Tents are usually regarded as temporary shelter for recreational uses, but many people around the planet still live in what seem to be tents all the time, permanently . All around the year, whether winter or summer, these special structures house whole families against the elements. In the steppes of Mongolia and Central Asia, nomadic peoples still use felt-covered wood lattice yurts for homes. They’re like tents that may be pitched anytime, anywhere, and yet are more roomy and robust, such that they can stand permanently if necessary, as indeed many do nowadays when some steppe peoples no longer follow big herds around and are essentially settled down in one place.
Technically, a yurt is not quite a tent, though similarities abound far more than do differences. Tents conjure certain photographs that yurts don’t. For starters, a camping tent is usually short lived and typically utilitarian, while yurts and tepees, a somewhat similar dwelling of certain indigenous American clans, are supposed to endure as sole abodes of their inhabitants. Indeed, we don’t talk of a tent’s inhabitants – not as such, anyway – whereas with yurts and tepees it is completely smart to do so.
These structures are in numerous ways much more home-like than any tent can be, though a selection of tents do exist on the market now such as Big Agnes tent. Until rather recently, for example, tents did not generally have windows or openings to allow smoke to escape or get out, while yurts and tepees do because cooking is expected to be done within them, inside.
Still, some characteristics may continue to be different between these sorts of structures and tents. Owing to their nearly wholly different purposes, tents don’t have walls as thick as those of yurts and tepees, for example. Fans in the West have changed the yurt and expanded on its ideas to form new kinds of dwelling, often made with modern high tech materials. They also are not typically meant to be moved regularly and some are built to be permanent structures and practically immobile.
