It began in the Sinai desert in 1977.
I was twenty years old when I walked into my first Bedouin tent and felt something shift. Not comfort — the opposite. The wind moved through the fabric. The cold came in at the edges. There was almost nothing inside. And yet the people who lived there had a richness I couldn't name. Something in the proportion of what they possessed to what they were. The oneness with the earth, the wind, the mountains, the sea. Not poverty. A different kind of wealth entirely.
I spent three years learning from them. Then I kept moving — through every kind of wild place the planet offered. Between 1992 and 1995 I lived deep in the Bolivian Amazon, with the Uchupiamona tribe. The jungle at that depth is absolute. It gets inside you in a way nothing else does.
In late 1995, I arrived in Los Angeles and rented an apartment.
After a few days I simply couldn't take it. I asked my landlord's permission to build a tent on the roof. He agreed. I have lived in a tent ever since — on rooftops and in backyards, on four continents, no matter where I am. If I own the house or just rent it, I build my tent. My tents have become famous among everyone who has seen them. They make the house redundant. The romance of it is overwhelming.
After five years in a Mongolian ger, I heard that the real master builders — the people who had never stopped — were Kyrgyz. I came to Kyrgyzstan to see it with my own eyes. I arrived, and instantly fell in love with the country, its people, and the boz üy. I also met Nura.