The next big seasonal move happened when the cattle ate all of the grasses around the spring camp and the heat and sunlight scorched the ground. Running away from deadly dry seasons, the nomads undertook a long migration towards their summer camping grounds in the north. This is where the sun is less ferocious and there are more small woods with protecting shade, and the rivers dont run dry all year long. The summer nomadic camps always settled around riverbanks with access to water and cool air.
In the fall there is a third seasonal movement, now back towards the south. The fall camping could be at the same place as the spring one, or some other suitable place. This was the best time of the year for the nomads. The cattle is fat and plentiful, the people are healthy and full of energy. This is where many of the nomadic production works happen, such as mass cattle shearing (fall shearing), making felt for yurts, woodworking, and etc.
Also this is where the most delicious event in the nomadic life too place: the massive fall slaughter of cattle called «soghym». The carefully selected animals were slaughtered in large numbers, and their meat was salted and dried to be stored over long winter. This is the only time of year when there is plenty of meat for everybody to eat. And because of that, this is when most of celebrations take place, such as marriage brokerage and weddings.
After the end of fall season, nomadic families traveled to their winter facilities. Here they put their cattle in fenced yards and stored hay for winter. Once the snow fell the nomads were seating out for a few cold month: eating on their food stores, feeding the cattle with hay, making and fixing their equipment, and hoping that the spring will come on time. And the cycle repeats again, year after year, millennium after millennium.
Such was the typical seasonal migration cycle of the Eurasian Nomads. In Kazakhstan the winter camping grounds were located in modern-day Southern Kazakhstan bordering with Central Asian states (Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Turkmenistan), while the summer camps were located around the northern border with todays Russia.
Over the thousands of years the nomadic seasonal migrations were perfected to a solid system. Each tribe had its own route (a corridor) and camping grounds, with designated watering holes and pastures. Only tribe members knew the best locations and paths, and could deliver their caravans to the destinations safely and efficiently. Other tribes, in times of peace, never violated these unwritten rules. In times of war or famine, however, these routes and grazing grounds were often becoming battlegrounds between rival tribes.
In Kazakhstan the process of moving from one seasonal camp to another is called «Kósh» as noun and «Kóshu» as verb, and the proper name for the word «nomadic» as adjective is «kóshpeli» or «kóshpendi».
Nomadic leisure
Culture, poetry, and music
Contrary to the erroneous commonly established opinion, the Eurasian Nomads were probably the most cultural people that ever existed on Earth, in the nomadic meaning of «cultural» that is.
The reason for that was that the nomadic lifestyle didnt require working long hours from sunrise to sunset every day, like in was for farmers or craftsmen in SC nation. Instead, the life of nomad consisted of massive, labor-intensive, but short efforts, such as four seasonal Kóshes, collective cattle shearing, felt-making, soghym, or swift war raids and military campaigns; alternated with long periods of relative calmness and leisure time.
And that leisure time was used mostly for cultural activities, arts, sports, and other pleasures. In fact, despite the harsh lifestyle, the nomads most of all valued quality time and used any occasion to throw a party. Whenever any guest, even a complete stranger, came to any yurt, he or she was admitted as a dear guest with the most respect and consideration. This was a universal law of the nomadic hospitality in peaceful times. First feed the guests, water their horses, and then ask questions. This law never changed for thousands of years.
Then came long conversations that could last for days and nights for as long as the guests were willing to stay. And if the guests possessed some valuable skills, knowledge or talents, this could easily turn into a big holiday event for the whole nomadic extended family called Aul, or even an entire tribe.
If a guest could tell good stories, old fairy tales or legends, if he was well-travelled or educated, or if she knew how to play musical instruments and perform songs and poetry, this was the happiest occasion and honor for the hosting family. Such a guest was like a pure gold, and the hosts didnt spare any expenses or efforts to please him or her and their neighbors. The sheep was slaughtered for meat, and the horse milk qymyz and camel milk shubat was consumed in mad amounts.
The oral literature tradition of nomads was simply enormous. Unfortunately, very little of it survived to date, because the nomads rarely used writing and the poetry was passed on orally and thus was forever lost, forgotten in the folds of centuries. The roots of European traditional poetry, such as minstrels, bards, saga-tellers, and singers, lies in the EN oral tradition. At this, the later was not limited to the nobility, and was vastly greater and encompassed all layers of nomadic society. Every nomadic Aul and tribe had one or dozens of poets, musicians, and singers, and they were distinguished and nurtured by their families and neighbors.
There were a few types of poets in the Great Steppe. Some were only performing old legends and sagas, others specialized in moral and philosophical poetry, and others used their poetical talents for politics and social criticism. Often the EN staged poetic battles between the specially-trained fast-rhyming poets, similar to modern-day rap battles. There were even the shamanic poets, who used poetry to cure the ill, strengthen the weak, restore the fertility, stabilize the mentally-ill, and etc. There were also poet-warriors, actual combat participants, who used their poetry to raise the moral of their tribesmen and humiliate the enemy.
The Eurasian Nomads loved music even more than poetry. One could be simply blown away by the amount of musical instrument types that the nomads invented on their own or adopted from their neighbors. There is the Museum of Kazakh Musical Instruments in my city of Almaty, and it has a great variety of items on display, but this is only a tiny survived fracture of what the nomads used to have. There is a big array of string instruments, string and bow instruments, wind instruments, percussion instruments, jaw harps, string harps, bells, whistles, and etc. There is even an instrument made of horse hooves. Looks like the nomads were obsessed with making sounds of music out of everything they could get their hands on.
Just as there were many types of musical instruments, there were also many types of musical forms. Some are sad and long, others are short and furious or funny, merry, and spirit-lifting. There was a big cluster of love poetry, of course. There was war music, and drums with tambourines were used as signal tools in the armies. Some musicians were able to imitate dozens, if not hundreds of nature sounds, such as hooves rattle, birds singing (different species), wind blowing, water flawing, and etc.
Of course there were singers too, who were able to play instruments and sing. Those were the skills that pretty much every single nomadic girl or a boy were expected to master at least to some degree in their free time, unlike that of the SC nations, where mostly the privileged class could afford a luxury to study and perform music.