Fromoverhere

Teens: In a shared taxi to Chimbulak, Kazakhstan  Having just waited for two hours without success at the number 6 bus-stop, I shared a taxi up the mountain with a couple of 19-year-old Kazakh boys.  We had tried chatting when waiting at the bus stop, but found that I was probably better at Russian than [...]

One of my favourite modes of transport are marshrutkas and shared taxis – they’re a great opportunity to meet people, zip around and between towns, and you rarely need to bargain because they have fixed prices.  Marshrutkas, which you find everywhere in central Asia – and Africa – under different names, are mini-buses that will [...]

Sometimes your whole perspective of a place is entirely shaped -  somewhat unfairly – by what happens when you are there.  This is despite the fact that what has happened has nothing to do with the location.  In this case, my perspective of Shymkent in Kazakhstan is farcical, unbearably hot and frustrating.  I am maligning [...]

Sometimes something happens to make you fall over laughing, without reservations or inhibitions, and makes you feel good for the rest of the day.  This something happened to me today when walking to the train station. Jessica Alba – Hollywood’s Dark Angel, exotic ingenue of Sin City, and the girl in Fantastic Four – has [...]

For Rachel (and those who are interested in whether Twilight-mania translates to cyrillic): For Beth, proof that great bands don’t disappear, they (and their foreheads) just get frozen in Russia: For Michael, my dad, who likes Peace roses – here are two from the garden of the hostel I stayed at in Cholpon-Ata, Kyrkyzstan.