Postcard from Bishkek

Kyrgyzstan is a secular state, although the majority of the Kyrgyz would classify themselves as Muslim.  Over the centuries, however, Kyrgyzstan’s position on the Great Silk Road meant that it was exposed to a wide variety of religious ideas and traditions.  Indeed, at least one author has claimed that the Great Silk Road could just […]

Balbals are small stone figures, (statues, statuettes), which are found scattered throughout the Steppes of Central Asia, (from North-western Mongolia to Turkey – the area between the Caspian and Black Seas), and in Northern Kyrgyzstan they are considered to be a feature. This may be because these enigmatic stone figures are a number of places […]

I am aware that there has been a somewhat depressing turn to the postcards recently, in that there have been quite few references to deaths and funerals. I have mentioned several times that last year was the year of the “black tie”.  It wasn’t just a case of the number of people that died in […]

Petroglyphs – the word comes from the Greek (petra = “stone” and glyphe = “to draw”) and is used to denote pictures drawn or etched onto stones. These drawings, left for us on high rocks and in deep caves can provide evidence of the way of life and the environment of times gone by when there was […]