Holiday in Central Asia (13): Rishton, Kokand & Tashkent in Uzbekistan
September 14th, 2022 by Roger Darlington
It was basically a travelling day (Day 12) as we left the Fergana Valley to journey to Tashkent prior to our venture tomorrow into Tajikistan.
The group of eight plus our guide and luggage were allocated to four modern white cars, the LPG-powered Chevrolet Cobalt. I sat in the front of my car with Charles & Nova in the back. At the beginning of the journey, I was a confirmed atheist but almost immediately I became a devout Muslim because our Uzbek driver – no doubt very competent – drove at breakneck speed and frightening agility. And, all the time that we were in towns, we had endless loud bleeping from his device to warn of speed detectors.
The roads were excellent but that only encouraged the driver to go to infinity and beyond. Meanwhile the temperature rose to 32C and the car’s air-con was so disappointing that we kept the windows open. I slept most of the time that we were on the road so that I did not have to witness too much of this mania.
Our convoy left our hotel in Fergana at 8.30 am and reached our hotel in Tashkent at 6.30 pm so it was a ten-hour day – but we did stop two and a half times. The first stop was at Rishton where we visited the the ceramics workshop of Rustam & Regina Usmanov. The local clay and glaze are unique and I bought eight beautiful tiles.
The second stop was at the town of Kokand which, in the 18th & 19th centuries, was capital of one of Uzbekistan’s three great khanates and second only to Bukhara as a religious centre in Central Asia. An excellent local guide called Anvar took us around the magnificent Palace of the Khan of Kokand which was built in 1873 with seven courtyards and 114 rooms. Shorter visits were to a former medressa, a current mosque, and a graveyard before we had lunch at the “Benazir” restaurant.
The half stop was at the top of the Kamchik Pass at 2267 metres which presents a grand photo opportunity although it was rather hazy that afternoon. In fact, for parts of this whole area – such army camps and tunnels – photographs are not allowed. Indeed the army stopped us photographing a river!
This is because the pass is seen as a strategic location in the event of conflict, should Kyrgyzstan to the north or Tajikistan to the south decided to cut off the Fergana Valley to the east or attack Tashkent to the west. This may seem unlikely, but today there had been a border incident between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan which resulted in the death of a border guard and injury to five others.
On my trip to Uzbekistan in 2006, we stayed at the grim Uzbekistan Hotel, but this time we are in the Lotte City Hotel which is a splendid facility and dinner was at the hotel.
Tomorrow we head for Tajikistan – border disputes permitting.
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Holiday in Central Asia (12): Fergana and Margilon in Uzbekistan
September 13th, 2022 by Roger Darlington
On our first full day in Uzbekistan (Day 11), we looked around two of the towns of the Fergana Valley. Our local guide was a woman named Madina who unfortunately had a terribly strong accent, a monotonous tone, and an insistence on reciting a contain stream of detailed information. Yet, when I asked her about the Andijon Massacre in 2005, she claimed that she did not understand what had happened.
First, in Fergana itself, we strolled around the extensive park with a towering statue of the 9th century astronomer after whom the town is named, al-Farghani. Next we visited the Fergana State Museum where I signed the visitor book on behalf of the group. Finally we stopped for some green tea at a cafe where I befriended a group of local women in their 70s who gather to do embroidery together. When I said that I was looking for a new wife, they all volunteered and I chose the one who said that she was single.
We then made the short drive to the town of Margilon which dates back to the 1st century BC. Here we toured the Yodgorlik silk factory where we were shown the traditional methods of silk production from steaming and unravelling the cocoons to the tie-dying and weaving. A pause for lunch was at a local restaurant called “Diyor”. Finally we walked around the complex of the 18th century saint Pur Siddiq whom legend says escaped with his life when pigeons built nests to cover the cave where he was hiding from infidels.
Dinner was at a different local restaurant with the authentically Uzbek name (!) “Brown Sugar Coffee House”.
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Holiday in Central Asia (11): Bishkek to Osh to Fergana
September 12th, 2022 by Roger Darlington
It was Day 10 and we are one third into our tour. In Bishkek, we were up at 4 am and out at 5 am for an early morning flight to Osh in the very west of Kyrgyzstan. On the minibus to the airport, it sounded as if another challenge was on the horizon when we were told that domestic flights had a weight limit of 15 kg for the hold and 5 kg for the cabin with excess weight needing to be be paid for. In fact, the check-in clerk loaded one suitcase on top of another until he had two piles of four cases each and then declared that the group as a whole did not exceed the limit (fortunately our guide Olga only had hand luggage so her 15 kg went towards the group limit).
The flight to Osh – a city with an incredible history of 3,000 years – only lasted 40 minutes which gave us time to view a few features of the area around the main square – including a giant statue of Lenin with outstretched arm – and to visit a tea house – full of old men passing the time. Then we said farewell to Olga and walked through the border between Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. Our luggage was checked a couple of times and our passport was checked endless times, so this took an hour.
On the other side of the border, we met our guide for all our time in Uzbekistan: Timur – half Uzbek and half Tartat. We were very pleased to find that, in contrast to the basic minibus in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, we had a large modern coach, but it did not have a toilet on board and we were advised that there would be no toilet facilities until we reached our destination, so we had to use the very basic facilities at the border control.
Uzbekistan is an hour behind Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan and it took us almost two and a half hours to drive through the Fergana Valley – the most populous, the most fertile and the most industrial region in the country – to reach the city of Fergana. Here we started with lunch at a restaurant called “UHU” before checking into the Terra Nova hotel which was something of a disappointment from what we had expected.
Later in the afternoon, Timur took the group out for an hour’s walk in the city but there was nothing to see plus the weather was now overcast and spitting. Fergana is the valley’s least ancient and least Uzbek city. Then, in the evening, we went out together for dinner in a restaurant called “Legenda” which was refreshingly different in that, instead of four overly-large courses of food which was our constant experience for both lunch and dinner in both Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, we had three moderately-sized courses and, for a change, the main course was vegetarian.
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Holiday in Central Asia (10): back to Bishkek in Kyrgyzstan
September 11th, 2022 by Roger Darlington
After two days on the south side of Lake Issyk-Kok, today (Day 9), we were returning to the capital Bishkek. The day did not go according to the programme but it was interesting nevertheless.
The programme had us breaking the journey half way round the northern side of the lake to visit a complex called Rukh Ordo near Cholpon-Ata which depicts Kyrgyz legends, but the site was being visited today by foreign delegations and so was closed to the public.
Instead Olga suggested a visit to a location just outside Karakol: the museum, monument and grave of the Russian explorer Pristina Przhevalsk (1839-1888) whose name was used by the Soviets to rename Karakol for the communist period. The museum has a giant map filling a whole wall which depicts the routes of his four expeditions to various parts of Central Asia when it was largely unknown outside the region.
We still travelled along the northern side of Lake Issyk-Kol and we still stopped in Cholpon-Ata for lunch. But afterwards Olga proposed a short addition to the programme: a quick look at what she called “the museum of the open sky”. This is an extensive field of glacial boulders, many featuring petroglyphs, especially from the period of the Scythian era (7th C to 3rd C BC).
We had left Karakol at 8.45 am and were back at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Bishkek at 7.10 pm – a journey of 420 km (260 miles) which took us ten and half hours (but with four stops). At the hotel, we reconnected with group members Charles & Nova whom we had left four days ago and were pleased to find that Charles was now recovered from his bout of covid.
However, over dinner at the hotel, the oldest members of the group almost passed out and then repeatedly vomited. An ambulance was called and he was put on a drip.
I always knew that this was going to be a challenging trip …
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Holiday in Central Asia (9): Karakol & Arashan in Kyrgyzstan
September 10th, 2022 by Roger Darlington
Now in Karakol, we started Day 8 with a quick look around. The town was founded in 1869 and named Karakol meaning ‘black hand’ because of the working inhabitants. In Soviet times, it was called Przhevalsk after the explorer Nikolai Przhevalsk whose last expedition ended here. It is an indication of how sparsely populated is Kyrgyzstan that today Karakol with its population of just 75,000 is the country’s fourth largest town.
We viewed two major buildings. The Holy Trinity Cathedral was finished in 1895 and built of wood to enable it to survive earthquakes (the five onion domes were removed by the Bolsheviks but restored some three decades later). The Dungan Mosque was founded in 1910 and closed for worship between 1933 and 1943, but managed to survive (the other eight mosques in the town were destroyed by the Bolsheviks). The Dungan community of Chinese Muslims fled to Kyrgyzstan in 1877 and the mosque looks more like a Chinese Buddhist temple.
The rest of the day was occupied with a visit to a hot spring development called Altyn-Arashan (Golden Spa). This is set in a glorious alpine valley located at a height of 2,500 metres (8,000 feet) with the Arashan river running along the whole route there and the Palatka Peak looming over the southern end. The problem is reaching and returning from this picture-perfect sight.
We needed a special Soviet-era military vehicle called a GAZ 66 and we were thrown around constantly as the vehicle edged slowly over stones of every size bumping violently literally every second or two. It took us two and a half hours to reach the valley and then a further three hours to descend and we only spent 40 minutes at our destination where we had a packed lunch and found a suitable bush in lieu of a toilet.
Like yesterday, we were offered the opportunity to walk part of the way down. This time our vehicle stopped regularly to pick up members of the group who felt that they had walked as far as they wished. I walked two separate sections totalling about one hour, but the altitude and the scree meant that this hour was enough for me.
We had been told by our guide Olga: “It is a kind of extreme adventure”. She was not kidding. For all of us this was the roughest ride of our lives and we had to wonder whether it was really appropriate for individuals of our age (up to 77). But it had indeed been an adventure and the views were superb.
Dinner was a quiet affair. It was at the hotel and we were the only people in the restaurant.
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Holiday in Central Asia (8): south side of Lake Issyk-Kok in Kyrgyzstan
September 9th, 2022 by Roger Darlington
Lake Issyk-Kol is over 170 km (105 miles) long and up to 70 km (44 miles) across and lies at an altitude of over 1600 metres (over 5,000 feet). It is not only one of the world’s few remaining ancient lakes, estimated to be 25 million years old, but it is also the second largest alpine lake on the planet.
The name means ‘hot lake’ which comes from a combination of extreme depth, thermal activity, and mild salinity which ensures that the lake never freezes even in the fierce winters. The backdrop in the north is the snow-dappled Ala-Too mountains. The lake runs west-east. The northern shore has shallower beaches and warmer water, but it is much more expensive than the southern shore which is therefore known as “the wild shore”.
Our first full day in the area (Day 7) was spent visiting locations on the south side of the lake. First, we viewed Skazka (Faireytale) Canyon which has red hills of every size and shape. There are high and low walking routes and our group took (part of) the low route (some members of the group have walking difficulties). Then, just south of a village called Jeti-Oguz, we drove into a gorge called Broken Heart and Seven Bulls which indicates the shapes of the mountains to be found there,
From now in, the route was even tougher for our four-wheel drive coach but our driver was not fazed. So we ploughed on up rutted and rock-strewn ‘roads’ twisting and turning to avoid obstacles and crossing the fast-flowing Jeti-Oguz River.
Out destination was a yurt camp located at a height of round 2,000 metres (7,000 feet). Since leaving the hotel, it had taken us four and a half hours to reach the camp with no stops for toilets or coffees. So we were pleased to make use of the camp’s facilities and enjoyed lunch in a yurt with four dumplings as the main course.
Finally our guide Olga – a fit young woman – invited the group to walk back as far at the first of the five bridges which apparently was 4 km (2.5 miles). Only one person actually made it as far as the first bridge and that walk took 70 minutes. Yes, it was me.
On the six previous nights of our Central Asia trip, we have only had one night at that hotel each time. But now we have checked into the Karagat Hotel in the town of Karakol where we will spend all of two nights. Suitcases might actually be unpacked this time and some clothes washing may be attempted.
Dinner was at a popular and lively restaurant called “Dastorkon”. Astonishingly one of the group met an English man who he used to know years ago.
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Holiday in Central Asia (7): travel to Lake Issyk-Kol in Kyrgyzstan
September 8th, 2022 by Roger Darlington
Now in another country: Kyrgyzstan is a thinly-populated nation bisected by mountain ranges and the north-south divide has always bedevilled the country’s politics. Since independence, there have been three revolutions (2005, 2010, 2020) and six presidents. The Kyrgyz language has two dialects, one in the north influenced by Russian and the other to the south shaped by Uzbek. In fact, Russian is the everyday language of all educated citizens and, like the other countries of Central Asia, emotionally most people still identify with Russia.
Now in another city: Modern Bishkek was founded in 1878 on the site of a Russian garrison. From 1926 to 1991, the city’s Soviet name was Frunze, honouring locally-born Mikhail Frunze, a Russian Civil War commander. Today it is a city of 1M. Before leaving town, we had a quick look at the main squares, viewing the soaring national flagpole and new equestrian statue of Mighty Manas, observing the changing of the guard with slowly goose-stepping soldiers, and finally observing the large statue of Lenin opposite the single-chamber parliament.
For the next two days, our itinerary will be focused on the Issyk-Kol Lake, so on Day 6 we drove east on a road which early on actually took us into and out of neighbouring Kazakhstan for a few minutes. The quality of the roads was terrible but we made steady progress on our journey of 330 kms (200 miles):with one short comfort stop at a service station (the toilets were out of order) and an hour and a half for lunch in a family home in Bokonbaievo (there were no adequate restaurants anywhere on the route).
So we left the hotel at 8.30 am and finally reached our overnight accommodation at 3.40 pm. We are staying at an artist colony at Kadji-Sal just 10 minutes walk from Lake Issyk-Kol. Unlike Saty village in Kazakhstan, each room has a toilet and shower and decent WiFi but, at the time of our arrival, there was an unannounced absence of electricity locally (it returned at 5 pm). Dinner was at the guesthouse with a large group of Israeli tourists.
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Holiday in Central Asia (6): city tour of Almaty, Kazakhstan
September 7th, 2022 by Roger Darlington
Our last day in Kazakhstan (Day 5) started with a surprise when one of our group Nova announced that overnight her partner Charles, who had never had covid, had just tested positive for the virus. The tour organisers decided that, while the rest of the group would fly to Bishkek in Kyrgyzstan, Charles & Nova would need to travel there by road and then isolate at our hotel there until he tested negative.
So, for the rest of us, the day was a tour of the city on a day when the temperature was 36C.
Almaty, which is located in the south-east corner of the country, was previously called Alma-Ata (Father of Apples) but, following independence, it was renamed to be closer in name to the original Silk Road settlement of Almatu. It used to be the capital but, in 1998, this was moved to Astana in the centre of the country which was subsequently renamed Nur-Sultan. This is all part of the ubiquitous post-Soviet rebranding in this region.
However, Almaty remains the largest city in the country with a population of about 2M. It is a surprisingly picturesque city with plenty of trees and overlooked by the Zailiysky Alatau mountains. It has only has one tube line with just 11 stations.
The tour started with a visit to the Central State Museum where pride of place goes to a large replica of the Golden Man – the national symbol of Kazakhstan – who was a 3rd or 4th century warrior whose gold-clan remains were uncovered in 1969 and are now located in the new capital. Next we took a cable car – or “the rope way” as a sign suggested in English – up the Kok Tobe (Green Hill) which affords splendid views over the city as well as offering a 2007 set of bronze statues of the four Beatles.
Back down from the cable car, we had lunch at a restaurant called “Assorti”. Afterwards we drove down Freedom Street (formerly Lenin Street) to Panfilov Park (named after an Almaty infantry unit who died fighting outside Moscow in 1941). At the heart of the square is the beautiful candy-coloured Zenkov Cathedral which was built between 1904-1906 entirely of wood (which is how it survived the earthquake of 1911).
Much of the square, as its name suggests, has military connotations with grandiose Soviet-designed monuments commemorating the dead of the Civil War in 1917-1920 and the Second World War in 1941-1945 plus a huge statue portraying the 28 Panfilov Heroes and an eternal flame of honour. Rather prosaically, we even made a short visit to the Kazakh Museum of Folk Musical Instruments which is located in a 1908 wooden building in the square.
It was time to say goodbye to Svetlana and make the short flight of 30 minutes from Almaty in Kazakhstan to Bishkek in Kyrgyzstan – the second country on our tour of the ‘stans’. Our local guide was Olga – a Russian whose family has lived In Kyrgyzstan for five generations. Our hotel was the Hyatt, an excellent place, if not as opulent as the Ritz-Carlton in Almaty.
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Holiday in Central Asia (5) a strange lake in Kazakhstan
September 6th, 2022 by Roger Darlington
It was an odd night in the Alban guesthouse and many of the group did not sleep so well because of the regular barking of local dogs, the early crowing of the village cocks, and some members taking nighttime showers. I pride myself on being able to sleep anywhere at anytime but a combination of jet-lag and animal noises had me awake for a while.
Today’s excursion (Day 4) was to a very particular location called Kaindy Lake. This is so remote that it could only be accessed by four-wheeled drive vehicles, so the group split into two Toyota 4WD land cruisers in which we swerved around ruts and rocks, splashed through streams, and ploughed up hills for a fun drive of 45 minutes.
Once out of the vehicles, things became even more challenging. The paths down to the lake are very steep and very gravelly and several of the group took a tumble. But what a sight: both at water level and from the hillside above.
Kaindy Lake was formed by nature after an earthquake in 1911 dislodged a huge block of mountain which blocked the river and created the lake in which earlier trees still make a ghostly appearance. Located around 2,000 metres above sea level, surrounded by huge spruce trees, and with the silver trucks of dead spruce risking above the water surface like the masts of sunken ships, this is truly a magical experience.
We were at Kiandy Lake for an hour and a half, following which we returned to our guesthouse for a quick lunch, before leaving Saty village to return to Almaty. It was a journey of almost four and a half hours, but we stopped briefly to view the Black Canyon and to have a comfort break.
Some of us wanted to take the opportunity to have a sleep or read a book, but our guide Svetlana appealed to us to ask her anything about Kazakhstan and our Scottish member requested information on the country’s experience of ice hockey. His other questions kept us going till Almaty where we are staying at the same place as previously: the luxurious Ritz-Carlton Hotel.
Dinner was also at a familiar location: “Navat” restaurant. This time we had salmon as the main course (the Kazaks do love their meat) and three members of staff put on a short dance show.
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Holiday in Central Asia (4): canyon & lake in Kazakhstan
September 5th, 2022 by Roger Darlington
After a day and a night in Almaty to rest and recover from our jet lag, on Day 3 we left the city for two days to visit some nature locations in the very south-east this huge country.
Our guide Svetlana never stopped talking while we were on the road and we learned so much about the country and the people. Her personal story is symbolic of post-Soviet Central Asia. Her mother’s family was Ukrainian kulak and banished to Sakhalin Island, while her father’s family was Don Cossack kulaks who were sent to Siberia. Thank you, comrade Stalin. They grew up in the Soviet Union before finding themselves in independent Kazakhstan. On our road journey, we passed close to China and Kyrgyzstan and went through a Uyghur village. It is a complicated region of the world.
Leaving our Almaty hotel at 7.30 am, we travelled around 200 km to arrive at our first destination just over 3 hours later (there was a comfort stop at a service station that served coffee). Our destination was the spectacular Charyn Canyon where we spent three and a half hours. The canyon consists of rocks varying in age from 23M to 60M years old. Today the canyon is 154 km in length with cliff sides of up to 300 metres high.
We walked the 1.3 metre trial along the top, walked all the way back, and then took the 2.3 metre trail on the floor of the canyon all the way to the rushing Charyn River, so we covered around 5 metres. The lower part of the canyon is known as the Valley of the Castles because of the striated and coloured cliff faces on either side. The weather was glorious with a temperature of around 40C made bearable by a breeze. But, in the summer, the temperature can hit 50C. Understandably we all took a open lorry back (thankfully with sears) from the river to the start of the trails and found some shelter for a picnic lunch.
Our next destination was a further 100 km and took almost another two hours on increasingly winding roads. This time our destination was the Kolsai Lakes. In fact, we only viewed the nearest and deepest (70 metres). We were higher now so the weather was milder and the views were simply beautiful. After a coffee, I took a walk half way round the large lake, during which I befriended a Kazak couple who wanted to video me (no problem) and discuss English football (a subject on which I am totally ignorant).
We are not returning to Almaty yet because we have another local sight to visit, so we spent the night in the very simple but clean Alban guesthouse in a tiny village called Saty. Ten of us the group plus driver & guide – shared two toilets and two showers. Here the WiFi was so slow it reminded me of the days of dial-up when we watched that blue bar edging barely perceptively to the right.
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