Archive sections: ‘Kyrgyzstan’
February 15th: On this day in 2005, a new website was launched which was to quickly establish itself as a major phenomenon on the internet – a video-sharing website on which users can upload, share, and view videos: You Tube. Actually, the domain name was registered the day before the launch; the first video, (a 19 second clip [...]
Yesterday, I commented on the fact that it was Saint Valentine’s Day. I could just have easily chosen to mark an anniversary which has slightly more relevance to Kyrgyzstan, but the day passed by without anyone really noticing it. It was February 14th, 1483 when Babur, (the “Tiger”), the first of the Mogul Emperors, of [...]
In yesterday’s post, I wrote about the importance of hats in Central Asia and concentrated on the headgear worn by men. Women also have distinctive styles of traditional headgear and I suppose that I ought to mention these as well.
Whenever we have a spell of cold weather, I am taken to task by my friends and colleagues about why I don’t wear a hat. It isn’t just hats, I tend not to wear a scarf or gloves. The reason is simple, I have a habit of loosing them. I put them down in a [...]
The 2011 Asian Winter Games have come to an end. They were held just over the border in Kazakhstan, or at least some of the 69 events in 11 different sports were held just over the border in Almaty, others were held in the Kazakh capital, Astana.
I’ve missed an anniversary. Surprisingly, little was made of it here, even though it was a nice round number – “It was twenty years ago …” as the Beatles sang on the title track of “Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”, that the Supreme Soviet of the Kyrgyz Republic, then a constituent republic of the [...]
As I review the news coming in from Egypt, reports and analysis, I see that reporters are making quite a few references to Kyrgyzstan. I suppose that is natural, and understandable, as yet another government faces outbursts of public discontent, with calls on the President and government to resign and the resulting disorder on the [...]
The Southern Ring road around Bishkek is named after Isa Akhunbaev, a notable Kyrgyz doctor and surgeon (who lived between 1908 and 1975). Akhunbaev is not well known today outside his native Kyrgyzstan – but he is held in very high regard amongst his own people – not only because of his achievements – but [...]
As I have been sitting nursing a bout of the flu, my mind has turned, (naturally), to medical matters … I have, for example, looked up symptoms and treatments, but I have also been thinking about the medical provision here in Kyrgyzstan. The travel advice for Kyrgyzstan from the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office states: [...]
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 [...]
