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…
The Long haul to Dolisie – Hopping the famous Trans-Gabonais train, I departed at Moanda, the second to last stop. I had a mild interest in seeing Franceville; however I was a day behind (I wanted to leave Libreville Thursday, yet there was no train Thursday), and went directly into one of eastern Gabon’s larger…
In a small corner of East Turkey, just a stone’s throw from the Iranian border, exists a race of semi-nomadic folk called the Jelali. The Jelali follow a lifestyle founded on livestock farming across a mountainous landscape that includes Mount Ararat, the fabled resting place of Noah’s Ark; Little Ararat, a smaller version of its…
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…
“It’s perfectly safe”. With this final reassurance (from a reliable source) ringing in our ears, we set off on our (supposedly) 7 ½ hour journey to Iraq. Thirteen hours later, I flopped down on my hotel bed in Zhako and fell into a blissful slumber. This is the story of those thirteen hours. We set…
Tom and I set out yesterday for Bayt Baws, a former village now swallowed by Sanaa’s urban sprawl. We descended in the bus into Hada and began walking on the road towards the village. A few minutes passed before a jeep crawled up to us. “Hello Sadeeq! Where you from?” Something about the situation made…
