Sunday was a rare “day off”.
Tatiana, my accountant, has a friend, Anna, staying from Russia, and suggested going into the mountains so we decided to make a day of it.
The obvious choice for a day trip from Bishkek is to go to one of the valleys in the Kyrgyz Krebet, just South of the city. A favourite place to visit, for both locals and visitors alike, is the Ala Archa National Park. Although it is beautiful and has a variety of landscapes and a range of walks of differing levels of difficulty, I prefer the next valley, Alamedin because there tends to be fewer people there. We decided that because it has been cold and there has been snow recently that we would go to both valleys and spend a shorter time in each, returning to the vehicle and warming ourselves up on the journey between the two. More…
On Saturday I wrote about the Swiss charity Parmir Bridges and some events that they are organizing in various Swiss towns in March. In the post I mentioned that they had arranged for the translation for a book by Ella Maillart into Kyrgyz.
Being a Swiss based charity concerned with Kyrgyzstan, their interest in Ella Maillart is understandable, but not many people will know the name. It bis not one that immediately springs to mind either when thinking of Kyrgyzstan, explorers or travellers.
Her story, however, is quite extraordinary.
More…
Picture credit: Center for History of Sciences, The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. Lilla Frescativägen 4A, P.O. Box 50005, SE-104 05 Stockholm, Sweden.
Every now and again we have experience which gives us a sense of having a “brush with history”.
In fact we are living through history, it’s just that much of it is mundane and ordinary … everyday life, the details of which are “grist for the mill” for social historians who try to piece together what life was like in days gone by rather than concentrating on dates and rulers, battles and treaties. Just occasionally, however, we get caught up in momentous historical events rather than observing them from, through the accounts of others such as in reports in the media. Such as: having lived through two revolutions in five years. More…
I have written before about Pamir Bridges, a Swiss charity that aims to renovate bridges in rural areas, often high in the mountains, in Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Afghanistan.
Last week I received the notification of four “soirées”, or Cultural Evenings, they are organizing in March and their Annual General Meeting which will be held in April.
As it is their tenth anniversary, it’s obviously a big occasion for them. Since they were founded in 2001, they have identified over 70 bridges in need of attention and managed to repair 40 of them. They have also held some 45 such soirées in Switzerland, France and the USA; provided support for Ecotourism activities in the region and arranged for the translation of a book by Ellie Maillart into Kyrgyz.
If anyone happens to be in the area at the time and has some free time, they offer the chance for a nice evening out, learning a little about life in the remote mountains of Central Asia as well as Pamir Bridges and their work. More…
Salaries and Prices seem to have been the main themes of the week. The proposed salary increases for teachers, medical workers and others working in the public sector have not been universally welcomed. The International Monetary Fund, (IMF), have fired a warning shot across the government’s bows, suggesting the “targeted social programmes” were a better way to try and alleviate poverty rather than across the board increases in salaries and pensions. The key concern seems to be, as the former Minister of Finance tried to point out, there just isn’t the money in the budget. It’s not clear where the government is going to find the resources to pay the increased salaries. In addition, however, the IMF is concerned that paying this increase will only help to feed inflation. More…
It is not clear to me whether the great Mongol leader Tamerlane died on February 17th or the 18th, in 1405, I have seen both dates recorded in the literature. Whichever it was, I am sure that were plenty of people who were relieved by his passing – if only the envoys of the Chinese Ming Emperor that he was holding hostage at the time. More…
It’s that time of year again, time for the regular quarterly report from Hugh and Jean about the activities at the Karakol Orphanage and the two micro credit organizations that they support. The update arrived in the email, and anyone who would like to see a copy, a pdf version can be found here. More…
February 15th: On this day in 2005, a new website was launched which was to quickly establish itself as a major phenomenon on the internet – a video-sharing website on which users can upload, share, and view videos: You Tube.
Actually, the domain name was registered the day before the launch; the first video, (a 19 second clip called “Me at the zoo”, by one of the three founders, Jawed Karim) was uploaded at 8:27pm on April 23rd, (incidentally, it is still available here, (or below), and has already been viewed over 4 million times … there is also a post that claims to be a compilation of the first twenty videos posted here); from May a “Beta Test” version of the site was available; the official launch took place in November and buy July the next year there were already 65,000 new videos being uploaded every day(!) – they actually say that 35 hours of new videos are uploaded to the site every minute(!), and something like two billion (!) videos are watched every day, so it’s no wonder that in 2007, You Tube was using as much bandwidth as the whole of the internet used in 2000. More…
Yesterday, I commented on the fact that it was Saint Valentine’s Day. I could just have easily chosen to mark an anniversary which has slightly more relevance to Kyrgyzstan, but the day passed by without anyone really noticing it.
It was February 14th, 1483 when Babur, (the “Tiger”), the first of the Mogul Emperors, of India was born.
Hang on … I said that the event had relevance to Kyrgyzstan, but he was the founder of an Indian Dynasty. What’s going on? More…
On Saturday, the International Women’s Club in Bishkek organized a Valentine’s Day Ball in the Hyatt. I didn’t go, because:
a) I didn’t know about it … (so they need to look at their marketing … usually they write to everyone and approach us for sponsorship or prizes for the raffle but this time we heard nothing), and
b) I am still recovering from my bout of the flu … (On Friday night I saw one of the organizers who said that had two seats still available on their table and I was welcome to join them, but I declined as I was still not feeling 100%).
Saint Valentine’s Day is celebrated by people around the world on February 14th. I am not certain, however, when the Orthodox Church commemorates the saint’s day, (or even if they recognize Valentine as a Saint), but if they did then and they used the same day of the year, then they would presumably commemorate it on February 27th, (which would be February 14th according to the old Julian Calendar). More…
