Archive sections: ‘Kyrgyzstan’
Let me start this week with an apology and a correction. Last week I said that there were going to be two public holidays this week, which meant a “three day working week”. Well, I got it wrong … the Muslim holiday, Kurman Ait, falls next week, not on Friday the 12th. Those of you [...]
One aspect of Kyrgyz Culture which has come to the attention of the West is the practice of Ala Kachuu – or “Bride Stealing”. It appears that this tradition stems from the times of nomadic culture and lifestyle of the past where people were constantly on the move from one pasture (jailoo) to another. (It [...]
There’s a story about Oscar Wilde, that he was at a dinner party when somebody made a clever, witty, remark and he is supposed to have commented, “I wish I had said that!”, to which Whistler, one of the dinner guests replied: “You will, Oscar. You will.” Well, I felt like Oscar Wilde one day [...]
Irkeshtam is approached from Osh, the second city of Kyrgyzstan, in the South of the country. The road travels south along the valley of the Taldyk and Gulcho river gorges to the village of Sary Tash (“Yellow Stone” in Kyrgyz), which sits on a cross roads. To the West lies the road to Dushanbe in [...]
Yakov Nikiforovich Logvinenko was born on 23rd October,1896 in the Poltava province of Ukraine and his family moved to Pishpek in 1912. He was conscripted into the Imperial Army in the First World War and sent to the front. During the war he achieved the rank of corporal – but after the October Revolution he returned [...]
Alexey Illarionovich Ivanitsyn was a mechanic who participated in the 1905 revolution – and the Imperial authorities exiled him to Central Asia – where he arrived destitute and penniless.
In Britain we have a children’s rhyme which runs … Remember, remember, the fifth of November, Gunpowder, treason and plot …
Those of you that know me will know that one of my favourite pastimes used to be playing “Trivial Pursuits”. I have that sort of mind that “collects” trivia … I loved the Geography questions but I also enjoyed History ones as well. Although I am interested in History, my knowledge of the subject is [...]
One of the emails that I received this week thanked me for the weekly postcard that I send out giving a review of the weeks events here in Kyrgyzstan, but the writer admitted that they were rather confused as to to who was who and the positions taken by the various parties in our recent [...]
One morning in October 1987, I woke up at six o’clock as usual, had a bite of breakfast and got into my car to drive to school. As I emerged from the garage, I got a bit of a shock – there was absolute chaos everywhere I looked, high winds, branches of trees all over [...]
