Archive for September, 2022
Holiday in Central Asia (9): Karakol & Arashan in Kyrgyzstan
September 10th, 2022 by Roger Darlington
Now in Karakol, we started Day 8 with a quick look around. The town was founded in 1869 and named Karakol meaning ‘black hand’ because of the working inhabitants. In Soviet times, it was called Przhevalsk after the explorer Nikolai Przhevalsk whose last expedition ended here. It is an indication of how sparsely populated is […]
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Holiday in Central Asia (8): south side of Lake Issyk-Kok in Kyrgyzstan
September 9th, 2022 by Roger Darlington
Lake Issyk-Kol is over 170 km (105 miles) long and up to 70 km (44 miles) across and lies at an altitude of over 1600 metres (over 5,000 feet). It is not only one of the world’s few remaining ancient lakes, estimated to be 25 million years old, but it is also the second largest […]
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Holiday in Central Asia (7): travel to Lake Issyk-Kol in Kyrgyzstan
September 8th, 2022 by Roger Darlington
Now in another country: Kyrgyzstan is a thinly-populated nation bisected by mountain ranges and the north-south divide has always bedevilled the country’s politics. Since independence, there have been three revolutions (2005, 2010, 2020) and six presidents. The Kyrgyz language has two dialects, one in the north influenced by Russian and the other to the south […]
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Holiday in Central Asia (6): city tour of Almaty, Kazakhstan
September 7th, 2022 by Roger Darlington
Our last day in Kazakhstan (Day 5) started with a surprise when one of our group Nova announced that overnight her partner Charles, who had never had covid, had just tested positive for the virus. The tour organisers decided that, while the rest of the group would fly to Bishkek in Kyrgyzstan, Charles & Nova […]
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Holiday in Central Asia (5) a strange lake in Kazakhstan
September 6th, 2022 by Roger Darlington
It was an odd night in the Alban guesthouse and many of the group did not sleep so well because of the regular barking of local dogs, the early crowing of the village cocks, and some members taking nighttime showers. I pride myself on being able to sleep anywhere at anytime but a combination of […]
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Holiday in Central Asia (4): canyon & lake in Kazakhstan
September 5th, 2022 by Roger Darlington
After a day and a night in Almaty to rest and recover from our jet lag, on Day 3 we left the city for two days to visit some nature locations in the very south-east this huge country. Our guide Svetlana never stopped talking while we were on the road and we learned so much […]
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Holiday in Central Asia (3): welcome to Kazakhstan
September 4th, 2022 by Roger Darlington
Kazakhstan is about the size of Western Europe and, as a single entity with defined borders, it was an invention of the Soviet regime in the 1920s. During the Cold War, the USSR decided that the republic was so empty and remote that they used it as the chief nuclear bomb testing ground. When the […]
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Holiday in Central Asia (2): getting there
September 4th, 2022 by Roger Darlington
I knew that this trip would be challenging but I didn’t expect the challenges to begin before we even reached the region. However, the evening before departure, we were notified that our UK Tour Manager had just gone down with covid so that we would be dependent solely on local guides. On Day 1 of […]
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Holiday in Central Asia (1): introduction
September 2nd, 2022 by Roger Darlington
Throughout my life, I have been fortunate to have had many opportunities to travel and I have visited a total of 80 countries all around the world. But this trip – organised by the travel company Voyages Jules Verne (VJV) – is different. It is not my furthest or my longest trip: that would be […]
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