Haven’t been posting lately as I have been on summer break. Look forward to a lot of travelogue posts about my adventures in Big Almaty Lake, Korgalzhino, Burabay, and Aktau. However my vacation began with horses and dzhigits. A few of my favorite shots of the Astana Day celebrations, one of my favorite holidays because they seem to really bring out a lot of Kazakh culture that doesn’t get displayed on other holidays, like horse sports, hawks and kumys. However it would be fun if there were some equally large scale demonstrations of other cultures. Maybe a little Russian village next to the yurts in the square.

As usual, if you like any of these photos click on them to buy. Or to peruse some of my other favorite shots.

Due to popular request, I redesigned Dombro Hero. People who had bought the T-shirt asked the design to be moved up higher and the wording to be bigger. Once I did that, I thought it looked better a little more square, so I rotated the dombro and moved it to the other side.

The Original Dombro Hero T-shirt is still up for sale. And I am really grateful for the people who posted about it and all my buyers too. It’s never too late to get one–this site has even delivered to Tajikistan and Afghanistan so I think those of us in Kazakhstan will get our orders too!

Another T-shirt I designed is a heavily photoshopped (well, GIMPshopped but who’s keeping track?) photo of mine of Bayterek. I have been looking for a nice simple T-shirt of Bayterek, the symbol of Astana and I couldn’t find one that I liked. I also really like the neon-pastel color scheme of the official “Capital Day” posters so I used them as a background. Click on the photo of either T-shirt to get to the buying page. Each one is available in a variety of colors and styles including long-sleeve, fitted and V-neck.

End of commercial. We will soon return you to your regular KZBlog with some travel stories and photos as I’ve been on vacation the last few weeks and been doing some traveling (finally) around Kazakhstan. I’m going to try to give not only adventure/travelogue stories but also concrete info on how to get to these places and what to expect there. I hope readers will add their own advice and stories in the comments.

Finally got around to digging up some old photos I took several Nauryzes ago (several years ago on Nauryz). It was my first year in Kazakhstan and I went to Duman to watch them put up the yurts, having never seen this before. Watching, I got the idea to do a little photo instructable on how to put together a yurt. While I doubt anyone could use these instructions to actually build a yurt themselves, I hope it’s interesting to see the different steps involved.

The materials all laid out. Believe it or not, this is all you need (except for the outside covering). The shanyrak or roof and the wall frames.



For fancy yurts, step one is to put up the door. Simpler yurts have no door, only a doorway.

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Finally tracked down the Schedule of Events for Astana Day in English. My biggest disappointment is that it looks like they have replaced the Kazakh horse sports with a show jumping competition. Seriously, I wait all year to go to the Hippodrome and see the kokpar, the races and of course the kyz kui and dzigitovka.

Kyz kui (Catch the girl) is a traditional game where a man tries to catch a woman on horseback. If he catches her, he gets to kiss her. The fun part is that she has a riding crop to beat him off with! And sometimes they do it in reverse where the woman chases the man! Dzigitovka (Manly sport?) consists of show-riding like riding standing up on the saddle or climbing on and off the horse and full gallop. It’s really impressive and derives from hunting and war skills that all nomads had to have to survive in the olden days. The name indicates that it was also a chance for young men to show off and hopefully impress a girl or two. However, it does look like the parks will be full of interesting traditional displays so I’m looking forward to walking around the Festival of Nomad Civilization.

Normally Astana Day (which coincides with the president’s birthday) lasts for a whole week. I assume the financial crisis has forced the government to cut its budget a bit. Still it should be fun.

So what are you looking forward to on the upcoming holiday? Or do you plan to stay home and sleep late?