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Getting from one end of south Kyrgyzstan to the other involves skirting around several of the Fergana Valley enclaves, unless you happen to have a Kyrgyz or Uzbek passport.  I’ve done this twice, without any problems — unless you count a day-long journey in place of what should be a fairly short trip.  Here’s how…

I’ve done the journey by shared taxi from Kyrgyzstan’s capital Bishkek to its second city Osh several times now. It’s a gruelling day-long journey, taking around 11-12 hours (more when it’s snowing). My previous trips were in the autumn, when it was already getting dark by the time we reached the south of the country,…

A woman walked into a bar… No, she didn’t.  A woman walked into a bar, had a couple of beers, got chatting to some of the regulars, found at least one of them was a useful contact and arranged to have a more formal chat with his colleague later in the week, heard some fascinating…

Almaty’s unfinished underground system is known as the “golden metro” because of all the money sunk into the project. It’s been under construction since Soviet times, with work starting back in 1988. While this money lined a lot of officials’ pockets, there was no end in sight to construction of the Almaty metro … until…

We arrived in Naryn in mist, sleet and driving winds. Out of the mist loomed the mostly Soviet-built city, but the low clouds obscured the mountains towering over it.  Set high among the Tian-Shan, Naryn is the only major town in the region of the same name, which is the highest in the country —…

It was a 350km road trip from the Kyrgyz capital Bishkek up to the high mountain of the Naryn region.  We stated the day leaving early from Bishkek, heading east along the main road though the Chui valley, skirting close to the Kazakh border.  The modern day road from Bishkek to Naryn follows the path…

I don’t know anyone in Almaty who’s been to Taldykorgan, the administrative centre of the Almaty, region but I decided to visit when we had a long weekend for Victory Day.  Victory Day, by the way, is celebrated on 9 May and it marks the anniversary of Allied forces’ victory over Nazi Germany in 1945. …

I arrived in Pavlodar on a snowy afternoon in February. With the temperature below freezing for the last couple of months, the sides of the Irtysh river, which the bus crossed entering the city, were frozen and covered in snow, with water flowing only in the broad central channel. Areas of the city that hadn’t…

The name Ekibastuz translates from the Kazakh as ‘two heads of salt’, yet it’s not salt but coal that this north Kazakhstan town is known for.  It’s famous for being the site of the world’s biggest open-cast coal mine, and there are an estimated 74mn tonnes of coal per square kilometre in the area or…

Seeing buildings emerge from a howling blizzard gives a different impression from viewing them on a clear, sunny day. One of the Oskemen (also known by its Russian name Ust-Kamenogorsk) landmarks that made the biggest impression on me was the Muhamadi Mosque which — as the photos show — looks very like a Disney castle…