Kyrgyzstan

Aside from being perhaps the most consonant heavy name for a country when you look at a map, Kyrgyzstan doesn't get much attention in the world. It's not a big country, and it is right in the middle of Asia surrounded by other -stan countries and China to the East. It is a very mountainous piece of land that has been the border between civilizations for thousands of years. It is the only place in the region that has a democracy, for whatever that's worth, and is open to outsiders (most people don't need a visa to visit here). It is a country that a little over 20 years ago was part of the Soviet Union, but now is simply struggling to stay afloat financially, socially and psychologically.  

While a Soviet Socialist Republic, it was a very diverse place, with large numbers of Russians, Ukranians, Uzbeks and ethnic Germans living alongside the Kyrgyz, who didn't constitute a majority of the population until the 1980's. After the end of the Soviet Union most besides the Uzbeks went to their respective ethnic territories.  There is still a smattering of Russians, and the language is still predominant in the cities and widely spoken elsewhere, but things are slowly but surely sliding towards the use of Kyrgyz.

Nomadism isn't such a distant memory here, and plenty of the people still ride horses and spend the warm months up in the highlands living in yurts tending to their livestock. The  government has invoked the peoples oral story telling tradition, in particular the epic story of Manas, to create a national identity. So it was that they moved the statues of Lenin to less prominent locations and put up ones like this in its place-

Here are some other random shots I've taken in the past few weeks here. I'll be sure to add some more before the summer is through.