Proud Views

For mountaineers, climbing the Seven Summits, the highest mountain on each continent, is an ultimate life goal. For Dastan Kasmamytov, the challenge is about reaching a higher goal: challenging perceptions of the Central Asian queer experience.

Despite growing up in the beautifully mountainous Kyrgyzstan, Dastan’s love for hiking didn’t emerge until 2008, when he moved to the equally mountainous Washington State in the U.S. to study digital design. It was also during this time that he began to understand and accept his gay identity.

After his studies, Dastan returned to Kyrgyzstan, where he continued improving his climbing skills, and came out to his parents. Frustrated with his homeland’s underreported violence against the LGBT community, he connected with other Kyrgyz queer activists, and soon found himself at the forefront of a Human Rights Watch report on police brutality against gay and bisexual men. During a life- changing 2014 HRW press conference, he bravely decided to come out publicly. “Until the last minute, I wasn’t sure about it,” Dastan explains, “Everyone was telling me that it was quite dangerous – and it was. But there was no one else who would do it otherwise.”

Thrust into the spotlight in a conservative Muslim country, Dastan experienced harsh backlash. “People were recognizing me in the streets.” After receiving more than thirty death threats and experiencing multiple brushes with physical violence, he left for Kazakhstan “just to escape from the hate,” and began a master’s degree in Norway.

Looking back on this time, Dastan reflects,“It was really scary, but it was the greatest time in my life, because I felt alive, like I was part of something very important.” Underneath the media frenzy, however, the twenty-four-year-old received messages from young queer individuals thanking him for broaching the national conversation on homosexuality.

In 2017, his career brought him to his new home, Berlin, where he conceived his Seven Summits journey, which he calls the Pink Summits. For Dastan, however, this is about more than climbing the highest peak on every continent: it’s a testament to changing narratives – he would be the first Central Asian to do so, and certainly the first openly gay Central Asian at that. His Pink Summits journey shows an alternative story to Western-led LGBT activism and creates awareness around the Central Asian queer experience. After completing his Pink Summits, Dastan hopes to reawaken the LGBT conversation in Kyrgyzstan.

So far, he has summited Kosciuszko in Australia and Elbrus in Russia in 2018, and has plans to conquer Kilimanjaro in Tanzania and eventually Aconcagua in Argentina in 2019. ◊

Follow Dastan’s Pink Summits journey on his blog, pinksummits.com, or Instagram @dastanik.