It is good advice and applies not just to driving. In English we also the phrase “Haste makes waste” – which encapsulates the idea of “what’s the hurry?” When you are in a hurry – you tend to make mistakes.

A few years ago I was involved in a near miss. I was being driven up to Naryn from Bishkek. It’s about 360 kilometres, through the Central Tien Shan mountain range. The road condition is quite good – asphalt paved road for most of the way, apart from one pass at just over 3000 meters a.s.l. – but even that is quite good. The surface isn’t smooth and even all the way – but apart from a few spots, (which I now know quite well – having travelled the road at least once a month for about five years), the journey is quite comfortable.

On this occasion, the driver was a young Russian – an experienced driver, but quite young and full of the confidence of youth. The “world was his oyster” – and he carried himself as if he was invincible. It had been snowing, although it had stopped, and there was about a foot (30 cms) of snow lying on the ground. We were making good time … perhaps we were doing too well, because we came over the crest of a hill and hit a spot of packed ice … the vehicle swerved: first right, then left, across the carriageway, (fortunately there weren’t any other vehicles anywhere in sight), then round and round. Cool, calm and collected, the young charioteer sitting behind the wheel threw the vehicle into the skid and slowed down until we came to a standstill.

Maybe the passengers were all used to this sort of occurrence, (I wasn’t!), but they all took it very well … there was no screaming, shouting, or panic … just a sharp intake of breath. Once the vehicle was safely “parked” we all caught our breath again … and set off again.

I took the opportunity to congratulate the young man on his driving skills … “Very impressive … Well Done” – and then added, “What a pity it was necessary in the first place.”

That was not the only such incident.

I remember on another occasion I did the same journey in a “local taxi”. After half an hour of what should be at least a four hour journey – but was obviously going to take under three this time – I asked the driver to slow down. We were driving through a gorge with a long, narrow and winding road with vehicles traveling in both directions … and occasionally livestock meandering along or across the highway. He looked at me aghast, horrified – as if I was challenging his manhood. It seems that he decided that it was easier not to understand my “Pigeon Russian” – and ignored me. So I said, as slowly and as clearly as I could: “You may be tired of living … but I’m not.”. He looked bemused … it was clear he understood me … but once again chose to ignore me. After a few more minutes I said “Stop the car – I am getting out!”.

“You can’t stop here,” he protested, “it’s the middle of nowhere.” Quite correct, but at least we had now established that he did understand me. He began to take me seriously. He slowed down for the next hour or so, but you could tell that he straining at the leash all the time – eager to step on the gas and show what his little Lada was capable of. Eventually, testosterone got the better of him and he threw caution to the wind … as his foot hit the floor, we were back up to breaking the speed limit once more. By that time, however, we were out of the mountains and into the plains where the roads are straight – and wide – designed for traveling at 90 kilometers an hour (about 56 mph) and I didn’t feel too worried about doing 120.

In one of the popular guides to Central Asia, there is a list of the author’s personal favourite highlights of the region. It includes the “cheap taxis in Kyrgyzstan”.

Now it is true that there are cheap taxis in Kyrgyzstan – but you run the risk of “getting what you pay for”. It has to be said that there are many very good, caring and obliging drivers who operate taxis … but …

There is system of local, shared, taxis operating between each of the major cities. The drivers wait at central points – usually outside the bus station – for potential clients. Once they have a carload, then they depart. A “carload” usually means four people. Three share the back seat, and the fourth sits up-front next to the driver – in what we, in Britain, euphemistically call the “death seat”. It is possible to take the taxi for yourself – by paying for the additional, unused, places.

Several embassies and foreign ministries (such as the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office) actually advise against using them. Why is this? Apart from the fact that you could be crammed up three to a seat for what could be a long journey … you take “pot-luck” with your fellow passengers, the driver and the vehicle.

There is no licensing of taxis in the Kyrgyz Republic. Buses, minibuses and vehicles owned by companies (like ours) used for carrying passengers have to receive a license – but not taxi drivers. The law actually explicitly excludes them from this requirement. Basically, anyone with a vehicle and a driver’s license can start working as taxi driver. Some of the drivers operate full time – as “professional” drivers, but others may simply be looking for paying passengers to help defray the costs of undertaking a journey to see friends and/or family. For example, I have one acquaintance, a Doctor who lives in the South of the country. During the summer he supplements his meager salary of about USD15 by taking his annual leave and shuttling backwards and forwards between Bishkek and Osh. When not on vacation, he still manages to make the journey once a month.

Please don’t misunderstand me … lots of people use these taxis everyday – and, sometimes, I also use them. For the traveler on a tight budget, especially, the use of buses, minibuses and local taxis offers a cheaper alternative to hiring a car and driver from a company like ours … but, it is a case of Caveat Preemptor – “Let the buyer beware”.

In the capital, Bishkek, there are a number of new taxi firms and they have a number of advantages:

• the vehicles have special lights and displays – and so are easy to identify;
• you can order a taxi by phone;
• drivers and vehicles are (supposed to be) checked and vetted;
• each one is numbered, so there is some control – for example: if you forget something in the back of the vehicle, it might be possible to trace the vehicle;
• there is a set system of tariffs – it might be a bit more expensive than simply flagging down a vehicle on the street, but is predictable and there is no argument;

“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.

They know me quite well, however, and so followed up their surprised question with another one: “What’s this one about?”

They know, for example, that the sites which we already have fall into categories:

• There’s sites about us and our activities, and about Kyrgyzstan:
  • www.celestialweb.info – a “portal” with links to all of the others and
  • www.celestial.kg – the companies’ “visit card”;
  • a suite of three sites, one each for the companies’ three main activities:
    • www.tours.kg,
    • www.silkroadlodge.kg,
    • www.cmgh.kg -
  • (and this one – although, strictly speaking, this a personal website rather than a company one ianbek.kg, )

and

• Sites about Kyrgyzstan:
  • www.celestial.com.kg – our travel encyclopedia to Kyrgyzstan; and
  • a suite of sites about traditional Kyrgyz culture:
    • www.horses.kg,
    • www.tastes.kg;
    • www.sounds.kg;
    • www.yurts.kg and
    • www.crafts.kg which is planned and currently under construction;
  • a goodwill gesture to good causes in Kyrgyzstan to showcase their work
    • www.gk.kg
  • the planned “Kyrgyz diary” website about the year in Kyrgyzstan

It seems to me that there is a gap here … something’s missing … what about the other people … the visitors to Kyrgyzstan.  Where do they have their say?

To be fair, many visitors to Kyrgyzstan do already “have their say” … they post videos on sites like Youtube, The Lonely Planet Thorn Tree or TripAdviser, or they have their own blogs.

Perhaps, I suggested, it would be a good idea to bring those together in a single resource.  To make available to people who are interested in traveling to Kyrgyzstan the wealth of experience and advice of others who have already trodden this path …

That led to quite a discussion with a lot of fruitful ideas – some of which we are working on for future developments.

… but there is more!

We know that there is a rich vein of knowledge available on the internet, but sometimes it can be difficult to locate it.  Over the years I have seen a vast number of web pages about Kyrgyzstan … and although many have been filed away in my “Favourites” tab … an awful lot have been lost.  Some of the sites have actually disappeared, just as ianbek.com once disappeared.  Other, individual pages, have been archived and withdrawn by the publishers and so are no longer available.  On the other hand – a huge number are still “out there … somewhere”, waiting to be discovered by the surfer.

Search engines can help us find them – but they can come up with huge listings … Search for Ian Claytor and Googol gives 47800 results, search for “Ian Claytor” and it narrows down to 570.  Search for Celestial Mountains and it finds about 176,000 results, whilst “Celestial Mountains” gives just 20,000 (yet surprisingly “The Celestial Mountains Tour Company” yields about 21,500!).

Try searching for Kyrgyzstan … and you get something like 282,000,000 links! – yes, 282 million links!

Not all of the links are useful … and by the time you get past the tenth page, (if you haven’t already given up), you might just come across a “gem” of an article … .

What’s more, we can’t hope hope to put all these links into the database, so we are obviously going to have to be selective.  We’ll limit ourselves to those associated with travel to Kyrgyzstan and some links that give background information that might be useful, or helpful, to someone interested in traveling to Kyrgyzstan.  We won’t include pages that are news based or address political, economic and social social problems or those aimed at selling things – like tours or hotel accommodation.

Now, it’s true, unfortunately, that not all of the things that you find on blogs and review sites are positive.     There may be things on the internet that we would prefer weren’t there … but they are … and they do represent the authors’ opinions, their experiences and their impressions.  As they are already in the public domain we can’t ignore them.  As a result, some of the links will be to pages that some people may feel are negative – but they need to be seen for what they are: part of an overall picture.

So, we decided to try and make it easier for people to navigate the mass of information out there, so that the surfer can find the sort of pages that will help them get a feel for Kyrgyzstan.

We are not selling anything … not trying to give a news service with the latest up to date information about what’s happening in the country or social commentary … just a directory of pages with information, reviews and impressions of the country … a  targeted resource.

So, that was the concept.

We decided to give it a go.

However, life is not simple.  I know from my days of teaching Information Technology that there are a whole host of questions about structuring websites, and the information that they contain …  and so it proved to be in this case.

So, we set up a small test version and tried it out.

We searched through our Favourites folders, blog sites, we googled and searched on several different search engines …  finally we decided to try it live.

It’s not a finished product … it’s a “testbed” … we are trying the concept out.  It seemed like a good idea, but how will it work in practice?,  What problems will we encounter?, How do we organize the links?, how will it be most useful to the surfer?

If we decide to continue the project, then the final version may well look totally different from this “testbed”.  This is just a trial version to see what it looks like, what the problems are and see how we can improve it.

Why not have a look?  Give us your feedback … suggest sites and individual pages, categories and so on. Help us to help the surfer!

Help us to help you!

Ian Claytor.

General Director
The Celestial Mountains Companies.

Let’s start with the simple and the obvious … my name is Ian Claytor. I am British and was born on 8th March, 1953, in Malvern, Worcestershire.

Ian is a Scottish name, (it’s the Scottish equivalent of John, or “God’s Gift”), although there is nothing Scottish about the family. There aren’t that many Claytors around … and it seems that the Malvern branch of the family originally came from Nottinghamshire. There’s a family legend that tells that we are descended originally from a family called Clayton, who were local squires and landowners, but there was a scandal involving a gypsy girl and a curse placed on the “seventh son of the seventh son” … they seem to have gone in for big families in those days … and in an attempt to overcome the curse one of my ancestors changed his name by replacing the final letter, an “n”, with an an “r”. (An attempt to create an “alpha effect” with an “omega change”, as Arthur C. Clarke put it in one of his short stories.) I am not sure I believe the account, but it makes for a good story.

Actually, Ian is what it says on my Birth Certificate and in my passport – so it is my official name – but according to Canon Law, (Church Law, that is), it’s not my name at all. When I was born my mother had Tuberculosis – it cost her a lung and my father once told me that they “pulled the curtains”, (meaning that they thought that she was about to die), not just once but twice during this period. Anyway, when I finally made my appearance, they were so concerned that I might not survive that the doctor christened me then and there. Apparently he named me Royston and, as I said, according to Canon Law, once you are christened, then you have been given a name and that is your name. Full Stop! So, how come I am now Ian Claytor and not Royston Claytor. My mother explained it me like this: my older brother, Tony, had trouble saying my name – even in the short version, Roy. Apparently, he kept calling me “Boy”. “No son of mine is going to go through life being called “Boy”", she decided, and so when it came time to officially register the birth with the authorities, she changed it to Ian.

She thought she had solved the problem because no-one could shorten the name … but she was thwarted by Richard, my best friend at primary school, who would insist on calling me “Ee”. I think that, at times, she felt that she could have throttled him.

In answer to one of the questions that I am most often asked here, I have to report that I am single and have never been married and so, no, I am not divorced and no, I have no children – although I do have a number of cats. You can read more about them here.

As I said, I have an older brother, Tony, who is married to Christine and they have two teenage sons, Dominic and Lawrie and live in Hertfordshire.

For the first two and half years of my life when my mother was ill with TB, I had been passed from relative to relative eventually ending up in a children’s home in Stourbridge in North Worcestershire. One of earliest memories is of playing on the swings at the home. Another is of sitting in the backseat of the car my parents had borrowed when they came to fetch me and, looking out of the back window seeing a big bright “Midland Red” bus turn the corner behind us.

Malvern, where I grew and went to school, was a small town of about 30,000 but it was originally a number of villages, (Great Malvern, Malvern Link, North Malvern, West Malvern, Little Malvern, Malvern Wells and a number with names that don’t contain the name Malvern), which grew up around the Malvern Hills.

My father was a postman for all his life, except for the war years when he served as a tank driver, driving a Churchill tank in North Africa and up through Italy. He was also a Trade Union official, serving for many years as the local branch secretary of the Union of Post Office Workers), an example I was to follow later on in life. My mother was a housewife for most of her life, but did spend some time working a shorthand typist and secretary. She was very fond of handicrafts and I think she would have found the traditional crafts of the Kyrgyz very interesting and would have enjoyed making Shyrdaks, Ala Kiyiz, Kurak and Saima embroidery.

I wasn’t a particularly good student at school. In fact I still have my school report where one of my teachers commented: “Ian works well when he can’t avoid it” … and I still wonder why he couldn’t have stuck with the traditionally tried and tested: “Could do better”, but it was at least original and showed that I wasn’t just “one of the crowd”. My schooldays, of course, did much to shape my future career, but there’s more about that here. Anyway, I must have done reasonably well because I ended up with three A-Levels and a place at Teacher Training college and the backdoor into Oxford University and an Oxford degree, and there’s more about that here.

Oxford was an adventure. Up until then I hadn’t traveled much and my horizons were very much limited to Malvern where I had grown up. I had been to the seaside at Weston-Super-Mare, (or Weston-Super-Mud as we called it because when the tide went out, the sea retreated so far that there seemed to be nothing but miles and miles of wet sand), and to Cornwall with the family of my best friend … they later moved there and he still lives there and now runs a number of hotels in the area – so we’re colleagues. Oxford, however, was different … it wasn’t a holiday, just a week or two … I was on my own, and I made the most of it.

I made some good friends in college, and we kept in touch for a while after we finished our course. When it came time for everyone to leave and go make their own way in the world, one of my friends, took my address but said: “I don’t promise to keep in touch … maybe I will, but think how many friends you had at school that you’ve lost touch with – and that was only three or four years ago … people move on, and I don’t like making promises I don’t know if I can keep.” It’s sad, but she was right – and I have always remembered that … especially the bit promises – after all, an Englishman’s word is supposed to be his bond!

After college it was a question of finding a job … and I got thrown in at the deep end. I became the Teacher in Charge of Religious Education in a large school in Thame in rural Oxfordshire. OK … “teacher in charge” … the only teacher of Religious Education, as it happened. Being the only one, however, I couldn’t take every class and there were a couple of people to help me … but basically I was left on my own devices.

It was in Thame that I started to follow my father’s footsteps and joined a union. It wasn’t exactly what you would think of as a Trade Union … or at least what I thought of at that time as a Trade Union. Teaching isn’t exactly a “blue collar”, working class, profession, and the union that I chose was not militant by any means. Some people referred to us conservative, or even “right wing”, but that wasn’t really true. We preferred to call ourselves the “moderate” teachers’ union. Normally, I “don’t do things by halves” and guided by the principles that although “membership has its privileges” it also has its responsibilities, so I found myself taking an active role in Association affairs. After the move to London, this grew year by year and before I know it I was branch secretary, and in the course of the next seventeen years I also took on the roles (at different times) of Branch Treasurer and Chairman as well as a conference delegate and Branch representative, negotiating with employers, local authorities and, on one occasion, a Minister of the Crown. As it happens, this experience taught me an awful lot and helped me a great deal when I came to Kyrgyzstan and I found myself attending meetings (and sometimes arguing) with government officials, Ministers and even Prime Ministers and Presidents and two British princes of the realm. (Yes, two … strange isn’t it, I traveled half way around the world to meet two members of my own Royal Family!)

The Headteacher in Thame had a basic rule of thumb … the first year a teacher worked in the school, especially if they were a probationary teacher like me, (that is they were newly qualified and new to teaching), then they were basically “taking” from the school – gaining experience and additional “on the job training”. Everything is a new experience. During the Second year its a case of “fifty-fifty” … they are still learning, but they are also putting into practice that they learned in the first year. By the time they get to the third year, they are “giving back” to the school. Now, it seemed to me, (and still does), that that’s a bit crude, but there is a lot of truth in it and it makes a lot sense in a school situation where there is a clear annual cycle. Anyway, I did my three years and and then started looking around for the next step in my career.

I applied for a job in London … returning to my “first love”, Mathematics. In fact, I didn’t get it … at the interview we were told that someone else had been appointed, but “it was a close decision and thanks for applying”. So, I got quite a surprise a few days later when I got a phone call saying that the successful applicant had to withdraw and asking if I was still interested in the job. Yes, I was, and so I made another of the big decisions in my life and moved to London.

Having been, nominally at least, my own boss as “Teacher in charge of Religious Education”, I now joined the rank and file as ordinary classroom teacher. I had fewer groups to get to know and was teaching a subject which, even if it wasn’t popular with everyone, was thought to be useful and not just a “necessary chore”, a statutory obligation. I got on well with the classes – although, yes, there were “ups and downs”. I was there for seventeen years. That’s a long time, but although it was seventeen years in one school, I actually had several different jobs during that time. After a few years as a classroom Maths teacher, I took on classes in Statistics and then Computing, IT and vocational courses as well as taking on various administrative roles within the school. There’s more about that here.

I also took on a role as an examiner, (in both Maths and Computing). My first experience of working in the examination system was as a student when I got a holiday job as a “checker” for one of the exam boards. It surprised me how many so-called “intelligent” people couldn’t add up the marks they had awarded a candidate – and as a result this was something I paid great attention to when I eventually became an examiner. Later as a with the Certificate of Secondary Education (CSE), which was the equivalent of a school leaving certificate, and the system involved using class teachers as markers and examiners. When my career moved into computing I applied for several jobs as a assistant examiner in Computing, (without any expectation of success – hey, my degree was in Theology, not computing or any other related subject), and to my surprise and amazement I was accepted – for all of them! Every year, from May until August, I spent many long hours marking scripts and coursework projects, and attending meetings. It was a hard job, carrying great responsibility but it was a great experience which helped me immensely in many different ways. I would strongly recommend it to any teacher as being both rewarding and worthwhile. (There’s more about my experiences here.)

As I said before, I didn’t travel very much when I was young. Now, during those seventeen years I really got the travel bug. I traveled to various places around Britain, visited France two or three times every year and also lots of other places in Europe, (Albania, Austria, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Germany, Greece, Holland, Ireland, Italy, Monaco, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, Yugoslavia, …). I went to the States four times, New Zealand, French Polynesia, Pakistan, Thailand, China (Hong Kong) and several of the Caribbean islands. I even visited Russia, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan … but little did I know at the time that I would end up living here! I regret that I never made it to Africa or South America (… ever since I studied South America as part A-Level Geography, I have wanted to go to Brazil – especially the Amazon). I always enjoyed visiting new places, seeing the sights and being able to point to something and say to myself, “I remember learning about that in Geography, or History, or … whatever, and now I am seeing it in real life”; meeting new people; trying new food; learning about different cultures. One thing I didn’t really like was sitting on a beach, sunbathing. I was prepared to do it occasionally if my friends on holiday wanted to do so, provided we split the holiday and did some “”exploring” as well. I felt that it was wasting too much valuable time. As the Beatles put it: “Life is very short and there’s no time for …”, well they said (sang) “fussing and fighting, my friend”, but as far as I was concerned it should have been “sitting around idle”. I suppose it was the “Protestant work ethic” which had been instilled in me by this time.

In fact, I like being busy and I kept (keep) myself busy in many ways. I also have an obsessive personality and tend “not to do things by halves”

As well as teaching, examining and my work with the union, another way was my involvement in Rugby. Although I have tried my hand at many sports I have never been a great sportsman. In my schooldays, however, I played Rugby for the school team and the local club. I was never very good at it … I joke that my position was seventeenth man (for those that don’t know – a rugby team consists of fifteen players!). Even when I stopped playing as the result of an injury, I continued to coach one of the school teams and to referee some matches … although I can’t say that I really enjoyed either.

Another thing I undertook was “in-service” training. I am a great believer that education is a lifelong activity. We are always meeting new experiences, and the world is constantly changing with new facts being discovered and new technologies being developed and so we need to prepare ourselves for the challenges of tomorrow … and not rely on what we learned in the dim and distant past. When I went on my first “First Aid” course, for example, we were taught that the way to deal with a nose bleed was to pinch the bridge of the nose and put the patients head back with the nose in the air, but a couple of years later at the refresher course we were told to pinch the bridge of the nose and bend the patient forward with the nose down. As it was explained to us, if the head is back then there is a chance for the blood to flow through the nasal cavity into the mouth and then into the throat … causing all sorts of complications. It wasn’t, however, just a case of keeping up-to-date. I’m a bit like a sponge in learning new things. I loved playing Trivial Pursuits! I once included an obscure fact in a history essay at school and the teacher circled it in red and added a comment “Where did this come from?” I took great pleasure in telling him it was a book that he had told us we all ought to buy. I had done so, and showed him the reference. There was nothing he could say in reply apart from: “You remember the strangest things!” As a result I also took a number of courses which had nothing to do with work and my favourite was “Looking at Paintings” from the Open University. I don’t know if they still offer it … but it was very enlightening in many different respects. Attending courses is something I miss here … but the internet is a great tool and I feel very fortunate in being able to research almost any topic.

The next big decision in my life involved the move to Kyrgyzstan. In fact it wasn’t one decision, it was a series of at least three during the course of just over a year: to come here; to stay and what to do once I had decided to stay.

Tony, a friend whom I had known since my days in Oxford, worked as a lawyer for a large international firm based in London. His first visit to Kyrgyzstan was in the early 1990′s as part of his work – and he fell in love with the country and the people. On his suggestion I came here on holiday in 1994 and although I liked the place I never really thought that much more about it until he told me that he had landed a job here, wanted to open his law firm and needed help to set up the office. Would I come and help him? Yes, OK. I originally came for one year, but things never quite go according to plan and as the year was coming to an end there was still lots to do, so I stayed on to finish the job. I could have gone back home. I had a job waiting for me and staying here meant saying goodbye to that and a career that I had been developing for twenty years. To be honest, however, I was ready for a change and I looked forward to meeting the challenges of starting something new.

Once I decided to stay, and the office was up and running it was a case of “what do I do now?”. We looked at several options and eventually decided that the most perspicacious was Tourism … and so, together with another friend from the UK, we started the Celestial Mountains Tour Company, and two hotels. We would have liked to open more, but, (as I keep saying), things don’t always go according to plan.

As before, I keep myself busy. There’s never a dull moment. If ever I seem to stop and be idle, it’s not because I have nothing to do … it’s because I have so much to do that I don’t know where to start. I am involved in a number of projects here in Kyrgyzstan. I am an active member of the International Business Council (IBC) and the Kyrgyz Association of Tour Operators (KATO) – in fact I am the president of the Association, which always raises an eyebrow – an Englishman as the President of a Kyrgyz Association … but then some people say (jokingly) that, after fourteen years here, I am almost half Kyrgyz anyway. (I have actually taken out official “Residence” status but, no, I am not looking to take out Kyrgyz citizenship – to do that I would have to give up my British passport, and I am not keen to do that.) Some people even say I am more enthusiastic about all things Kyrgyz than most of the locals. I have even been thanked by locals for telling them things about Kyrgyzstan that they didn’t know … or for showing them a part of Kyrgyzstan that they haven’t seen before.

So, that’s my story … or, at least, part of my story. There’s obviously a lot of details missing but it should help to give you a feel of who I am, where I am coming from and why I say some of the things I do in these postcards.

Thanks for reading this far …