By Sachit Subba ⢠Other Sports ⢠Aug 26, 2026 17:29 PM ⢠45 views
This week Nepal's flag is travelling to Central Asia. The day before they departed for the VI World Nomad Gamesâa biennial event featuring traditional and ethnic sports that attracts participants from around the worldâthe Nepal Olympic Committee said goodbye to athlete Triloki Prasad Yadav and his coach, Mumtaz Ali Idrisi.
The farewell showed the weight of the NOC leadership, with President Jeevan Ram Shrestha in charge and Secretary General Rajiv Shrestha and committee member Lhakpa Lama also present. There was no grand ceremony or extra show beyond the roomâjust the three senior officials offering their best wishes to the two representatives before their long journey east.
Shrestha's message was simple: struggle hard and perform well. He told Yadav and Idrisi to put their all into it while wearing the colours of Nepal, a usual phrase at such events but one that still has a strong impact when an athlete is about to go onto foreign soil with the hopes of a small nation depending on them.
The Games get underway on August 31 in Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan, before moving to the country's most prominent venue: the Issyk-Kul region, which contains one of the largest alpine lakes in the world and provides a suitable setting for events based on nomadic traditionâsuch as equestrian sports, wrestling, archery, and other competitions associated with the steppe cultures of Central Asia. The closing ceremony takes place in Cholpon-Ata on September 6, marking the end of a week of competition that has become one of the more distinctive events on the international sporting calendar since the Games were first held in 2014.
For Nepal, the decision to send athletes to the World Nomad Games fits a wider trend of using multi-sport events to gain international recognition for sports that seldom receive attention at home. The NOC's statement did not specify the event Yadav took part in, nor did it include a list of the entire Nepali delegation. So the only information currently available relates to this particular pairing and this send-off.
What will happen in the coming days will depend on how the week progresses in Kyrgyzstan; clearer insights into the results, the chances of winning medals, and the full details of Nepal's team will become available as the Games get closer and then start. For now, this is the story: two athletes, a formal farewell from the country's leading sports organisation, and nine days when Nepal's name will be called on foreign ground, thousands of kilometres from home.
