Archive sections: ‘For the Record’
During the week the “baseball kids” have been making plans for the weekend. Sunday – October 31st, Halloween – seems to have caught their imagination. Katya, for example, is a member of a dance troupe and they had a show in one of the city’s youth centers, (but as I was in Naryn for my [...]
Theodore Hertzen was born in 1935 in the village of Ak Dobo in Leninopole, (currently known as Bakai Ata) of Talas oblast, where there is a small museum dedicated to his life and work. He was educated at both the Bishkek and Moscow Institutes of Art and he has been granted many awards such as [...]
To help preserve the priceless, pristine, virgin, natural resources that it possesses, Kyrgyzstan has a total of 83 Specially Protected Natural Territories, (SPNT), with a total area of about 800,000 hectares, which is 4% of Kyrgyzstan’s total land area. Perhaps, the most famous of these specially protected regions is Ala Archa – just outside Bishkek. [...]
There is an old maxim in Real Estate … the only thing that really counts is “location, location, location”. It is such an overriding principle that in 2001 it was used for the title for a TV programme on Britain’s Channel 4. The mantra basically encapsulates the idea that identical homes can increase or decrease [...]
This was part of the initial draft for the page Nothing in life is simple. In the end, I decided to edit most of it out … but thought I would include as a “subpage” … just in case anyone is interested.
The term, “Aksakal Courts” literally translates as “White Beard Courts”, and is used for a court, or council, of elders which is authorized to consider certain types of legal cases. Traditionally, these local community “courts” consisted of the oldest men in the village, who make decisions as if an elected town council. Today, they are [...]
There is a saying that “Everyday is a special day for someone, somewhere”. In Kyrgyzstan this seems to be true as there are a number of what are termed “professional holidays”, such as: Teacher’s day, Policeman’s Day, Day of workers in the Television industry … and so on.
International Tourism Day is one of a number of “professional holidays” commemorated in the Kyrgyz Republic. September 27 was designated as World Tourism Day at the Third Session of the General Assembly of the World Tourism Organization, (WTO, now the United Nations World Tourism Organisation, or UNWTO), in Torremolinos, Spain, in September 1979. The date, September [...]
Prices are a very important element of any package, and can be the source of much misunderstanding.
There are a few reasons to take this road: It provides a cross-country route between the Northeast (Issyk Kul) and Southwest (Osh) corners of the country, avoiding the need to travel via Bishkek. The landscapes and villages are different from other, well visited, places and they look remote and untouched. You can visit the Saimaluu-Tash [...]
