Postcard from Bishkek

Kara Suu valley, Karavshin - Photo credit: k.belotserkovskiy / Foter /Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic (CC BY-ND 2.0) The Karavshin Mountains form a narrow east-west spine of granite, about 15 miles long, among the usual shale and limestone peaks of the Pamir Alai, on the border of Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. Sheer and massive rock formations cut by vertical cracks […]

Photo credit: simonov / Foter / Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.0) Today, 8th August, is designated as the International Day of Mountaineering – Dehn Alpinism. Mountaineering – also called Alpinism – is a generic term used to describe various activities undertaken in mountain regions.  Its origins seem to stem from the term mountaineer which, some four hundred years […]

The other day I came across some new research … well, it was new to me, although the paper is dated April 2011. What attracted my attention in the first place was the “teaser”: “Living at a high altitude can protect you from certain diseases“, which was accompanied by a link to a short article with […]

Today is the International Day of the Mountains, so I thought I would take a brief look at one of the main mountain systems that cross the country – The Pamir Mountains:

This year, today happens to be a double holiday here in Kyrgyzstan … it’s Orozo Ait – the last day of Ramadan and an official public holiday.  I have written a brief postcard about this holiday before … so let me move onto the second reason for celebration … Apparently it is also Dehn Alpininsta; […]

Coronet Peak is a mountain at the head of the Ala Archa Gorge, which lies about 40 kilometers, (just under an hour’s drive), to the South of downtown Bishkek. The gorge is famous for its beautiful alpine scenery, (some consider it to be the most picturesque of the mountain valleys in the Kyrgyz Ala Too […]

Despite our name, The Celestial Mountains Tour company doesn’t undertake mountaineering expeditions.  Even so, being in Kyrgyzstan, which is over 90% mountainous, it is difficult to ignore the various peaks. Today is the International Day of the Mountains, so I thought I would take a look at another of Kyrgyzstan’s lesser known mountains. There aren’t […]

Lenin Peak in the Osh oblast lies on the border with Tajikistan – it rises to a height of 7134m and was the third highest mountain in the former Soviet Union, shaped something like a “high armchair”. The outline, however, is not always obvious because the summit is almost always covered in cloud – and […]

  Khan Tengri: lies in the Issyk Kul oblast near the border with Kazakhstan. (The name is translated variously as “Prince of Spirits” or “Ruler of the Sky”) Until recently the summit was said to be 6995m a.s.l. but a recent survey announced that it is, in fact, 7010m – however some people treat this […]

I have mentioned in a previous postcards the phenomenon of #TTOT - Travel Talk on Twitter. The organisers decide on a subject for the week and then on Tuesday, (at 9:30 GMT – am and pm, in order to cover all the world’s time zones), they pose a series of questions on that theme, inviting others to submit answers, and thus […]