Archive sections: ‘From an Expat’
The “Camel Cheese Crew” from “What took you so long?” are here! I wrote a few weeks ago about the project – they are making a series of films about pastoral lifestyles around the world through the theme of Camels and in particular cheese made from camel milk. On their travels they are passing through [...]
If last week was a Three Day Week, this week has been a Four Day Week. Friday marked the end of Ramadan, and is known here as Orozo Ait, (although elsewhere in the Muslim world it has different names – for example: “Eid al Fitr”), and is a public holiday. Because it is based on [...]
We had an interesting problem with a client’s payment for a tour last month. Yes, we do have tourists in Kyrgyzstan … despite this year’s “little local difficulty” … not as many not as many as last year, nor as many as would have liked or hoped for. As is often the case, there was [...]
Have you noticed how history seems to have a habit of repeating itself. The actual circumstances vary in detail, of course, but the situations and the way that people react often bear remarkable similarities. I have written before how struck I was by the similarities between how the situations evolved in Russia in 1917 and [...]
Here in Kyrgyzstan it is traditional to think of the tourist season as ending on September 27th, the International Day of Tourism. In fact, for most of the tourism industry the season is much shorter. The vast majority of tourists who visit the country are usually from Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Siberia and they mass on [...]
In many ways, this week has been a quite week but also a strange week … it has provided to be a hiatus in lots of different ways.
“Another Website?” That was the astonished reaction I got a short while ago when I announced to my staff that I was thinking of launching yet another new website into the company’s constantly growing family of websites.
It’s odd that in these days of the internet and Information and Communication Technologies, with i-pods, i-phones and i-pads, Blackberries and Bluetooth, the printed word is still in many respects the preferred version of many people when handling documents. Last week I wrote about an Oral History Project, run as part of a journalism course [...]
People often ask me why Celestial Mountains has so many websites. It’s a good question, and I usually answer by saying that they each address a different topic.
I wrote about Svetlana’s trip to Kashgar … well, she’s given me a report on the trip and I thought I would share with you some of her gems. At first I thought of revisiting and editing the page to include some quotes – but then I thought it might be better just to give [...]
