Have a look around Kyrgyzstan at www.see.kg
When I was a schoolboy, (and later when I was a schoolteacher), one of the standard projects that classes were set was to plan a holiday. The task involved a number of different skills, establishing a budget, and costing various alternatives; setting priorities as to the type of holiday, (for example, activities like trekking or sunbathing); selecting a destination, a hotel or package; creating timetables for the itinerary, (not forgetting to plan the trip to and from the airport) and so on. Sometimes the pupils would draw inspiration from television travel programmes or accounts of other people’s holidays. The task would involve scour the newspapers for adverts, and writing off for brochures, and visits to local travel agents looking for brochures, (they must have known what was going on and probably cursed the teachers for their imaginative initiatives) from which descriptions would be copied and pictures cut out for the posters and final report. The library would be raided for guide books.
These days, of course, things are a lot easier in terms of getting ideas and information. The traditional sources of information are still there, but with the internet people can scan many more ideas, download the brochures, pictures and even video of their destination. Many destinations and tour companies produce special CDs and DVDs as souvenirs which double as promotional materials. For anyone actually planning a trip there is lots of advice on destinations, activities, procedures and so forth available on specialist websites and through the channels of social media.
As an aside: it is interesting to note how many people already use social media in planning their holidays. In a survey just before the WTM exhibition in London in November, the results suggested that very few people – less than 10% – consulted social media before making a major purchase. Other surveys suggest a far greater proportion of people do so, but the interesting thing in this survey was that the numbers who admitted to using new technology in this way when it came to travel and hospitality far exceeded the numbers who said they used it when buying something like a car, or household goods such as a fridge, freezer, hi-fi system or even a computer.
It seems to me, that anyone who wants to research a holiday has an enormous wealth of material to assist them. Much more than they ever used to have. Sometimes it seems as if they don’t even need to leave home to enjoy the experience of exploring a destination.
In fact, a long time ago, I once listened to a radio play about a couple who did exactly that. Every year planned their holiday meticulously. Each year they planned to explore some distant, remote and exotic destination. When the time for their holiday came, they shut up home, drew the curtains, disconnected the phone, locked the doors and settled down to enjoy their vacation. As it happens, however, they never left home. They watched videos of their destination; read guide books for descriptions of the sites in the location where they were supposed to be and examples of local folklore and customs; delved into travel books written by people who had already been there; used foreign language phrase books to speak in the local language; listened to records/tapes of the local folk music; employed a sunbed and lotion to create a tan; cooked meals according to the local cuisine and basically relaxed at home. When the holiday was over, they emerged and regaled their colleagues, friends and relatives with anecdotes about their vicarious experiences, showing off the souvenirs they had purchased by mail order. If I remember correctly, the play revolved around a setback to their plan as someone arrived to disturb their imaginary holiday …
If that seems a little far fetched now, it certainly seemed so at the time. As, I said, however, the present day traveler has a huge range of resources available to them and the internet has only helped to facilitate that explosion.
At the risk of adding to a situation of “data overload”, we’ve decided to add yet one more internet resource to the burgeoning mountain of material about Kyrgyzstan.
In addition to the various printed materials that we produce, including brochures, leaflets, flyers, postcards and the Kyrgyzstan Travel Guide that we worked on together with Silk Road Media; our “Infopack CD”; various downloadable pdf files and our pantheon of websites featuring: our companies, (www.celestial.kg), tour operations, (www.tours.kg), and hotels, (www.silkroadlodge.kg and www.cmgh.kg); our “travel encyclopedia” to Kyrgyzstan, (www.celestial.com.kg); the series of cultural websites, (on traditional cuisine, – www.tastes.kg, horses in Kyrgyz culture – www.horses.kg, traditional music – www.sounds.kg – and the yurt – www.yurts.kg, as well as the one in production on Kyrgyz crafts); the portal with links to webpages, (for example blogs written by travelers visiting Kyrgyzstan – www.links.kg) … and others … we are introducing a new website called see.kg, (www.see.kg).
It will feature “spherical panoramas” of sites around Kyrgyzstan. Our photographer, Victor Rehemyae, has visited a number of sites around the country and taken a series of photographs which can be presented on screen as if you are standing in the place of the camera, and can twist and turn, look up and down, and the scene unfolds on screen as if you were there. Better than that, you can zoom in to see things in more detail.
To give you an idea, here’s one taken earlier this summer in the main Ala Too Square in Bishkek:
Of course, it’s not perfect … what is? It is like photograph, a snapshot taken at a single point in time. It’s not a film, video or clip, so there is no motion. It doesn’t feed all the senses, only the sight. There is, for example, no sound and you cannot get a sense of the smells or feel the warmth of the sun on your skin, nor the chill of the winter breeze as snow lies on the ground.
However, why not come and have a look around Kyrgzstan at www.see.kg – we hope it will give an idea of the places and things that you can see in Kyrgyzstan.
At the moment it’s only a test version and there are only about twenty panoramas on the site … but we hope to add to those over the course of time. If you want to be informed of when we add new panoramas, and we will send you updates as and when they are added, or follow me on Twitter, (@Bishkekpostcard), or our links.kg page on Facebook.
Bishkek