Holiday in Central Asia (15) Istaravshan in Tajikistan
September 17th, 2022 by Roger Darlington
It was another day (Day 14) in Tajikistan and consisted of a long road journey south-west to Iskander-Kul with a major stop at Istaravshan. In fact, our first (short) stop was to view cotton-picking in roadside fields – a really tough occupation carried out by women and supervised by a man.
At Istaravshan, we started with a quick viewing of a structure called Mug Teppe. This blue-domed gateway was constructed in 2002 (and then extended in 2019) to mark the 2,500th anniversary of the founding of the city. Next we looked at a mosque complex with a minaret built in 1999. At this point, our guide Shahbaz added something to the programme: a demonstration of the making of wooden combs by the master Sadiq.
Still in Istaravshan, it was time for lunch and this was in a self-service establishment called “Faroyon”. For the first time on our trip, we were able to choose both what we wanted to eat and how much of it we wanted. I even managed to find a little baklava for dessert. Before leaving town, we had a look at a block of workshops opposite the main bazaar which is dubbed Blacksmiths Arcade because here local artisans with their own forges craft everything from nails to knives.
At this stage, we headed off for a tunnel through rock built by the Chinese called Shahriston Tunnel. Located at an elevation of around 2,600 metres (about 8,500 feet), it is 5.2 kms (over 3 miles) long and poorly lit but it does the job. Once out in daylight again, the road plunges downwards in a series of tight twists and turns overlooking precipitous drops. In 45 minutes, we descended almost 1,300 metres (about 4,300 feet) to the Zerafshan River. Anyone would find this an awesome experience and, sitting in the ‘drop’ side of our vehicle, I certainly found it exhilarating.
With comfort stops and a final three quarters of an hour along the kind of rough-roading that we experienced in Kyrgyzstan, we finally reached Iskander-Kul (Alexander Lake). We had left Khojand at 8.30 am and reached Iskander-Kul at 5 pm, so it was a journey of around 200 kms (about 120 miles) that took us eight and half hours, but we had spent around four hours in Istaravshan and had a number of comfort and photo stops.
Even before entering our accommodation, Shahbaz offered us a walk to a waterfall. Of the eight members of the group, only four decided to set off and a mere two actually made it – ironically the two oldest members of the group: me (74) and Philip (77).
The chalet-like accommodation was clean and comfortable but very basic – with no WiFi! Dinner was served on-site in what looked like a large empty greenhouse.
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Holiday in Central Asia (14): Khojand in Tajikistan
September 15th, 2022 by Roger Darlington
Another day – Day 13 and the half way point in the trip – and another country – Tajikistan which on its eastern side borders China, Pakistan and Afghanistan.
So we took our large coach from Tashkent to a border crossing with Tajikistan some 90 km south – a journey of about two hours – where we said goodbye to our guide Timur (we will see him again in Samarkand). Like the border crossing into Uzbekistan, the crossing into Tajikistan involved lots of walking, lots of dragging of suitcases, and repeated examination of passports (and, in this case, visas).
About three quarters of an hour later, we met our guide for Tajikistan Shahbaz and were ushered into two small minibuses. The journey further south to Khojand took an hour and, once at the Khojand Deluxe Hotel, we were given all of 15 minutes to find our rooms and return to reception for the short ride to our lunch venue: a restaurant called “Zaytun”.
Khojand was called Leninabad during the Soviet era. It is the second-largest city in the country and one of the oldest cities in Central Asia, dating back about 2,500 years and a major city along the ancient Silk Road.
Our afternoon tour of the city involved visits to the Historical Museum of Sughd Province (fascinating review of local history), the Sheikh Massal ad-Din complex (a former mosque, a current mosque and a mausoleum), the Panchshanbe Bazaar (reputedly the largest in Central Asia), Victory Park ( the site of the relocated 22 metre statue of Lenin), and – after a slow cable car ride across the Syr-Darya river – a memorial to regional hero Ismail Samani which stands where the Lenin statue used to be.
An early dinner was held sitting outside the city restaurant “Adibon” where, instead of yer another version of plov, Shahbaz ordered for us chicken, lamb & beef kebabs which were delicious.
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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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