Postcard from Bishkek

On one occasion about ten years ago I was traveling up from Bishkek up to Lake Issyk Kul.  As we drove along the Northern shore towards Chalpon Ata I was busy taking in the view to out right, of the sky blue waters of the lake when one of my companions told me took to […]

A few years ago I was asked by a friend where he could take his wife ind in-laws for a weekend away. As it happens, he knows Kyrgyzstan quite well, (his wife is Kyrgyz), and he had already been to many places around Bishkek. He wanted to avoid the obvious places like Ala Archa, which […]

The “Road to … ” films were seven comedies starring Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, and Dorothy Lamour, often simply as  the “Road” pictures.  The seven included:  The Road to Singapore (in 1940);  Zanzibar (1941); Morocco (1942); Utopia (1946); Rio (1947); Bali (1952) and Hong Kong (1962). They were a combination of adventure, comedy, romance, and music where they played the role of […]

This is quite a long postcard … but there’s a reason for that … it describes just some the things and places it is possible to encounter on the almost 900 kilometer round trip from Bishkek to Karakol. Some of the sites mentioned already have postcards dedicated to them – perhaps in the future, I […]

I’m off to Naryn for my regular monthly visit to the guesthouse. The main road from Bishkek to Naryn offers a wide variety of landscapes, and although I know the route well, travelling it about 150 times, (at least once a month over the last twelve and a half years), I never tire of the […]

There are a few reasons to take this road: It provides a cross-country route between the Northeast (Issyk Kul) and Southwest (Osh) corners of the country, avoiding the need to travel via Bishkek. The landscapes and villages are different from other, well visited, places and they look remote and untouched. You can visit the Saimaluu-Tash […]