travels

Kirstin in Istanbul (again)

May 9, 2013

I’m heading to Istanbul (again)! Be back in a week.

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Karakol Antiques

March 20, 2013

During our day spent walking around Karakol, we passed an antiques store and I told Farrell we absolutely had to stop in there and visit before we went back to the guesthouse. Having recently purchased another Soviet-era film camera, I was in the mood to look for more and smitten at the thought of finding [...]

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Karakol animal market

March 18, 2013

Okay sure, let’s wake up at 6am and go to the animal market. We (Farrell, me, Win strapped to my chest, and Cami, the only other person out of our 18-person group who wanted to go with us) walked 10 minutes to get to the main road. We’ll catch a cab, that shouldn’t be too [...]

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exploring Karakol

March 14, 2013

Some photos from our walk around Karakol. Jamilya’s B&B is the guesthouse we stayed in, and it was perfectly adequate and large enough for our whole group. A bit cold, but that’s an ongoing complaint for all of Kyrgyzstan in the winter. Why have a door to your establishment when you can have a ferocious [...]

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taking Win to Karakol

March 11, 2013

Karakol is another one of those places that strikes me as being “must-see” in Kyrgyzstan. It’s one of the bigger and fairly well-known sites, especially by those who have experienced a Kyrgyzstan winter. Why? Because although Karakol doesn’t seem like much in the warmer months (maybe some good hiking? I’m a terrible tour guide), but [...]

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Apple Festival

November 6, 2012

At this moment, I’m eating a mango, drinking coffee with eggnog, uploading videos to Youtube at the speed of light and catching up on my favorite Korean soap opera on Hulu (it’s blocked in Kyrgyzstan). I’m positively glowing in the wonders of America. And I’m making fantastic progress on the list of things I wanted [...]

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maybe leaving? definitely leaving?

November 1, 2012

(Update: I made it back with no problems whatsoever, it’s almost comical that we worried so much about it. And, even better, Timati was on my Bishkek-Moscow flight, although at first I assumed he and his blinged-out, tatted-up posse were obnoxious Americans who work at the transit center. He’s much shorter than I thought he [...]

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Swimming at 10,000 feet

October 15, 2012

It was September, there was already snow on the ground, and during the previous night I had experienced moments where I was absolutely sure that I wouldn’t make it to sunrise without a serious case of frostbite (or, more dramatically, dying of hypothermia). It was not ideal weather for stripping down and taking a refreshing [...]

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Tips for photographing stars

October 8, 2012

I love shooting stars and star trails. Love it. There’s something so meticulous about attempting a long-exposure, the anticipation and delayed gratification of knowing whether it worked or failed miserably. It’s something I’ve only attempted once before in a more rural spot of Colorado, so knowing I would be so far out in the middle [...]

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the road between Kochkor and Song-Kul

October 3, 2012

There’s not much to see on the drive between Kochkor and Song Kul. Maybe some quirky things, like an old water tank that’s been painted and converted into some sort of shop or house. (And the cluster of Uzbek brothels, no photos of those.) Eventually the scenery starts to change and the car becomes a [...]

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