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Ella Maillart @ellamaillart.bsky.social · 19h

Such intensity and determination in both her face and posture!!! 👌🏼

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Ella Maillart @ellamaillart.bsky.social · 19h

👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼🏏

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Ella Maillart @ellamaillart.bsky.social · 19h

"... Valodya and Capa go with him. They will have to bivouac in the open, so they take the little storm tent, the rope, ice-axe and crampons, warm clothing and provisions. I admire them terrifically for starting off in the icy cold without turning a hair to spend a night on a glacier."

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Ella Maillart @ellamaillart.bsky.social · 19h

"... Typhoid and dysentery are the two ills we are most likely to suffer from. Anyhow it means that I cannot accompany my friends, who intend to climb the beautiful white peak we admired from the Chuguchak pass. Auguste can resist no longer the call of Sary-Tor, immense and impassive ..."

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Ella Maillart @ellamaillart.bsky.social · 19h

"'Ella! take your temperature,' Capa bids me thoughtfully. 'You don't look yourself at all.' 'Of course not. There is no need. I'm hot because it's so stuffy in here.' But she insists. Results a reading of 103.5°. Devil take it, what can it mean?" #EllaMaillart #Photography #Kyrgyzstan #SaryTor

'Mila Engelhardt at a campsite in Sarydzhaz', Tian Shan Mountains, Kyrgyzstan, Ella Maillart, 1932

Soviet researcher and mountaineer Milissa 'Mila' Engelhardt (nee Lyubimova) sits inside a classic A-frame ridge tent pitched in a rocky, open landscape in Sarydzhaz, Kyrgyzstan.

This is a remote, high-altitude valley border region in the Tian Shan mountains known for its harsh terrain, sweeping glaciers and dramatic peaks. Mila is wearing a plaid shirt and a white hat, whilst physician and mountaineer Auguste Letavet stands outside in a long coat.

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Ella Maillart @ellamaillart.bsky.social · 13/10/2026

Definitely going to borrow that idea 🙏🏼🤣🙏🏼🤣🙏🏼🤣

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Ella Maillart @ellamaillart.bsky.social · 13/10/2026

'Ostensibly' is doing a lot of heavy lifting there ...

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Ella Maillart @ellamaillart.bsky.social · 13/10/2026

Wow! Extraordinarily foreboding, isn't it? Although you don't have to guess what Ella does next ... How she goes about it, though, is utterly mind-blowing!!!

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Ella Maillart @ellamaillart.bsky.social · 13/10/2026

“In the middle of Ak-Shyirak, a snowy gilded pyramid rises in the setting sun, the harmony of its proportions reminds me of Mont Blanc. “No one has ever climbed this summit,” says Auguste meditatively, and his blue eyes sparkling in his scarlet face." #EllaMaillart #Kyrgyzstan #AlShyirak #SaryTor

The dramatic, ice-capped dome structure of Sary-Tor - 4946.9 metres above sea level and the third highest peak in the Tian Shan mountain range - characterised by heavy permanent snow fields, deeply grooved ice-fall couloirs and prominent crevasses across its upper flanks.

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Ella Maillart @ellamaillart.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

Such a gorgeous image ... and I hope your visitor really appreciates the efforts you are making to welcome them!!! 🏡

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Ella Maillart @ellamaillart.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

'Sources du Syr-Daria et sommet du Sari-Tor', Kyrgyz Soviet Socialist Republic (present-day Kyrgyzstan), Ella Maillart, 1932

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Ella Maillart @ellamaillart.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

"... after watering the cotton fields of Ferghana, Tashkent and its five hundred thousand inhabitants, and the plain where boars and tigers still live hidden in the reeds. Here it is called the Narin."

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Ella Maillart @ellamaillart.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

"Ella," says Volodya in a thrilled voice, "that trickle you saw flowing out of the glacier we crossed is the source of the Syr Dazia, the great Iaxartes of the Ancients, which pours its waters in the Sea of Aral ..." #EllaMaillart #Photography #Kazakhstan #Kyrgzstan #Turkestan #TianShan #SaryTor

'Sources du Syr-Daria et sommet du Sari-Tor', Kyrgyz Soviet Socialist Republic (present-day Kyrgyzstan), Ella Maillart, 1932

A glacial landscape feeds the headwaters of the Syr Darya - one of Central Asia's most vital river systems - in the Tian Shan mountain range within the Kyrgyz Autonomous Socialist Soviet Republic (present-day Kyrgyzstan).

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Ella Maillart @ellamaillart.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

Wasn't quite as naughty as his central character Lin, Jimmy, but did share a few Kingfisher beers with Gregory at his favourite haunt, Leopold's Café, on Colaba Causeway!!! m.rediff.com/amp/news/rep...

m.rediff.com

'Shantaram' returns to Leopold

Had the terrorists come five hours earlier, I wouldn't be here talking to you,' says Gregory David Roberts, the Australian author of the novel Shantaram, oft-considered a foreigner's Ode to Mumbai. 'W...

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Ella Maillart @ellamaillart.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

A brief pause before approaching Sary-Tor! 🏔️

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Ella Maillart @ellamaillart.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

"The wideness of the horizon has to be inside us, cannot be anywhere but inside us, otherwise what we speak about is geographic distances." - Ella Maillart #EllaMaillart #Photography #Kyrgyzstan #Karakol

A smiling young woman wrapped in a heavy cloak adorned with embroidered circular motifs and unique woven textures popular among nomadic and local cultures in Central Asia during the early 20th century.

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Ella Maillart @ellamaillart.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

Ohhhhh, in 'Turkestan Solo' Ella tells us that she did indeed encounter these enormous dogs! According to simonside.net/ella-maillart/: "She travels to the Caucasus Mountains with a group of Russian students. On her way back to Europe, she also visits Crimea to recuperate from a vicious dog bite."

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Ella Maillart @ellamaillart.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

"... the powerful stream that irrigates the cotton fields of Tashkent and joins the Aral Sea after flowing through the desert of the red sands. I had no idea that I should one day cross these hard-frozen waters at their mouth."

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Ella Maillart @ellamaillart.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

"Ahead, the south is barred by the white line of the Ak Chiriak range where our eyes again and again admire a most tempting summit. As for the rivulet trickling out of our glacier, it is the source of the great Syr Daria ..." #EllaMaillart #Photography #Kyrgyzstan #China #TerskeyAlatau

A rider on horseback travels alongside a vast glacier and lake at 4,800 metres near the Kashka-Suu Pass in the Terskey Alatau mountain chain, Kirghiz Autonomous Socialist Soviet Republic (modern-day Kyrgyzstan), Ella Maillart, 1932

The Kashka-Suu Pass is an ancient highland route traditionally navigated by nomadic caravans moving between Central Asia and China.

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Ella Maillart @ellamaillart.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

"Squatting in front of a neighbouring yurt, four workers, with all their might and with wands that whistle in their hands, beat smartly on some camel-wool scattered over a sheet. Rhythmically the arms rise and fall, the elbows are pulled back sharply ..." #EllaMaillart #Photography #Kyrgyzstan

'Natives Beating Felt', Kyrgyzstan, Ella Maillart, 1932

Workers lean over a striped reed mat containing wet, layered wool fibres, pressing and kneading them to bind the fibres into a solid piece of felt. A bucket and a tool handle stand beside the mat on the ground.

Practiced mainly by nomadic tribes, this laborious process of wet felting involves raw wool being moistened with water or an alkaline solution, wrapped tightly in a woven reed mat and repeatedly beaten, kneaded and rolled by a synchronised row of workers using their hands, forearms or feet.

This mechanical pressure causes the microscopic scales of the wool fibers to permanently interlock, creating durable, water-resistant sheets used for carpets, tents, clothing and blankets.

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Ella Maillart @ellamaillart.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Well done!!! 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼

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Ella Maillart @ellamaillart.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

"On their visits to one another, the women of the aul are continually spinning; or one of them, squatting on the ground may be weaving. ... As usual, every one of them is keen to handle my camera, and finds great pleasure in looking through the view-finder." #EllaMaillart #Photography #Kyrgyzstan

A smiling Kyrgyz woman spinning wool on a drop spindle with a central whorl and wound wool yarn at Ak-Shyyrak in the Tian Shan mountain system of Kyrgyzstan.

The shaft is the straight wooden rod held vertically to spin and twist raw fibres into continuous threads, whilst the whorl is the weighted, rounded disc in the middle which acts as a flywheel to maintain momentum and steady rotation when flicked.

The yarn cop is the oval bundle of freshly-spun wool fibres wrapped securely around the shaft just above the whorl.

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Ella Maillart @ellamaillart.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Which is more than we can say about the political community. Cowards.

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Ella Maillart @ellamaillart.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

"Then the thin ends of supple wands are fitted into the holes of the crown and pushed into the interstices of the lattice work. Over this umbrella-shaped frame they lay big squares of felt held down by broad plaited straps. According to custom, the building of the yurt is done by women only."

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Ella Maillart @ellamaillart.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

"I watch the building of a yurt, a most ingenious habitation requiring neither nails nor foundations. First a few sections of lattice work are stood up vertically in a circle; then somebody stands in the middle holding up on a fork the wooden crown to form the apex of the tent. ..."

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Ella Maillart @ellamaillart.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

"Next morning, I look eagerly at this new world 11,000 feet above the sea. On a sloping glade of short grass six yurts are grouped together. Women milk the mares and tease the mute of the camp who stares at us with mouth agape." #EllaMaillart #Photography #Kyrgyzstan #Yurt

Wool Felt Making, Kyrgyzstan, Ella Maillart, 1932

Framed by the Tian Shan mountains, a Kyrgyz woman stands by a traditional yurt, a highly versatile, portable structure engineered from a wooden lattice frame covered in thick sheep's wool felt. A samovar and other utensils are placed nearby on the ground.

In the background on the right, a group of women are gathered closely on the ground, rolling and pressing wool fibres to create the felt sheets (kiyiz) used to insulate these structures against Central Asia's harsh weather.

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