Osh

Apparently, while doing vodka shots for an hour and a half with Uruzbaev (the former KGB colonel), I had made such a good impression that he decided to offer me a “free” trip to Osh, to see one of the other airports in the system, and get a better idea of the assets and infrastructure of Kyrgyz Air.

Thus commenced my MOST frightening commercial (if you can call it that) air travel experience I have ever had. The flight to Osh travels over a pass in the Tien Shan mountains at about 16,000 feet. However, the aircraft the flew the route, at least the day I took it, was not pressurized. The pilot and co-pilot wore oxygen masks (THANK GOD) but we passengers just sat in the back as we climbed over the pass. The turbulence was incredible up in the passes, and we bounced within feet of rocks and the sides of mountains. I also developed a splitting headache as a result of the rapid change of altitude (I was told that’s why they stuck so close to the pass and didn’t fly higher to avoid turbulence). When I arrived I didn’t even ASK how long it took to drive back, but arranged to have my driver (Turbek – also former KGB) sent down from Bishkek to pick me up. Turned out it was a relatively short drive – 6 hours or so.

Osh is an incredibly interesting place, very close to the border of Uzbeckistan, and very Central Asian feeling (unlike Bishkek, where there were just as many Russians as Kyrgyz). The market there was loud and colorful, with dozens of women selling homemade sour cream that they would ladle over and over again – it was perfectly acceptable to run your finger quickly through a stream of sour cream as they ladled to taste it and decide if you wanted to buy a jar. Butchers sold meat from tables buzzing with flies, and you could tell what it was by the head of the slaughtered animal, which they hung over the table as a kind of ignpost. A group of men and boys slaughtered a sheep by the side of the road, cutting its throat and letting it bleed out into the gutter.

Outside of Osh, there's a rocky mountainside that people hike up to the top of. I think because of the language barrier, I never really got specifically what the attraction was (since Central Asians aren't big hikers just for the sake of the great outdoors). At the top was a section of rock worn smooth as a playground slide - which of course we all promptly slid down. It was only later that our driver managed to communicate to us that the point of that was to increase fertility! Yikes!

The hospitality we received in Osh was incredible. Our local office manager, a man who had built his own home for himself, his wife, and three children, invited us to dinner. Because one of the girls traveling with us was a vegetarian, they had slaughtered three chickens for the dinner (the concept of pure vegetarianism is difficult for them to grasp). She ate the chicken, to be polite. His wife cooked chicken “plof” – essentially pilaf, with rice, and onions, and tomatoes – in a huge pot over an open fire, and we sat on a wooden platform with backs on three sides, cross legged, with the food in the center in front of us. Neither his wife nore his children joined us at the table. It was a relatively cool evening (Osh is at the foothills of the mountains) and I was a bit cool. Our office manager offered me a sweater to wear, which I took gratefully - he then told me his wife made it from the wool of their black sheep, and I complimented her on how pretty it was. When we went to leave at the end of the evening, they kept insisting I keep the sweater - I practically had to throw it out the window of the car. They had so little, but were willing to share everything they had. Really wonderful folks.