Days 194 and 195 (Kyrgyzstan): Osh (back in the Fergana Valley)

The days in Osh … what should I say. Again, the two days were largely similar, so I am folding them into one entry again. Osh is in the Fergana Valley. Funny thing that I was here just a few weeks ago – just a couple of hundred kms to the West. And the bazaars of Kokand and Osh being so similar, one could just forget that it is a different city.

The helicopter landing pads are the same in all of Central Asia.

What is different for once is the internet cafe business. This is the only place so far that has put restrictions on the amount of uploads you can do. Which stinks after all the pictures I have been taking on the Pamir Highway. In the end, after scouring the places – one charging triple the price, the other closed, the third one not allowing uploads – I found a cafe that would let me do what I needed to do. Sort of … it was slow on the first day and smoking on the second.

The main attraction of Osh for me was the bazaar. But after having been to so many already they are remarkably similar so I cannot get worked up about them all that much. What is interesting though are the people that stop by here. Again, just as in Kokand there is a great variety of different ethnicities milling about. All a result of this conglomeration of people over the centuries – and artificial lines having been drawn to come to some kind of separation.

One other amazing thing was the food here in Osh. I have eaten Lagman before in Bishkek and it was good. But so was the one that I tried here. And open kitchen to some extent – here is proof. Lagman are noodles with meat and vegetables (and tons of garlic) and some sauce. Yummy, yummy Uygur stuff. Can’t (yet) get enough of it.

Turns out that my keyboard has given up after coming down from the Pamir Highway. It worked perfectly fine still in Sary Tash and now it is not doing much any longer. I will write to the manufacturer and see whether they are willing to send a replacement.

I also decided that I would fly to Bishkek after all. The initial idea had been to drive to Bishkek and fly back, but I don’t feel like being boxed into a car forever (10-12h, depending on the degree of craziness and ability to push fatigue [sadly this is a factor]of your driver). It also reduces the time I cannot work on things if I have to for the visa part.