Rogue | Frontier Philosophy

I defected from America to live with nomads in Central Asia.

You have four options — Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan.

These nations seek foreign experts to help them develop their nations — this is how I got my start.

Here's how you can too:

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Here's how to get a working visa:

I've worked in the region since 2022, as a college instructor, teaching Literature and Philosophy courses.

The educational sector here is desperate to hire most anyone to come and teach. There is high demand and few, if any applicants (especially in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan), meaning that this avenue is your easiest "in" to get a working visa that allows you full year entry.

Contact any "international school" or university, and see negotiate a position. Yes, they all pay well. You should be able to save a minimum of $2,000 per month anywhere in the region and live off less than $1,000. It's easy.

Here's how to get a digital nomad visa:

If you don't want to teach, you can leverage Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan's new "digital nomad" visas. The visas are valid for 6 months each with opportunity to renew. Kazakhstan demands an income of $3,000 per month and Kyrgyzstan demands ... well, no one really knows.

The program is a recent development and I doubt anyone has applied yet to verify the option. I'm sure you can apply with success even if you make something low like $1,000 a month and you'll be accepted. The Kyrgyz government is very excited to invite foreigners (from Western nations) to live and invest here.

Here's how to get a business/investor visa:

If you like to have fun like me, you can bring over a sizable amount of cash to invest in local businesses or rentals. The general investors visas are something like $100,000 - $150,000.

It's a frontier economy. High risk. High reward. Mind you I had a full head of hair before I came here. I will be completely bald by next year. This is the level of difficulty to navigate the market.

All the wealthy locals have import/export businesses. The foreigners here have speciality education "schools", cafes, restaurants, or real estate portfolios.

Foreigners can legally own apartments and houses. Personally, I own and plan to rent apartments. I bought a 2 room apartment in the city center in one of the capital cities for 65k in cash. I can rent this out for about 1k per month (probably more) via Airbnb. Buy two apartments. Register them as a local LLC. Rent them for better returns than the USA stock market, and, then, you'll be set for an investment visa.

We cannot own land (depending on who you know). We can lease land like most locals do. If you want to farm right now today, you can, in theory, get off the plane, go to a realtor, and then find frontier land to lease for like $100 a month across 50 years or so, and then renew.

How to "buy" farmland:

Land is a little "different" here in the sense it doesn't exist. Most of the nations are purely mountainous (Kyrgyzstan for example is 94% mountains for example). I do not mean mountains with trees, as we have in the West. I mean unscalable, insurmountable, completely inhospitable mountains. If it's not mountainous, it's endless steppe lands forever. It is common to go without a person or village for hours in every direction.

Land plots available are only a few hundred square meters. You have just enough land to build a permanent structure and that's all. You build a settlement that is near to the mountains and then you can use all that frontier land to move animals.

HOWEVER, this land is likely the territory of a certain group of locals. Do not be surprised if they burn down your land, raid your crops, or steal you animals — this happens often here. 

Why? Simply put: You're weak and pathetic and no one wants you here. It's their land. Not yours. Say it again "It's their land. Not mine.".

Clans have lived here for thousands of years. They are typically divided by region. Clans appear to have only "mixed" recently due to forcible migration from the Soviet Union.

A Russian gentlemen once told me that "After three generations of the Soviet Union, their tribal identity yet remains. It cannot be bred out of them."

If you are not married into a "tribe", you will be crushed out of existence. If you are not crushed by a rival tribe for living in the wrong place, you will be crushed by the local mafias. If you are not crushed by the local mafias, you will be crushed by government officials.

This has been the experience of many foreigners who have tried farming in this region. I know because I saw the scorch marks on their lands from the fires set by locals to "smoke them out".

Why did the locals try to kill my friends? One brought a Southern wife to the North. Big mistake. You never "mix" locals from one region to another. Where your clan is from is where you live. Never go to a rival region.

I want to assert that Central Asians are extremely kind on average. But if you want to use their ancestral land, and their women, as your own, they will fight you.

I do not write this personally with any offense intended. It's their land and they get to choose who they welcome in it.

How to survive here as a farmer:

If you want to farm here, I'm sure you can arrange for a local family to "adopt you" as a farmhand for a season. But, if you want to truly live here, you must marry a local woman.

Your wife determines where you live, die, and how successful you can be in the country.

The land belongs to the tribes, not the government, not the state, not to you, to the tribes.

Certain clans have lived in their regions for centuries. You need to have a firm understanding of the geography first, plan the region where you are comfortable to live all your life second, and then, third, select a woman.

There is sparse farmland. Worse, 84% of it is overgrazed. Worse, there is a mass "desertification" effect, casing the glacial run off to dry up. There are few resources and minimal water.

Your best bet is to marry a woman from a province with trees and water as your first priority. This is not a joke. This is not a matter of preference. This is survival. You need to take this calculation into consideration with great seriousness. You need to maximize your chances of survival through integration with a clan whose region has resources. Plain and simple.

Faming is meaningless if you will be raided by enemies or if you'll die due to lack of resources.

Local marriage:

You can marry a Russian, a local woman, or one of the dozens of ethnic minorities.

If you want to stay long-term, you're likely going to marry a local woman (Kazkah, Mongol, Kyrgyz, Tajik, etc.). You will be confined to her region or a major city (safe zone with no clan violence) for life.

Meet a local woman in the main cities. Get your investments straight. Then, have her family award you land within her region, specifically near to their ancestral village.

Every clan appears to have different farming socializations depending on their region. Some specialize in bean production and sales, others sewing/weaving, others tobacco and cash crop farming, etc. You will need to clarify which specializations her family has access to and determine whether her familial specialization is suitable for you.

Her family will be poor and destitute. This means that if you can buy a homestead, her family should live with you and then work with you to achieve success. With the family to protect you and work with you, you'll be best prepared to survive. 

There are dotted Russian/German/Dungin settlements throughout the nation.

Russians and Germans have been here since the 1800s. They are generally loved without exception. If you want to maintain your "European lineage", one of the families will be very excited to marry off a daughter to you. However — and this is indeed a broad generalization — they all want to get out of here in a panic as if it was life or death. They will have a daughter marry you as a survival method to escape Central Asia and never to return in a wide majority of cases. You need to factor this in, when dating "Europeans" in their respective villages. 

Notable ethnic minorities include: Dungins, Tatars, and Uyghurs. There are few pockets scattered throughout the region in their villages. They each have their specializations, but can broadly be said to be the merchant class, primarily focused on selling at bazaars. Bazaars are the number one way to make money. If you marry into one of these minorities, it is unlikely you will be "allowed" to farm by any of these families, because, quite honestly, they're too busy building wealth.

Tatars are my favorite ethnic group; I cannot give them enough praise for their intellect and industriousness. If you marry into one of their families, you may be confined to the cities, but, at the least, you will have access to magnificent wealth.

Regional differences:

Mongolia:
Personally, I found my negotiations with Mongols to be extremely aggressive. I would not personally choose to settle in the nation. Additionally, the winters are far too harsh and the difficulty seems unimaginable. This is not to suggest that Mongols have any overtly negative attributes, only rather that I have not personally encountered much success with my conversations with their people.

Kazakhstan:
Kazakhstan is presently undergoing a fair amount of development. They have the wealth to develop their people with great success. If one wishes to be a digital nomad, this is likely where one could find the most comfort to both live and invest, especially if you want to access major cities as a primary base.

Tajikistan:

"The Tajiks are crazy savages." — this has been the most common reaction by locals in the region when asked about the Tajiks. The nation seems beyond foreign comprehension. It's some special, ancestral zone where only those clans who have lived there for centuries can appreciate. If I may be honest with you, it has made me genuinely afraid to have consistently heard nothing but negatives about the country for so many years. While I feel personally that I would be quite content to live there, I don't imagine it is hospitable enough for foreigners to survive in its frontier regions.

Kyrgyzstan:

Best nation on earth. The investment opportunities are marvelous (when you win), the people are incredibly kind. The mentality is ancient and locals are strongly connected with tradition. Every man I meet in the frontier regions seems to fully expect the modern civilizations to die out completely and the nomads to inherit the earth, once they go. They are interested in modernization but refuse anything that hinders their expression of traditional identity. They are a unique people, fully integrated with the past.

You will be welcome to farm here so long as you prize the will of Manas above all and ask the god Tengri bless you with fortune. These are ancient lands and so long as you respect their ways, Westerns can thrive here.

This August, I'm taking 20 Americans to ride with us throughout Kyrgyzstan.

We're happy to bring members eagle hunting and horse riding for up to one month at a time.

If you want to join us, message me, and I'm happy to personally introduce you to the region. 

Yes, I wrote this post while unironically eating horse meat and sheep intestine for lunch.