Five Parts From Bishkek to Tashkent

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  Osh, Kyrgyzstan
Friday, December 28, 2007

Part I: The Journey to Osh
Twelve hours of 80s music was enough to make the trip from Bishkek to Osh memorable. Throw in icy passes and wide expanses of white valleys and mountains. Stir the pot with some strange Kyrgyz brothers--Russe, the driver, and Ali...

The trip began in the bazar and Osh, where Russe and Ali agreed to give a student heading home and me a ride. Basically we were paying for their gas and expenses, a fair deal.

Russe was a fan of 80s music and had compiled dozens of cds for the trip, which he had done "about 50 times," back and forth. Mostly we listened to music and watched the landscape go by, hoping we didn't slide off the mountain passes.

Part II: Overnight
We arrived to Osh at about 2 a.m. dropping the student at his home. Russe insisted that I stay with them as it was too late to search for a hotel room in the bitter cold. Soon we were at their house and were joined by a third brother and Uzbek neighbor.

The joking and drinking began: "He has fish eyes," said Russe of his Uzbek friend, drinking a toast, not worrying about the past violence between their two cultures, which has brewed on-and-off in the Osh area since Independence from the USSR. You could blame Russia for imposing nonsensical boundaries that weave to and fro and include doughnut inholdings.

As Osh was remote from the other parts of Kyrgyzstan, the city gets its gas from Uzbekistan, a few kilometers away in the Fergana Valley. But now the gas was cut-off: "they do that sometimes," said Russe.

Soon, the bottles were empty, eyes were bloodshot, and Ali went to the store for more.

Abdul and Solomon's Throne

I went to sleep, sober and exhausted.

Part III: Babur's House, Solomon's Throne, Osh Bazaar
In the morning, I took a taxi with Rafshan, head covered in reverence to Allah, at the wheel to a couple of sights before heading to the border. I thinked Russe, Ali, and everyone before heading around Osh with Rafshan.

First we climbed Solomon's Throne, a Muslim pilgrimage outcrop, for a full view of Osh, the Muslim Cemetary below, and the Fergana Valley in the winter haze horizon. At the top was Babur's own private shelter and mosque as a teenager. Babur then moved to Afghanistan and conquered India, beginning the Mughal Empire.

Using the same logic as the Chinese (who claim anything they once set foot upon as theirs), Kyrgyzstan has plenty of reason to claim Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India as their own.

Pilgrims and children were at the top, saying hello and chatting with me on the way.

Down below, we skated around the black ice of the Osh Bazaar before heading to the border.

Part IV: The Border
When getting my Uzbekistan visa, I was interrogated. They thought I was a journalist. After the US criticized the Uzbek government for atrocities against Muslims in the Fergana Valley, relations have soured, the US "War on Terror" military base was closed, and visa policies tightened. The embassy wanted to know why I wanted to enter via Fergana:

"There's not any choice," aside from getting another Kazakhstan visa to take the quicker road to Tashkent.

This was not unexpected: another traveller told me of troubles and a militsia in Uzbekistan showed him a video clip on his cell phone: a woman getting stoned to death, filmed by his brother with his cell phone.

This was my first experience with the Uzbek apparatchik/militsia, but in the end it would be only one of many.

At the border, Rafshan helped me across, despite getting yelled at by the Uzbek border guards.

Cloth Wishes

Part V: The Road Trip to Tashkent
At the border, a group of friendly Fergana Uzbeks greeted me and soon I was with a family in a shared taxi, heading to the capital, Tashkent. We began the trip with a prayer for a safe journey. These were the people the government was repressing and killing: Islam was something not tolerated by the secular president Karimov, who was "re-elected" overwhelmingly a few days before. 

Quoth Karimov about Islamists: "Such people must be shot in the forehead! If necessary, I'll shoot them myself...!"  Indeed, thousands were killed in the Fergana Valley in 2005 and many are still in prisons.

On the way, we were stopped at about 10 different checkpoints and asked to open the trunk, maybe to check if we were hiding a dead body or nuclear bomb. This was part of the Uzbek version of the "War on Terror."

On the way, we stopped for dinner together--family, driver, and myself.  Late at night we arrived in Tashkent, my month in Uzbekistan just beginning.

Post your own travel photos for friends and family More Pictures

Lloyd and the Osh Gang	Osh Bazaar, part I	Osh Bazaar, part II	Osh Snow
Sledding Partners	Woman at Babur's Monument

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