raw meat after a year eating only vegetables and fruits. All these while, the spiciest food I’ve tasted is only Korean food which is just a little more like a tickle to my Malay tongue. And once I took the food cooked by my mom into my mouth, once again the million of sensors of my tongue sent the signal straight to my brain, telling myself that the food is really spicy and finally sending another signal to the rest of my body and as a result, my face turned red, my eyes produced tears and my skin produced sweat. It feels so good that made me to do nothing but concentrate only on the food rather than to think or worry about something else in my life. I also enjoyed getting lectured by my dad, giving me some good advice for me to keep pursuing my life, which he has been repeated hundreds of times since I was a child but for old time sake, I enjoyed and listened carefully every words that came out from the mouth of the man that I always respect in my entire life. Looking at him, time has make his physical body aged, not as strong as he used to be but not his soul, the soul doesnt get affected by aging process. Only things in this world that can be perceived with our five senses grow old, but not in the world where our soul dwell… the real world…

taking my family to touch the cold water of Issykkul Lake, second largest mountain lake in the world

I felt happy to see my two younger brothers and my young sister enjoying the landscape of eastern Kyrgyzstan where I live. Me and a few of my friends here in Karakol decided to make a day trip skiing and snowshoeing in the nearby mountains so I took my two brothers with me. Glad that they like it and would love to do it again some other time. At one time during the night my youngest brother told me that he wants to be a nomad too. A young energetic man who just turned 18 this year and just finished his high school in Kuala Lumpur. I kept silent for a while thinking on the best advice to give him. I told him to take it slow and easy and don’t plan too much. As for me, planning my time, my schedule and my life can be fun but to stick to the plan is no fun. I don’t want to live my life following a script that I write years ago but instead I live my life according to the surroundings, trying to be like water, so I will fit in any surroundings and situations and try my best to solve a problem when it is right in front of me. I didn’t plan this life… I didn’t choose to live my life as a nomad. This nomadic life chose me. Some people believe that they choose their destiny. I think otherwise. I think my destiny chose me. I think everything has been written since the beginning of time.. since the very beginning…

But by studying from his face, maybe he is too eager to listen to the word of wisdom that I tried to share. But it’s a normal thing, he’s too young and couldn’t wait to open the next page of his book of life, to see and experience the next chapter of his life. Sooner or later he will understand and everything will be in placed, just like everything else in this world in the past and present… and the incoming future. He basically has almost the same set of thinking with me. Surprising at someone at his age, we were actually discussing about sedentary life vs the nomadic life, about existence, the physic of the quantum world and mathematical representation about the universe just over a cup of coffee during the night when everyone else were in deep sleep. We just couldn’t go so deep about each subject since its impossible to discuss all of it over a cup of coffee.

heading back home from skiing

Time passes really fast while they’re here with me… as in being and spending time with familiar faces can really affect and influence the speed of time… as in spending quality time really put more weight in the sand of time. Without me realizing it, it was finally the time for them to go back home to Malaysia, leaving me here back alone dwelling in the mountains. Seeing them leaving at the immigration checkpoint in the airport making my nerves reacted differently, my body was about to produce tears through my eyes but my brain stopped the process from happening. I should accept everything that happened and will happen… that’s what I have learned on the road all these while and I should keep learning it. They are going to the exact place that they should be and I should go back to the exact place where I should be… doing the exact things that I should do… it was all written… we are all just living it. Destiny… the word destiny is really something to me, that one word can make me sit hours and hours in the dark inside my tent in the high mountains alone… thinking about it deeper and deeper… If one day I would write a book… I will definitely write about it…

back to where I should be, the dark cold lonely night

destiny, everything is exactly where it should be, including the grass.. the snow.. the sun…