Postcard from Bishkek

On Sunday, at the 38th session of the  Intergovernmental Committee of UNESCO, held in Doha, it was decided to accept a number of historical and cultural sites from around the world into the UNESCO World Heritage List. Among the nominations that were approved was one relating to the Silk Road, making special mention of the […]

Today is Mezhdunarodniy dehn karavanshika – The International Day of the Caravan.  This is not one of those international commemorative days established by the United Nations or one of their agencies … but a “professional holidays” for truck drivers, “teamsters”, crews of merchant vessels and escort ships, established in 1995 by the International Association for the rationalization […]

  There are some doubts about whether Marco Polo actually made his famous journey arising out of inconsistencies in his account, the lack of corroborative detail in official records for Kublai Khan’s court and the fact that there is no original manuscript – only a wide range of fragments and translations which contain different episodes […]

  The story of the Silk Road is a fascinating one – full of fearless explorers, military campaigns, religious pilgrims and great thinkers as well as humble and enterprising traders who risked both life and limb travelling in caravans across deserts, mountains and steppes.  There was no such thing as a single “Silk Road” – […]

A couple of months ago, one of the news agencies started publishing a series of articles about the some of the individual works of art contained in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts.  The second in the series featured a large painting the second floor, (first floor to the English like me, who […]

An Arab poet once said, “The West was still covered in ice when, in the East, they were already producing music”. It was also in the East that horses first domesticated and historical sources suggest that Central Asia was an ancient centre for horse-breeding. The horse played a very big role in the life of […]

Situated 10 km to the South of Tokmok – stands the Burana tower.  It’s a favourite spot for day trips from Bishkek and we often visit it on tours on the way between Bishkek and Issyk Kul or Naryn.  To be honest, it’s quite a while since I have been there myself, (over a year), […]

Hsuan Tsang was one of the early travellers along the Silk Road.  Although he is known as Hsuan Tsang, (Xuanzang), his real name was Chen Yi. Born in 599 – some sources say 602 - near Luoyang in Henan, China, he was the youngest of four children.  Some sources say that his siblings were all brothers, but others […]

  Let me say from the outsaet: As far as we know, Marco Polo never made it as far north as  Kyrgyzstan. There is considerable controversy about whether he actually made the journey for which he is famous but assuming that he did, then he crossed from what is now Afghanistan to Kashgar before travelling […]

About eight kilometres East of the city of Kant in Northern Kyrgyzstan lies the modern village of Krasnaya Rechka, (“Red River”).  This is the site of the ancient towns of Suyab and Nevkat (“New City”), a Silk Road city that flourished between the 6th and 12th centuries.  The identification is based on manuscripts found at the […]