Yoke thé ရုပ်သေ (literal translation is "miniatures" ) is the Burmese name for marionette puppetry. Like most of Burmese refined art, yoke thé performances originated from royal patronage and were gradually adapted for the wider populace. Yoke thé are almost always performed in the form of Burmese operas.
Burmese marionettes are very intricate and their use requires dexterous skills, as they employ 18 or 19 wires for male and female characters respectively, and each puppet is controlled by only one puppeteer.
The probable date of the origin of Burmese marionettes is given as around 1780, during the reign of Singu Min, and their introduction is credited to the Minister of Royal Entertainment, U Thaw. From their inception, marionettes enjoyed great popularity in the courts of the Konbaung dynasty. Little has changed since the creation of the art by U Thaw, and the set of characters developed by him is still in use today. Until the conquest of Upper Burma by the British in late ...
The Almaty Central Mosque, known in Kazakh as Almaty ortalyq meshiti, stands as one of the largest and most prominent mosques in Almaty and throughout Kazakhstan.
The current structure was erected on the site of an earlier Tatar Mosque that had operated since 1890, serving the local Muslim community of Tatar traders, artisans, and settlers during the period of Russian imperial expansion into Central Asia. That wooden mosque was destroyed by fire in 1987. In the years following Kazakhstan’s independence, plans advanced for a major new mosque to meet the needs of a growing Muslim population and to mark a revival of religious life after the Soviet era. The foundation was poured in 1993, and construction continued for six years until the building opened in 1999.
The mosque is a rectangular, domed building oriented along an east-west axis and clad in white marble, giving it a luminous appearance. Its main dome rises 36 meters with a diameter of 20 meters and rests on a two-tiered drum that transitions ...
The Green Bazaar in Almaty, also known as Zelyony Bazaar in Russian or Kök Bazaar in Kazakh, stands as one of the city’s oldest and most enduring commercial and cultural landmarks. Trading on this site in the heart of what was then the Russian colonial settlement of Verny began around 1868, when the area nearby streets served as an informal marketplace.
In 1875 a more formal structure known as the Gostiny Dvor, or Merchant’s Yard, was erected there. It consisted of two low pavilions stretching along Torgovaya Street. The complex functioned both as a trading floor and as a guest yard for caravans and merchants arriving from across Central Asia and beyond, reflecting the city’s growing role on regional trade routes.
A catastrophic earthquake in 1887 destroyed much of Verny, including the original Gostiny Dvor. The market was rebuilt afterward, yet it gradually lost some of its earlier preeminence as other specialized bazaars appeared around the expanding city.
In 1927, during the Soviet period, the ...
The railway connection between Tashkent and Almaty has deep roots in the expansion of the Russian Empire’s rail network across Central Asia. In the early twentieth century the Trans-Aral line linked European Russia to Turkestan, and later Soviet projects including the Turksib railway strengthened east-west corridors through the steppe.
After independence the route evolved into a regular international service. In 2017 Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan introduced more modern wide-bodied Talgo-style coaches on the Almaty-Tashkent run, improving comfort and reducing journey times.
Today the train operates daily as a practical overnight link between the two cities.
The distance is roughly nine hundred eighty kilometers and the journey takes about eighteen hours and ten minutes. Trains typically leave Tashkent Central in the mid-afternoon and arrive at Almaty-2 the following morning, allowing passengers to sleep through most of the travel and the border formalities.
First-class sleeper, often labeled SV or Lux,...
