Postcard from Bishkek

About a year ago I was invited by Victor Kadyrov, the General Director of the Rarity Book Shop in Dom Druzhba – Friendship House – at the side of the main Ala Too Square to visit the shop. I think it’s the largest bookshop on Bishkek, (I don’t know the actual figures), but it could […]

Over the years I have been a number of interesting questions … and last week another one arrived in the email: On the steppes, the nomads presumably have a healer of some sort in each tribe. Does that person have an honorific title or descriptor of some sort? There was some additional information … about […]

Pyotr Petrovich Semenov was born on 2nd January in 1827, at least that was the date in Russia – where they still used the Julian Calendar … in the rest of the world, where they used the Gregorian Calendar, it was already January 14th. Semenov was to come to famous for the reports of his […]

One of the most important Archaeological finds in the region was the “Golden Man” of Issyk. Actually, the Issyk in question is just the other side of the Kungei Ala Too Mountains, (which skirt the Northern shores of Lake Issyk Kul and mark the border with Kazakhstan), just South of the city of Alamty. Although […]

To understand the intricacies and interrelationships between the various peoples that have inhabited Kyrgyzstan over the centuries, to make sense of the events and understand the importance of particular sites in the country and place them into a proper context, it is perhaps best to first all understand the geography of Central Asia.  Indeed, one author […]

One of the places that often top of the list that tourists want included on their itinerary is Karakol in the Issyk Kul oblast. One reason for this is that it is the natural starting off point for treks into the Terskey Ala Too Mountains to the south of Lake Issyk Kul – with the […]

The Kenyan politician, Senator Beatrice Elachi, says: “It is not easy being in politics …”, and the statistics suggest that it is even harder making your mark in politics if you’re a woman. With a few notable exceptions … there are far fewer women who “break the glass ceiling” and make it to the top […]

Today is the fourth Thursday in November, which means that it’s Thanksgiving – an American holiday which commemorates the first successful harvest which the European settlers managed to gather after they had crossed the Atlantic. They had survived a difficult year and managed to survive … seemingly against all odds. Although they were living on […]

When I first came here, back in the mid 1990s, very little was known back in the West about Kyrgyzstan and Bishkek. I often tell the story about a phone call that I received from my mother, a few weeks before my eventual departure.  She asked me,  ”Where did you say you are going?”  ”Bishkek, […]

Every now and again, in my surfing of the internet, I come across a “gem” … a photograph … or a phrase, … a quotation … or a clip, a cartoon …  or … something that catches my eye.  I make a note or bookmark the page, but to be honest, I am not very […]