Kyrgyzstan's high plateaus and the Tian Shan range, the "Celestial Mountains" rising to 7,400 meters, frame this portrait of a semi-nomadic horse culture adapting to the modern world. Muscat Boruchev breeds the near-extinct spotted Kyrgyz horse, the charat, in the Ters Valley, working to undo decades of Soviet-era crossbreeding with Russian stock. Ornithologist Bastien Chaix, who first came to the country nine years earlier, leads scientific expeditions for the NGO Objectif Sciences International, taking orphaned children from Karakol into the mountains to reconnect them with the natural world their families once knew intimately. Further south, Iliyaz Usenov and Kuban Moidinov drive an all-terrain vehicle called the eBilim bus along dirt tracks in Naryn province, a mobile digital library bringing information and education to communities with no other access to either. The film moves between these three threads, herders, scientists, and educators, to show a country whose harsh terrain has kept its people unusually dependent on, and attentive to, the land around them.