Housekeeping in Kazakhstan
Filed Under: Central Asia, Kazakhstan, Motley Mots, Technology, Travel by Daniel Noll and Audrey ScottChanges to our home page, our erratic publishing schedule, and varied topics have thrown some of our readers off. It’s time to come clean.
We’re not actually traveling. We’ve been updating this site from a beach in the Maldives. We’ve fabricated all of our stories and grabbed content and photos from around the web and Photoshopped ourselves in where possible. Isn’t technology amazing?
OK, the real story.
For those of you who believe everything you read, that last bit was a joke. All the experiences are ours. And so is the content.
And, no, we aren’t in the Maldives. At the moment, we are in Almaty, Kazakhstan, taking a bit of a break at a friend’s place and enjoying life’s little luxuries – regular hot water, internet access, and the opportunity to prepare our own breakfast.
Eating aside, Kazakhstan has almost killed us twice – first at the Uzbek border and then on a hiking trip (in fairness, we did that to ourselves). We hope to make it to Kyrgyzstan before the third time’s a charm.
After our fill of sheep’s eyeballs and horse sausage in Kyrgyzstan, we’ll head to Tajikistan for a glimpse of the Pamir mountains in early autumn. And after we’ve exhausted the ‘Stans (or rather, they’ve exhausted us), we’ll head to China, with Nepal, India and Sri Lanka to follow.
You are posting articles about Armenia while you are in Kazakhstan. Aren’t they pretty far from one another?
Your geography is getting better. Because we are writing as we travel, sometimes we fall behind. Way behind. This is one of those moments. Open kimono time: we’ve been in “one of those moments” from the first step of our journey. Accept our apologies…and get used to it.
Why are you publishing pieces about Prague?
Why not? Some friends asked us to jot down some thoughts about ethnic restaurants and where to shop in Prague. Consider it a virtual extension of our role as Prague food advisers. We wrote these and composed the Google MyMaps a while ago and figured now was as good a time as any to get them out of the closet.
What happened to the home page?
We changed the layout. Instead of the three latest articles in full, you’ll now see the opening excerpt of the ten most recent. The idea: you can skim our latest articles, read the opening sentences, decide if you’d like to read more. Clicking “Continue Reading” takes you to the complete article and its comments.
Any other changes?
We’ve added photo slideshows to some posts. Thank you, Paul Stamatiou, for introducing us to this cool functionality. If you have a decent internet connection, they’re kind of fun. To see the title and caption, just click on the image during the slideshow. Here’s an example.
That’s the news from Almaty. If an article strikes you, please comment – when we’re chasing vodka with fermented mare’s milk in a yurt, it’s comforting to know someone’s actually reading about it. If you enjoy our site, please forward it to your friends.
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