Postcard from Bishkek

Well, I am back from my annual trip up to Lake Issyk Kul with some of the the kids.  This year we took Andrei and Maxim and their older brother Jenya, (the girls having already been up to the lake earlier in the season), and a couple of their school friends. There’s plenty of choice […]

They say that you can experience all four seasons in one day in Kyrgyzstan.  I have come across this myself in the past.  The mountainous nature of the terrain creates plenty of scope for microclimates in different valleys, varying with altitude, aspect, (North, South East or West facing), different soils creating habitats for differing types […]

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 […]

Isn’t it annoying when you get a tune in your head and you can’t get rid of it. When it happens to me I find that it is usually just a short phrase, maybe a line or two, from a song heard long, long ago.  It goes round and round in my mind, repeating over […]

I have just got back from my monthly trip to Naryn.  These trips are so much a part of my routine that I don’t normally write a postcard about them, but this one was slightly different, so I thought I would this time.

A few weeks ago I wrote about an invitation I had received to attend an exhibition across the border in Kashgar, in China. I was tempted – very tempted.  It is over ten years since I was last in Kashgar and I have heard much about how the city has changed.  The Chinese are developing […]

Everyone kept telling me to “Come on in, the water is lovely and warm!” I wasn’t convinced, especially after I had walked over to the water’s edge and dipped my toes into the lapping waves … The name of the lake, Issyk Kul, might mean Warm Lake in Kyrgyz, but that doesn’t really relate to […]

Now, if I was looking for a slogan to advertise Kyrgyzstan, then I might well look for something to reflect the mountainous landscape … after all, it is often said that 94% of Kyrgyzstan is mountainous.   This statistic sometimes surprises visitors … especially those who come looking for alpine landscapes with towering craggy peaks, snow […]

One of the most enjoyable extra curricula activities which I used to participate in when I was a schoolteacher back in Britain, was taking a group ice skating. Now, I am not a particularly good as an ice-skater.  There is no way that I could perform figure skating, ice-dancing or play in an ice hockey […]

Saturday was one of the few days in the year when you wouldn’t have found me in the office.  Well, that’s not quite true -  I arrived, as usual, at six o’clock and spent three hours going through the emails and some of the routine weekend tasks … but at nine o’clock I abandoned the […]