Nestled in the southeastern mountains of Uzbekistan, Boysun developed into a cultural hub over centuries, since the age of the ancient Silk Road. Given its long history and outside influence through the famed trade route, the region’s cultural heritage evolved to become as diverse as the flora and fauna that inhabit the region. As a way of celebrating the diverse cultural heritage that dates back to the pre-Islamic days, the Boysun Bahori Festival was first developed as an annual spring festival in the early 2000s, with some interruptions on certain years.\n\nUNESCO officially listed Boysun culture as a Masterpiece of Oral and Intangible Cultural Heritage, and in the following year, the first festival was held. April was chosen as the optimal time for the festival as Boysun is unusually pleasant at that time, with flowering fields and green mountains creating a perfect backdrop for a festive environment.\n\nThe locals set up a yurt camp that includes workshops and stages for ensembles to perform. In addition, they set up makeshift arenas for traditional sports like wrestling, horse-related sports, and other activities, such as tightrope walking and acrobatics.\n\nIn April 2019, with the support of the Uzbek Ministry of Culture to explain well-known cultural spaces that I wanted to visit for a long time, I went to Boysun to interview some of the locals. During these interviews, some interesting insights about cultural heritage in the Boysun area were uncovered. According to the local community, much of the younger generation, both male and female, have tendencies to pursue careers or education in larger cities. However, in spite of decreasing number of young generation, community people expressed their satisfaction with living in the heritage city. They appear proud of the many rituals and traditional games that have remained a part of daily life.\n\nSuch customary knowledge is in traditional carpet weaving, craftsmanship, games, and rituals, which are still a part of Boysun communities. Some youth activities include stick-tossing games that are similar to jachigi, a Korean children’s game and commonly played throughout the world. In Boysun, I interestingly noticed that some practices have been influenced more by Zoroastrianism than Islam.\n\nDuring my visit, many of community members were absent in the village to visit Termez to participate and observe the International Bakhshi Art Festival, which was held for first time in Uzbekistan. Nonetheless through my visit to this unique cultural place, I felt deep aspiration of the people for safeguarding their own culture and heritage inherited through generations.\n\nPhoto 1 : Boysun entrance ⓒ ICHCAP\nPhoto 2 : Local people in Boysun District ⓒ ICHCAP\nPhoto 3 : Interviewing locals in Boysun ⓒ ICHCAP\nPhoto 4 : Prayer hall in the trunk of a tree that is hundreds of years old ⓒ ICHCAP\nPhoto 5 : Overview of Boysun District (seen from the entrance hill) ⓒ ICHCAP

The Kyrgyz komuz is a national musical instrument. Traditionally, komuz was made from a single piece of wood. The instrument has three strings, which were traditionally made from dried ram innards, but in modern times, fishing lines are often used instead.

When it comes to the preservation of intangible cultural heritage (ICH), threats that lead to the loss of the viability of one or another element of ICH are latently implied. From a social anthropological point of view, this is a question of the interaction between tradition and innovation: do new technologies always negatively affect traditional art? How does modern everyday life affect the sustainability of a traditional view of the world that underlies the identity of each element of ICH?\n

Intangible cultural heritage presents an important form of living cultural heritage. It covers fundamental, yet extremely vulnerable aspects of living culture and tradition embodied in the spiritual life, traditional knowledge, skills, and practices of communities. It presents one of the most vivid and colourful forms in which the world’s cultural diversity is expressed and preserved.

Alisher Ikramov reviews information collected through a survey funded by ICHCAP. While his work primarily reviews ICH festivals, he is also able to gain insights into ways that networks can promote ICH along the Silk Roads. Looking at the importance of local communities and the popularity of such festivals locally, there is concern about a lack of a network to encourage larger tourist attendance. However, there are feelings that festivals do not authentically represent local traditions and products. Therefore, this could lead to an undesirable level of commoditization and as a result lower the quality of the event.

Wrestling is an intense struggle between two people based on strength, endurance, and patience. In addition to power and physical capacity, this contest also requires mental strength and control of the body with the mind. Wrestling has some characteristics that reflect people’s physical struggle with nature under various circumstances. As a consequence of these two complementary aspects, this activity has long been part of relations, competitions, and some kinds of claims of superiority among human beings. Wrestling, for all these reasons, is one of the oldest sports in the history of humanity. At the same time, this means that rich traditions, rituals, and practices have formed and evolved around wrestling in different parts of the world. Therefore, it is possible to say that this sport, in a way, represents one of the aspects of the cultural accumulation of humanity, the knowledge, practices, and rituals transmitted from one generation to the next. This fact also leads us to think of the regional, national, and local forms of wrestling that may be regarded in the context of diversity of cultural expressions. Within this perspective and the focus of this paper, traditional oil wrestling embodies a living heritage with various cultural characteristics. It might be helpful to provide some information on the history and main elements of traditional oil wrestling before elaborating upon its value from the perspective of intangible cultural heritage (ICH) identity, transmission, and safeguarding efforts.\nTraditional oil wrestling is performed on a grass field by wrestlers called who are doused in olive oil and wear a type of hand-stitched, tight-fitting, knee-covering leather pants called . The roots of the relation between Turks and wrestling may be traced back long before its presence in Anatolia and the Republic of Turkey, to Central Asia in

Kutch is a frontier district in the state of Gujarat in western India, situated on the border of India and Pakistan. Covering an area of 45,674 km², it is the largest district of India. It is surrounded by the Great and Little Rann of Kutch on the North, South, East, and the Arabian Sea on the West. In the beginning of the twelfth century, Kutch was ruled by Chavda, Sama, Sanghar, Kathi, and Solanki dynasties. From 1147 AD to 1947 AD, Kutch was ruled by the Jadejas, whose ancestors migrated to Kutch from Sindh (now in Pakistan). Sindh is one of the four provinces of Pakistan. Located in the southeast of the country, it is the third largest province of Pakistan. Sindh is bordered by Balochistan province to the west and Punjab province to the north. Sindh also borders the Indian states of Gujarat and Rajasthan to the east and Arabian Sea to the south. The influence of Sindhi culture is very prominent in Kutch due to the history of migration of pastoralists as well as artisanal communities. The current paper aims to explore the cross border cultural relationships between local communities of Kutch, India and Sindh, Pakistan by critically examining their shared oral tradition of Gujharat and a significant traditional textile craft practice called Ajrakh.

The shamanism of the Mongols, based on the beliefs that animals and all things in nature have souls, originates in the worship of Father-Sky and Mother-Earth. Worshiping these elements has roots from the traditions of nature worship that also involves worshiping the souls of ancestors and magical power of the spirits (ongon), revering respect to the mountain and water deities through divine practices, and executing remedies and verses (shivshleg). People believe that a male shaman (boo) and a female shaman (udgan) are capable of averting and warding off misfortune and evil and taming any enemy by foretelling the future causes communicating with the ninety-nine deities (tengris) that exist in the heavens and the spirits of earth and water.

With a history of exclusion and caste-based discrimination, the Devipujaks (worshippers of the Mother Goddess) have come a long way and carved out an identity of their own through the creation of the Kalamkari(hand-painted) tradition called Mata ni Pachhedi. A community of painters, hand printers, and dyers, settled in a small urban slum in Vasna, Ahmedabad, are struggling to sustain themselves by keeping alive this age-old art. This article attempts to capture the artform Mata ni Pachhedi and how the community is working on sustaining the textile tradition despite facing numerous challenges.

In reality, safeguarding ICH (or whatever term one uses)1 has been an important issue for the large majority of countries around the globe and their citizens long before the 2003 Convention was adopted. The ‘problem’ of ICH, therefore, was a lack of formal international recognition of this reality and a cultural heritage protection paradigm that prioritised monumental European cultural forms over local and indigenous ones and that, when it addressed traditional culture, it did so from a heavily researcher-oriented viewpoint. The experience of those countries that are Parties to the 2003 Convention shows clearly that ICH in all its various forms is a rich social and, often, economic and even political resource that provides a variety of possible routes towards sustainable models of development. This variety is determined by many social, cultural, economic, political, and environmental factors and is itself part of the invaluable diversity of this form of heritage.

Dongjo Yoo, a renowned installation artist, focuses primarily on environmental projects, specifically projects related to water. His most notable work is the Water Performance Installation Project, an eleven-year project starting from 2014, involving eleven lakes and rivers in ten countries. Under the motto of “there is no ‘water’ in the presence of water, and there is ‘water’ in the absence of water,” the project has been a large success. To highlight the importance of the environment, Mr. Yoo is looking forward to expanding his project to areas along the Silk Roads where water is a scarce and valuable resource.

“A man in Pamir, from birth to death, is accompa- nied by all sorts of family and everyday rites and customs. In many traditions, including the prepa- ration and use of food, traces of deep geographical and climatic isolation are clearly visible.The Pamir highlanders who lived in closeness with their nature had a great culture, rich in traditions, cults, customs which created humane framework of actions in relation to wildlife. Cultural values and practices re- lated to caring for nature at the same time supported the life of the mountain peoples. This culture has become the main priority for the effective,reasonable and rational use of wildlife resources.Such behavior not only contributed to the survival of the mountain population in the most severe climatic conditions, but also became the main factor in the conservation of wild fauna and flora.