When Claudius Bombarnac, Jules Verne´s imaginary hero in The Adventures of a Special Correspondent, arrives at the Apsheron peninsula on the shores of the Caspian he is appalled by the pollution, but thrilled at the same time by the naphtha that seeped out of the ground.
Central Asia
Central Asia
Kashmir – Fragile Mountains
by Vince Gainey •
Vince Gainey recently returned from a two-week mission to Pakistan-administered Kashmir to conduct an assessment for a humanitarian aid agency on provision of health services to earthquake survivors.
Central Asia, Features
Kyrgyzstan – A Day At The Races
by Ben Read •
From Here to There and Back Again: Horses and Cultural Ruminations in Kyrgyzstan Below the snow-covered slopes of eastern Kyrgyzstan, the horses ran in the At Chabysh races that afternoon in early November with all of the power and the grace and the beauty of all of their forebears. So much in the foreground of human cultures…
Central Asia
Kazakhstan – Horsemeat and Two Veg
by Robert Chenciner •
A Kazakh Nomads’ expression of equine affinity states, “Kazakhs are born in horses”. Perhaps that’s going a little too far, if taken literally, but there’s undeniably a very close alliance between man and beast in this vast tract of Central Asia. The present Republic of Kazakhstan was created in 1991 on the dissolution of the…
Central Asia, Features
Tranquil Tbilisi
by Arya Kazemi •
Georgia’s most famous son, Ioseb Jughashvili, later known by his cryptonym, Josef Stalin, once had monolithic cement replicas of his diminutive stature and lugubrious countenance peppered all across the Soviet empire. These days he doesn’t have even a single figurine in the whole of the city where, as a teen, he studied in the seminary…
Central Asia, Features
Tajikistan – The Middle Of Nowhere
by David Kovar •
I’m writing this en route from Istanbul to Munich after departing Dushanbe this morning. We’ll overnight in Munich and return to San Francisco at 6:30PM on Sunday evening. All told, we’ll have spent approximately 48 hours in aircraft in the last two weeks. We’ll also have spent at least 48 hours in various seats of…