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 […]

In recent weeks, the region known as the Ferghana Valley has been much in the news. For the record: The fertile Feghana Valley is about 300 kilmeters long and 170 kilometers wide and is divided between three neighbouring Central Asian states, (Uzbekistan, Tadjikistan and Kyrgyzstan), and comprises the flood plain of the Syr Darya River, […]

Tomorrow, the Batken Oblast celebrates its birthday … The administrative region was created on the 12th October 1999, out of the extreme South-Western parts of the existing Osh Oblast, (partly in response to incursions by armed militants of the Islamic Movement for Uzbekistan seeking to cross Kyrgyz territory between Tajikistan and Uzbekistan). Batken is located in […]

Kyrgyzstan is rich in caves and grottos, (=”Unkur” in Kyrgyz), which are scattered throughout the Republic and they attract a number of “speliologists” – “pot-holers”, or cavers.  Although many of them are easily accessible, they have not been developed as tourist attractions as in other parts of the world. Many of the caves provide evidence […]

A few years ago, atourist left a book for me that he had finished reading: The Carpet Wars by Christopher Kremmer. Although I was grateful, books in English are quite rare and so are like gold dust here, I wasn’t too sure if I was going to enjoy it.  It’s quite a tome, over 450 […]

There is a legend which tells of Urbo-Khan, a noble and respected Khan who lived at a place where caravans of the Silk Road crossed paths. He had an only daughter, Aigul, and she was as beautiful as a swan.  Her fiancée, a very strong man called Kozulan, was famous for his fearlessness and was in charge of […]

To help preserve the priceless, pristine, virgin, natural resources that it possesses, Kyrgyzstan has a total of 83 Specially Protected Natural Territories, (SPNT), with a total area of about 800,000 hectares, which is 4% of Kyrgyzstan’s total land area. Perhaps, the most famous of these specially protected regions is Ala Archa – just outside Bishkek. […]