Postcard from Bishkek

We’ve spent some time over the holiday period reworking the KyrgyzDiary website.

we’ve learnt from our experience last year and we hope that the site will be more user friendly and help people to find events that are going on in Kyrgyzstan, and particularly Bishkek, far more easily.

Our biggest problem, however, remains the same … getting information about what is going on.

I have said before that there is a tendency here for news about events to be held back … people tend to be far more spontaneous here but, perhaps, it is also because people are afraid to commit themselves too far ahead of time, in case plans have to be changed.  For example, I note that the big trade fair Bishkek Build that was due to be held in April has just been cancelled

Whatever, as a result most of the days in the months ahead are still empty.  Even for January there are not many events listed as many theatres etc. are taking a break over the New Year holidays.  We do expect that to change, however,  over the course of time.

There are plenty of background pages about the year in Kyrgyzstan: When to travel to Kyrgyzstan; the public holidays; “special” days like Chinese New Year,  Dehn Goroday, Stariy Noviy God, (Old New Year), “Professional Holidays”, Religious holidays and so on;  as well as information about festivals that are planned, the venues and the organizers of events.

The events themselves are split into categories like Activities, (such as treks and skiing); Charity events, the Circus, Concerts, Conferences, Exhibitions, Sporting events, Theatre and so on.

We hope that it will be useful to tourists and ex-pats alike; although it might be of interest to locals as well but for the moment it is only in English.

There is going to be a fair amount of work in maintaining the site but I think, (hope), that it will be worth it in the long run.

We’ll need lots of help.  If anyone knows of any planned events we would be grateful to hear about them and feature them.

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