Fall Break (This Year’s Theme: Pilgrimage)

If you recall, last year’s October vacation centered around a theme of exile; our trip convened a week of train travel to the northern coast of the Caspian, a tour of Aqtua, and Fort Chevchenko visiting the site of Taras Chevchenko’s exile outpost.

This year’s theme emerged as effortlessly as last year’s once I considered some of the more nascent characteristics of Turkestan, our destination. Located in southern Kazakhstan, close to the Uzbek border, this ancient Silk Road caravan is considered by many to be the holiest site in Kazakhstan. Indeed, the Kazakh’s holiest personage is entombed here in a great mausoleum revealing an Islamic cosmology unique to this central asian nation. This, indeed, was more than just a vacation with my wife and four other teachers. I’d like to think that this was a rare look into the sacred; a history of sufi teachings, Turkic-Mongol empire and the colossal breadth and influence of the Silk road in a region largely forgotten to the world until the latter 20th century.