A Cultural Exchange through Snowboarding Here is Azamat, hiking back up the hill with my snowboard for another run. Azamat was helping us collect firewood for a winter tourism project deep in the Terskey Ala-Too range of the Tien Shan mountains of Kyrgyzstan. At the end of the day, our work completed, he started asking me about my snowboard. "You want to try?" I asked him. "Of course!" he replied. So I strapped him in and sent him down a mellow little hill, and he screamed with joy as he rode powder for the first time in his life. "Whoooooo!" It was a moment that bridged our cultures and broke down barriers. He took five more runs that evening. He was hooked.