Holiday in Central Asia (11): Bishkek to Osh to Fergana 

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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