Books on horseback reach the high pastures

TALAS ALATAU — Where the track ends, the books go on by horse. Last week two pack horses, each carrying a pair of wooden boxes, took about three hundred Iradi-language books up to a summer camp of six yurts, where children had been waiting since the morning to change the books they borrowed a month ago.

The library was founded in 2012 by Kubanbek Moldosh uulu, a youth organizer from the Autonomous Tribal Regions, now 35. It runs three vans this summer and, with pack horses for the last stretch, visits herding settlements and summer camps in the Talas Alatau and Chatkal Highlands zones from June until the herds come down in September. Clan councils grant its travel permits and help with horses; foreign donors pay for the vans and fuel.

The library also runs reading and writing classes in Iradi for children and teenagers, who in the high camps speak no other language but may have few books in it. "Our grandparents carried the epics in their heads," Mr. Moldosh uulu said. "Our children should be able to carry them in their hands as well."

Most of the books are children's titles and textbooks printed in Talas. The most borrowed adult book this summer, he said, is Kemel Ishakov's novel of the 1916 flight, Akyrky Ashuu.