Further Wanderings

Our time in Osh began inauspiciously.
We climbed out of the mashrutka with little idea of where we were in town. We went to try and phone the hostel we hoped to stay at and I realized our phone was missing. I’d had it in my pocket on the mashrutka minutes before, so we ran back and tried to find it on the floor. No luck. No luck either when we used a fellow passengers phone to call ours. The SIM card had already been removed.

Ah well…

We made our way to the Osh Guesthouse, located on the fourth floor of a residential apartment building, only to find they were full for that night. While we sat and chatted with the staff and other guests the sky had darkened and it had started to rain. By the time we’d reached the ground floor the rain had become torrential. But we weren’t sure it would get better any time soon so out we went into the torrent, managing to become soaked from head to toes in the five minutes it took us to get to the next hotel just down the road.

Osh is perhaps best known to the outside world as the centre of the riots in 2010 (and earlier ones in 1990), which saw violent clashes between the city’s ethnic Kyrgyz and Uzbek residents. There was chaos in the city, with widespread looting and arson, and hundreds if not thousands (mostly Uzbeks) killed. While the two groups may not be the best of friends, it appears that the city’s Kyrgyz and Uzbek populations are once again living side by side in relative peace. Hopefully they have taken this sign (it reads “Peace”) at the north end of Osh’s Vayma Bazaar to heart

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Finding a ride south towards our destination, Arslanbob, at Osh bazaar was straightforward enough. We wandered up to the crowd of people near the parking lot, mentioned where we were headed and were immediately ushered towards a waiting minivan. Actually GOING anywhere was another matter. We sat around being hassled by a drunk Russian man (it was before 09:00 when we arrived) for a good forty fine minutes before enough other passengers were located and we all piled into the minivan and were on our way.

The first part of the journey was one we’d done before during our trip to Suusamyr: across to Kara Balta, south up the river valley, climbing up, up, up to the Tor Ashuu pass, negotiating the narrow tunnel at the top before finally giving back the altitude we’d gained by descending down to the Suusamyr Valley.

Soon after reaching the valley floor we moved on into new territory. The Suusamyr Valley was even larger than we’d realized our first time around and we spent a good hour travelling quickly at, despite significantly different winning pelong its fertile green floor. The roadside was lined with yurts selling Kyrgyz dairy products the whole length of our trip through the valley and on up the hillsides as the we climbed to the second of the two high mountain passes on the route.

Following the pass the road descended into a narrow river gorge full of dry, sandy coloured mountains, where we stopped for lunch. From the gorge we emerged into a wider expanse of low mountains, still with dry slopes but with a big, opalescent blue lake at their feet.

The final stage of the journey took us through the flat, hot, fertile farmland of the Fergana Valley, the bread basket (and the rice basket, and the melon basket, and the cotton basket…) of Kyrgyzstan.

A two story(!) yurt in the Suusamyr Valley

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