Postcard from Bishkek

Some years ago I went on a trip and one of the places where stayed was in a homestay.  On the television that particular evening there happened be a performance by one of the leading manaschi … and our hostess, shamefacedly lowered her voice and almost whispering told me a secret … “I don’t really […]

If I say that I have “green fingers” then, back home in the UK, people will think that I am goof with plants … house plants or garden plants … but here it can have different connotations. As it happens, as I type this I do indeed have “green fingers” … but it’s because I […]

In a previous postcard, written to commemorate the birthday of Pyotr Semenov, (the Russian explorer whose accounts of his journey and the samples he took back to St. Petersburg opened the Tien Shan Mountains to Western science – for which he was given the honourary title Tienshansky), I gave a summary of his first foray […]

The other day I came across an article on the BBC website about Onionomics: the importance of the Onion to Indian cuisine … well, not just cuisine but to society as a whole – and not just the farmers responsible for growing the 16 million tonnes of the crop each year … as the author of […]

The city authorities have been quite busy running raids of different sorts. They have been walking the streets and inspecting properties for all sorts of infringements of this or that regulation … writing reports, taking photographs, issuing notices, imposing fines and taking direct action to remove the offending items. Recently, for example, there has been […]

About a year ago I got a frantic phone call from a friend of mine … a local, – that is, although he is not Kyrgyz, he was born and grew up here … asking me if I could tell him how to get to Kol Suu, (pronounced Kol Suu, but it is sometime written […]

Today is another one of the Professional Holidays that seem to be so common in this part of the world – the Day of Land Management, Geodesy and Cartography - and is meant to commemorate the work and contribution of all those working in land registration and cartography. Two maps of particular importance in Kyrgyzstan’s history are […]

To those of working in Tourism, today is an important day … it’s the International Day of the Guide. It’s not recognized as a Professional Holiday here in Kyrgyzstan, even though Tourism is considered to be a priority area for the Country Development Strategy.  Here the International Day of Tourism, (September 27th every year, as […]

Today would have marked the birthday of an interesting character in Kyrgyzstan’s history: Djumabekov Asankulovovich Asankulov, who served two terms as the head of the KGB in Kyrgyzstan, (from 1967-78 and 1989-1991). The KGB, (Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti – Committee for State Security), was the main security agency for the Soviet Union from 1954 – when it […]

A short while ago, one of my correspondents sent me a link to an article by John Daly on the Jamestown Foundation’s website, China and Kyrgyzstan Discuss Rail Projects, and asked if I could comment … The article is about the discussions that are going on about the possibility of developing the country’s railway system […]