Postcard from Bishkek

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 […]

One of the problems of being an Englishman here in Kyrgyzstan is that I am often about English, like questionhs “How do you say in English, xxx?“, where “xxx” can be a simple word, or a complicated phrase … and I sometimes have to think hard to some up with an answer; especially if I […]

Today is the first day of Winter … in just a month’s time it will be New Year – the biggest holiday of the year. The place basically closes down for several days  - virtually all the shops close for New Year’s Day, January 1st, even the Narodniy supermarkets which are normally open all day […]

When I was teacher, I once had a pupil who was a keen trainspotter.  One day appeared in the computer room and said that he had bought a computer program and wanted to try it on the school computers … he didn’t have one at home. It was, of course, a computer game.  But … […]

Andrei has developed an interesting habit – I call it “I-want-to-go-to-itis“. The other day, for example, he was introduced to somebody, a visitor from Norway, and when he came home asked me, “where did she say she was from?”  ”Norway,” I replied … and he turned on the computer and Googled “Norway” … then switched […]

The other day I had a visitor, a student preparing a report on Ecotourism and Sustainable development. Everything went well until she got to the question “Have you heard about ‘Ecotourism’? – and, if so, what does it mean?” I’m afraid that I laughed and said, “Yes, I had … “, but when it came […]

Back on 23rd March, 2005, Kyrgyzstan erupted into the news headlines from a position of obscurity …  and I felt that had to write a “round robin” email to family and friends, colleagues and client around the world to let them know that what they were seeing on the news was only a part of […]

One of the oldest forms of tourism is the Pilgrimage: a journey or search of moral or spiritual significance, typically a journey to a shrine or other location of importance to one’s beliefs and faith. Its a growing aspect of tourism with the numbers of people involved continuing to rise.  For example, just 39 of the most […]

We all like the sunshine, which cheers us up and makes the world seem a better place. When I first came to Kyrgyzstan, I was promised something like three hundred days of sunshine a year.  We never seem, however, to make it and that was probably an exaggeration.  Indeed, I once read that there are […]

Although we often get requests asking us send send examples of whatever tour itineraries we have to offer, most people don’t really want an “off the peg” option but want something tailored to fit their particular interests, timetable and so forth. A few years ago we received a request that said a small group of […]