Steppe Magazine: Eight: A Central Asian Panorama

by Lucy Kelaart

Steppe Magazine is the ultimate guide for anybody travelling to or interested in learning more about Central Asia. Designed to cover the arts, history, culture, landscape and people of Central Asia (that is the five post-Soviet states of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan, along with Afghanistan and Xinjiang Province in western China), Steppe uses beautiful photography and insightful writers both from inside and outside the region (examples include Colin Thubron, Jason Elliot, Hamid Ismailov) to bring a fresh perspective to Central Asia. Steppe aims to highlight the unusual and take you for a ride across a revised and modernised Silk Road. From the Bentleys parked outside Almaty’s casinos to remote Pamiri villages where a yak is still the flashiest mode of transport, Steppe will be your companion and your guide. Read Steppe to discover a new Central Asian panorama. In Issue 2, we bring you a piece on Langston Hughes, the black African-American poet, and his time in Central Asia in the 1930s, a thirty page photo essay on the Kyrgyz of the Afghan Pamir, a photo essay on the 4,000 year old civilisation at Gonur Tepe in Turkmenistan, book reviews of ‘In Search of Kazakhstan’, ‘Jamilia’ and more, an illustrated piece on making manti, a Kazakh artist’s take on Borat, plus a diary from the producer of the Borat movie … and much more …