On the eve of Uzbekistan’s first appearance at the FIFA World Cup, I spoke with The Copa Club, a website for South American football, about what fans of Colombia can expect from their opponents in Group K. Both teams will also play against Portugal and DR Congo at this year’s tournament. My quotes are a … More Uzbekistan at the 2026 FIFA World Cup – A chat with The Copa Club
In the summer of 2025 I went to Mongolia, and styled a work trip for a two-day conference into 10 days getting to know a country I had always hoped to make it to. One day a local driver took me a hundred kilometres west of Ulaanbaatar to Hustai National Park – one of the … More Przewalski’s Horses in Hustai National Park, Mongolia
A new study into global air quality by the independent website HouseFresh has found that Kazakhstan is home to some of the world’s cleanest towns. The report also notes that one Kazakh city is also among the most polluted. Using data from IQAir’s 2024 research, HouseFresh examined the average PM2.5 level – the number of … More Asia’s Top Three Towns for Air Quality All in Kazakhstan, Finds New Study — The Times of Central Asia
The Little Bustard, a pheasant-sized bird native to Asia and southern Europe, has reached a nesting population of around 1,900 individuals in Kyrgyzstan this year. This marks a remarkable recovery, as the species was nationally extinct in the country less than 20 years ago. The Little Bustard was listed as extinct in the Red Book … More Once Lost from Kyrgyzstan, Little Bustard Population Soars in Northern Valleys — The Times of Central Asia
Loved for its handsome, bulbous nose, the saiga is found in large numbers across the Kazakh steppe. Once endangered in Kazakhstan, numbering as few as 40,000 in 2005, the antelope is in fact now overpopulated, as numbers have reached a record 4.1 million in 2025. … More Kazakhstan Gifts 1,500 Saiga Antelope to China — The Times of Central Asia
Nigora Fazliddin, a former journalist from Dushanbe, is part of a new generation of creators using social media to bridge cultural distances. Posting simple videos and photographs from her journeys in Tajikistan, she captures the landscapes and communities that outsiders, and even many Tajiks, rarely get to see. “This love I have for our land – its wild beauty, its silence, its soul – I try to share with others,” she tells The Times of Central Asia. … More Nigora Fazliddin: The Social Media Storyteller Bringing Life in Tajikistan to the World – The Times of Central Asia
LIFE IN CENTRAL ASIA 