Top 44 Quotes by Tim Cope

In the initial stages of my journey, I was trying to travel too fast by horse by sticking to a 'five days on and two off' schedule. On the steppe, time is not measured by days, weeks or hours but the fall of the seasons and condition of the animals.

In Khazak culture, historically, if any traveller comes riding from a long way, there is an obligation to take him into your home. For the first three days, the host doesn't even have the right to ask his name, his destination or his business.

In 1736, Bakhchisaray had been burned to the ground by the Russians, and when Catherine II's army completed the conquest of the peninsula in 1783, the last khan, Sahin Giray, took refuge in Turkey, where he was eventually executed.

What drew me to Kazakhstan was a curiosity to learn about life in this 'middle earth' of steppe between the endless forests of Russia in the north and the world's greatest mountain chains to the south.

Learning of my father's passing at age 55 not only shattered the world, far from home, that had become my reality, but catapulted my childhood and relationship with family - which had felt like another lifetime - into the present.

Perhaps most important for nomads was the belief in the symbiosis that existed between wolf and humans on the steppe. Wolves were an integral part of keeping the balance of nature, ensuring that plagues of rabbits and rodents didn't break out, which in turn protected the all-important pasture for the nomads' herds.