For the next few hours we kept climbing. From time to time, a Kazakh or Tuvan yurt could be seen in the distance. In a few valleys, herders were making hay from small patches of green: struggling for every blade of grass. Toward evening we arrived in the Tsengelkhayrkhan mountain range. Towering over three yurts on a ridge at the end of a valley near the Black Lake was the 4000 meters-high sacred mountain. The Tuvans call it Haarakan, Great Mountain, because awe and respect forbid them to spell out the proper names of what is divine or dangerous. This was the furthest the jeep could go. To meet us, Galsan Tschinag had left the neighboring valley and ridden across a mountain through hours of a lashing rain storm. We saw him from afar astride his white horse waiting on the ridge. He welcomed us into a yurt especially made for us—a brandnew, shining white yurt we were invited to take back to North America. We were offered different kinds of cheese and fried dough, and invited to drink from the silver bowl that has come down to him from his ancestors—as has his snuff bottle, his silver flint and the silver sheath of the dagger he wears on his silk saffron belt over his blue velvet coat when he is in the Altai. His son came to play a concert for us on the horsehead fi dle. He had brought the mail with him from Ölgiy, which included an invitation by the President of the Republic of Tywa, who hoped Galsan Tschinag would join him for the celebrations of the republic’s tenth anniversary; he would be offered a place of honor next to Putin. Clearly, we had arrived at the court of a prince. And we were honored because translations build bridges—honored by a man who is a most extraordinary bridge builder himself: As a shaman, he mediates between his community and the spirit world; as a chieftain, he connects Tuvans with each other; as a writer, he forges links between the oral tradition and epics of his people and the literate world outside; as a politician, he negotiates a future for his minority Tuvans among a sometimes hostile majority of Kazakhs and Mongolians; as a translator and teacher, he crosses, and enables others to cross, the linguistic borders of Tuvan, Kazakh, Mongolian, Russian, and German; and as a host, he opens his small yurt in the Altai, and his large yurt—the Altai and the steppe itself—to guests from abroad.

The next day, we continued our journey on horseback. Across steep, rocky terrain and a ridge more than 3000 meters high we rode for hours to reach the juniper valley, the summer pastures for a number of Tuvan and Kazakh families. There we watched Galsan Tschinag work as chieftain and shaman, and as host of a group of Europeans who, like us, had come to the Altai to learn about the Tuvans.