At the moment I am trying to read ‘News from Tatary‘ by Peter Fleming, originally published in 1936 and telling the story of his 3500 mile journey from Peking through the, then, mysterious province of Sinkiang to India with the Swiss journalist Ella Maillart. Apparently she also wrote an account of the journey, ‘Forbidden Journey’ – which apparently differs in many respects from his. Although I have read her book ‘Turkestan Solo’ about her exploits in Soviet Central Asia, I haven’t been able to track down a copy of Forbidden Journey … It’s difficult to get English books here in Kyrgyzstan. More…
There is one task that I really dislike and tend to put off if I possibly can … going to the bank.
Today I didn’t really have much choice. More…
November 17th, 2010 Author ian Sections: Kyrgyzstan
Prospect Chui is the one of the main thoroughfares of the city. It stretches along the entire length of the city from East to West. Entering the city from the West it carries the main road from Tashkent (Uzbekistan), Taraz (formerly Djambul in Kazakhstan) and Kara Balta (Kyrgyzstan – and hence the main road from Osh). After traversing the city centre it eventually ends in a T-junction with Cholpon Atinskaya Street in the Alamdemin microdistricts to the East of the city.
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Bishkek does not have regular organised city tours – although as a capital city it does have it’s fair share of interesting, important government building, museums, theatres, shops, monuments etc. The city centre is quite small and can easily be walked. A walk around the city centre along the following itinerary covers most of the important of these.
Here is an itinerary for a walking tour, which starts and finishes at our hotel, “The Silk Road Lodge”, in central Bishkek. More…
I came across an interesting article recently which proclaimed that “the best way to explore a city is on foot.” I thought to myself, “how true”, although I was a bit surprised by some of the editor’s selections for ten of the best cities for walking in, (Florence, Dubrovnik, Paris, New York, Vancouver, Munich, Edinburgh, Boston, Melbourne and Sydney). As the article said, “There are cities where cars reign supreme, others where a bicycle or public transportation will suffice, and a select few that remain a paradise for two feet. By design or purely by accident, each of these 10 cities beckons you to wander its boulevards, paths, and parks.” It seems to me that in at least some of those cities, the car does indeed “reign supreme” even though they might well have ample boulevards, paths and parks. More…
November 16th, 2010 Author ian Sections: Tourism
I don’t often get to look at the Sydney Morning Herald – after all, Sydney is an awful long way from Bishkek, but a tweet on Twitter sent me to an interesting article: “Why would anyone want to go there?” by Ben Groundwater – aka The Backpacker.
It was not only interesting. I found Groundwater’s approach, his use of “glib” humour in the face of a difficult issue, both thought proving and challenging.
The article is about Mexico – another faraway place, but that didn’t put me off. Indeed, it made me think of Thailand – and of Kyrgyzstan. More…
Kuman Ait is also known as Eid al-Adha (or the “Feast of Sacrifice”) and is the most important feast of the Muslim calendar.
(Eid is an Arabic word derived from the Arabic word, “aada” that means a recurring event – one that returns. In Islam it it is used to denote a festival.) More…
Ilya Fyodotovich Terentev served as the first elected mayor of the city, between 1895 and 1900, although – for some reason – he doesn’t appear on all of the lists enumerating the Mayors of the city. More…
As a nomadic people, travelling from place and erecting yurts wherever there was pasture for their livestock … the Kyrgyz don’t have a wide heritage in terms of architecture. Indeed, some people say that the closest they came to architecture was in erecting mausoleums for people after they had died.
Of course, the Kyrgyz were not the only people to inhabit the land – and some remains of former settlements are to be found … but not many. Apart from the various mausoleums that are found throughout the country, and the occasional mosque – such as Babur’s mosque in Osh, the best known examples of old structures that have survived to the present day are: the Burana Tower; the Tash Rabat caravanserai and the Archeological complex at Uzgen. One feature of interest in these monuments is the decorative brickwork that adorn them. More…
