A few hours east of Almaty, the road climbs into the clouds. The trees thin. The air sharpens. And then, with almost no warning, you arrive: the Assy Plateau unfurls around you, an enormous alpine grassland that seems to float between the ridgelines of the Tian Shan.
In one direction, there is nothing but green hills and a rugged horizon. In another, a cluster of yurts—kiiz ui—sits anchored to the land, their white canvas walls bright against the summer sky. Nearby, laundry flutters on a wooden line, and a dog naps in the sun. You can hear the wind, the calls of birds, and the occasional snort of a horse. That is about it. It is blissfully quiet.
And then—look up. Sitting alone on a rise in the landscape is a white dome: the Assy-Turgen Observatory, one of the largest astronomical observatories in Kazakhstan. Its dome gleams in the daylight, an emblem of scientific ambition placed in one of the darkest-sky zones in Central Asia. Surrounded by endless pastures and virtually no light pollution, it watches the stars while horses graze below.
Those horses are everywhere. In one photo, a band of them crests the hill at a distance, moving as a single line against the earth’s curve. In another, they stand close, ribs visible under sun-burnished coats, their foals nestled in the wildflowers. One shot captures a striking dappled stallion—white with black spots—looking directly at the camera, his stance alert but calm. These are not animals domesticated for tourists. They are working animals, companions, and cultural touchstones.
Kazakhstan’s relationship with horses is ancient and intimate. Long before it was a republic, this land was the domain of nomadic pastoralists who moved with the seasons. The Assy Plateau was—and still is—a zhailau, a summer grazing ground. Herders bring their livestock here for the rich high-altitude grass, setting up yurts just as their ancestors did. It is a continuity that requires no interpretation. You can see it in the horse trails that crisscross the hills and in the way foals instinctively follow their mothers over the terrain.
The photographs you see—of horses in formation, of yurts framed by mountains, of fields thick with clover and chamomile—are more than scenery. They offer glimpses into a rhythm of life that values movement, memory, and space. They show a place where time feels layered: Paleolithic rock carvings lie not far from here; Bronze Age kurgans (burial mounds) dot the valleys; and above it all, a telescope listens to the sky.
That is the kind of contrast that defines the plateau: ancient pastures and modern astronomy, animal trails and orbital maps. The stars above, the hoofprints below.
As the light tilts and lengthens, casting shadows that slip like ink across the hills, you begin to understand why people have returned to this place for thousands of years. It is not just the grass, or the altitude, or even the astonishing silence. It is the feeling that something older than memory resides here—something vast, watchful, and unshaken. You sense it in the stillness of a foal sleeping in wildflowers. In the white arc of a telescope waiting for night. In the soft breath of wind lifting the yurt’s felt flap. Not everything ancient has vanished. Some of it endures quietly, confidently on the Assy Plateau.
Holly Harris
Title VIII Fellowship for Overseas Language Study and Research Recipient
Advanced Russian Language and Area Studies Program (RLASP)
Al-Farabi Kazakh National University (KazNU)
Almaty, Kazakhstan, Summer 2025