The Fergana Valley & Osh:
From Tashkent we drove to the Fergana Valley by way of Kokand. This was the seat of the third Khanate in the 19th C and was a major crossroad on the Silk Road. Not far from Kokand lies Margilan, where there is still a silk production factory. As we were driving a few days before their Independence Day (from Soviet Russia), security was extremely tight. It seemed that there was at least one guard-post every thirty kilometers and sometimes much more than that. Security appears to be a major concern as even on regular days there are checkpoints at each major city and on the main thoroughfares between them. There are even guards by the entrance to the subways in Tashkent. These poor young men are condemned to spend 12 hours a day, 7 days a week for a couple of months asking people to open up their bags so that they could be checked. There is one guard per entrance and he stands on the steps in the heat as well as in freezing rain. It’s not a fun job. We were told the intense security is because of drug traffickers as well as to control any possible radical Islamic activists, of which there seem to be increasing numbers throughout Central Asia.
We made a fairly short stop in Kokand to see the recently renovated fortress/ark of the Kokand Khanate. Most of the building was destroyed by the Soviets and only the front part of the complex has been rebuilt. The harem doesn’t exist any more. Originally there were 114 rooms in the ark, one for each of the Suras in the Qu’ran. The façade of what was the third gate, now the only gate, and its four towers are decorated with patterns from across Uzbekistan. The intent was to demonstrate control over the entire territory, not just that of the Kokand region. The Kokand Khanate was known for its emphasis on literature and the arts, but also for continually trying to expand its borders, which led to trouble in both Osh and Bishkek, which are now part of Kyrgyzstan, and with Khojand, which is now part of Tajikistan. In Osh, the rebels asked Tsarist Russia for help against the Khan, which they got, but they ended up trading the Uzbek Khan for Tsarist, then Soviet, Russian overlords. As old wounds do not heal quickly in this region, the current tensions between the Kyrgyzs and the Uzbeks goes back at least until the Kokand Khanate. There was a list of the late 18th - 19th C Khans in one of the museum rooms; it listed 24 separate reigns from 19 different Khans, a couple were kicked out and then made it back into power. The last one was in and out three times. His descendants now live in Tashkent and are said to be a well-off with a manufacturing company.
It was good to see the site of the third of the Khanates to complete the picture we’d received from the other two, but the ark didn’t have anything inspirational about it and the museum was more or less a collection of common local artifacts that were used during the Khanate, it held nothing of particular artistic excellence.
Outside, however, in the park leading up to the gate, there were some interesting scenes. The first was a group of women with black plastic buckets, which would hold about a gallon and a half. They would go to the fountain in unison, fill up their buckets, walk to a spot on the edge of the cement pathway, throw the bucket’s water on the lawn and then go back and repeat the process. This was how they were watering the lawn, which covered an area of about 4 acres. At first I thought they were joking, but no, this was their job!
The second was a scene on one of the park benches where a young man gave his girlfriend a huge – almost as large as she was – white and pink teddy bear. We saw these bears in Turkmenistan, as well as in other Uzbek cities, and had been told about the custom, but it was fun to actually see it. As Ramadan ended in August this year, it is the season for weddings. I think we have seen at least one wedding every day we have been in Central Asia, and here was no different. The streets are lined with bridal gowns on display that get filthy from the dust and grime of the streets. It seems unlikely that all these shops can survive financially, there simply cannot be that many young people tying the knot, but who knows.
From Kokand we drove on to Fergana, stopping at increasingly more check-points, where we spent the night in a wonderful luxurious hotel. The Asia Hotel had a nice outdoor pool, beautiful garden with red canna lilies, yellow marigolds and multi-colored roses. And naturally, it was set up for a wedding party. The bride and groom were in the lobby when we arrived having their pictures taken. This couple looked happy, not like the poor girl in Osh the next day. She looked like her life had been taken from her.
The next morning we drove to the border, now through check-points with black ski masked soldiers with big rifles, which is a pretty terrifying sight. We continually had to show our passports and they ordered Paul and me out of the car to “be registered.” In other words, they hand wrote our names, visa and passport numbers on a ledger before we could go on to have this repeated again, before we finally came to a stop about 3-5 km in front of the actual border. We were told that our car wasn’t allowed to go any further and that we’d need to switch over to an authorized taxi that was run by some of the locals from the area. The taxi came, we switched our luggage into the other car and said good-bye to the two people who had been our constant companions and had become good friends, Kamola and Kahramon. Kahramon is a born professor, he loves to share his understanding of his country’s history and art. Kamola is among the most genuine and generous people I have met. We found a common interest in the meanings behind the symbols on the decorations of the mosque and minaret facades, and she translated large sections of a book for me that is only in Uzbek. Among the best things about traveling is meeting new people, and I am very glad we got to know this delightful couple.
I also felt really sorry for them as they had to drive all the way back through the check-points and the traffic jams into Tashkent in order to meet another client, a young student from Japan, who apparently didn’t get all the paperwork he needed from some of the places he stayed on his own. This can easily happen when travelling in countries where one doesn’t know the rules. I would never have thought to get documentation from each of the hotels we stayed in, to prove that we stayed there, had Kahramon not repeatedly checked to make sure we had them. The Japanese fellow wasn’t allowed to stay at the hotel he’d booked, as he couldn’t prove where he had been the night before and the hotel didn’t want to get in trouble with the police for aiding someone whose path couldn’t be followed. Kahramon, now had to get a fax from the previous night’s hotel and get it to the new hotel before the student would be able to get some sleep and then they had to drive all the way back to Samarkand where they live, so that Kamola, who is a school teacher could start work the next day.
When travelling through the country, Uzbekistan does not seem like a totalitarian regime and appears to have a patina of a democracy, but “for security reasons” it is still run like a police state. They even ask how much money you are bringing into the country, in which currencies, and if they find that you leave with more money than you came in with and cannot document that it came from your bank/credit card, then the border guards can confiscate whatever is beyond what you put on the entrance documents. Luckily, Kahramon had warned us about all this, so we were able to leave the country without any problems.
The border between Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan at Osh is heavily controlled on the Uzbek side as it was the site where in 2010 the Uzbeks who lived in Kyrgyzstan were being persecuted and killed by the Kyrgyz finally fled into Uzbekistan. Over a 1,000 people were killed in Osh within just one week’s worth of ethnic rivalry. While the Uzbeks were very concerned with security, crossing the minimal no-man’s land and getting into Kyrgyzstan was a breeze. The guard just looked at our passports, scanned them on his machine, the way they do at any U.S. entry point, stamped them and off we went to meet our driver and Jamila, who was going to show us around the city that afternoon.
I had planned the trip especially to see Suleyman Too, Solomon’s Throne, as it is a pilgrimage site for many Central Asian Muslims and I wanted to see what was so special about it. Solomon’s Throne is a mountain (well, more a jagged hill) in the center of the city. It is named after King Solomon and at least one legend says that he stopped here, it goes on to say that it is now a pilgrimage site as Mohammad came to here to see where Solomon had been and he prayed in one of the caves on the side of the mountain. He was followed by Babur, who was born near Kokand. Babur had wanted to make himself the ruler of the region, but he just couldn’t manage to do it. Disappointed, he came here to meditate and think about what he wanted to do with his life. (He was about 15-16 when this was happening.) From a look out spot that now has a small room, which has become a pilgrimage destination site, he planned his march into India, which would lead to the Mughal Dynasty that ruled much of the subcontinent from the early 16th – 19th C. when the British took over. So why did they – even in legend – come here? Probably because it is the most unique mountain in the region. It sticks out from the valley floor as a long, but singular mountain, and it has lots of very large caves where people have lived since Neolithic times. A few petroglyphs were supposedly found on the site, although, now anything that was there has been entirely defaced with all the graffiti of people’s names from the Soviet period on. Considerably more petroglyphs are found about an hour outside of town, but we didn’t get to see them. Paul & I did go looking for whatever we could find up on the “throne,” however, leaving poor Jamila behind as she said it was too dangerous to hike up the hill. It was clear she was a city girl and not used to going uphill. This was a mini-hike by any normal standards. We didn’t find any human art, but we did see beauty. The view from the top is wonderful; the mountain looks directly over the valley in a 360 degree direction, and pointing almost due east is a bowl created by two ridges that forms the path for the Silk Road. Perhaps this is why it is considered a sacred mountain, one can see what seems to be all of creation from on top.
At the foot of the mountain is the history museum, which was only slightly better than the ethnographic museum in a cave on the mountain. I did include a couple of pictures from the models in the latter in the gallery, though, as I enjoyed the guide there. From the museums we went through the fun park and saw a few more wedding parties including the one I referenced earlier. The wedding group consisted of about 15-18 people, not like the 1,000s we’d heard about in UZ, and the young men were trying to outshine each other on the dance floor, which was just a paved section of the park. The women stood around and watched as did the bride and groom. She looked absolutely miserable. I waited to see if I could get a picture of her smiling and the shot in the gallery is as close as I could come. Jamila explained that most girls get married before they are 22, and they are almost always arranged marriages.
The next stop was to a 17th C Mosque by the mountain, but as we got there during Namaz/prayer time, we couldn’t go in. Jamila would never be allowed in, but as I am a foreigner, other than at prayer time, would be. The Tajik rule of “men pray in the mosque and women at home” appears true for Kyrgyzstan as well.
Our final event in Osh was a walk through Central Asia’s largest outdoor bazaar. There is one very long thin section for clothes and traditional Kyrgyz items, including hats, felt shoes, pillows, blankets etc, followed by a section that is probably three times as long of Chinese made knick-knacks, clothes, backpacks etc., and then the seemingly endless street of food products. I put some of the pictures from this very colorful market in the gallery, but unfortunately couldn’t put the noise of the cars, people bargaining, throwing trash around and moving crates in there as well.
Throwing trash… Paul bought a couple of peaches from one of the vendors and as he had finished his bottle of water asked whether he could give her the bottle to throw away with the rest of her garbage. She took the bottle with a smile and promptly threw it over her shoulder into a little ditch. I guess there’s no recycling here…..
I hope you enjoy the pictures.
In the morning we caught an early flight to Bishkek, the capital city.
