Budget Travel Notes » Kyrgyzstan

Osh, Kyrgyzstan

budgettravelnotes — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 05:04:41 +0000

We were lucky to arrive in Osh just after the British Foreign & Commonwealth Office lifted their ‘all but essential travel ban’ to Kyrgyzstan.

We never spent much time here as there was a limited amount for us to do in the city, and we had a rough plan on where we wanted to head in Kyrgyzstan :

The day we arrived we thought we’d treat ourselves to a ‘slap up’ meal after being on the road a few days, so it was off to Rich Man’s for dinner. It was a bizarre experience as we mistakenly ended up in a private room, but there was the fullest menu we had seen so far during our trip. The food was ok and we stuffed ourselves.

In Osh the market is reputed to be the largest in the area outside of Kashkar. Whilst travelling I’m much more of a market person than museums as I think it makes you appreciate the locals and their daily life a lot more. The Osh market covers an area almost 2km long and is generally divided into different sections. The market was great selling everything under the sun. If you arrived here to prepare for a trekking trip you’d be able to pick up many different types of food from here. For some reason, the UK supermarket Morrison’s seemed to dominate as the plastic bag of choice – they were even being sold in batches for $1 on one stall. I can only assume that they have slipped out some factory in China as opposed to Morrison’s having some business tie up in the region!

The fruit and the herbs are always the areas I find most interesting in the markets in this part of the world as there so many items not available back home, and in the supermarkets it always seems overpackaged and marketed, and you’re forced to buy quantities you may not need, which only leads to waste.

The only other sites we visited in Osh were Solomon’s Throne which is an unmissable ridge shaped mountain in the centre of town. The view from above is shown as the top picture of this post. It’s a brief walk (and 3 Som to enter) to get to the top giving you views over the city centre. We could just see the snow peaked mountains in the distance due to the haze.

We spent time nailing down our plans in Kyrgyzstan which ended up being :

Arslanbob, a last minute addition to go to Sarey Chelek, BIshkek to visit a friend, then Cholpon Ata for Lake Issy Kul, Karakol for some trekking and back to Bishkek, maybe stopping on the south shore depending what happened That’s a pretty bog standard trip to Kyrgyzstan but we had discovered that it was not possible to visit Lake Song Kul yet as the mountain pass was still closed in May – we would need to be a month later to access there, especially to see the best of it.

Although we were offered a car organised by Osh Guesthouse for $290 for 5 days to take us to Bishkek, we decided to go it alone to save cash and have the experiences, so it was off to the bus station in the morning which is at the end of the market, near the centre of town.

Osh, Kyrgyzstan is a post from: Budget Travel Notes - Your guide to budget travel hints tips and tricks.

Directions to Osh Guesthouse, Osh, Kyrgyzstan

budgettravelnotes — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 04:27:57 +0000

One thing that seems to get mentioned a lot on the Lonely Planet forums is how hard it is to get to Osh Guesthouse. Now we found it really easy, but then we got picked up from the border

When I imagined Osh after reading the forum entries I imagined it to be one dusty town in the back of beyond – I don’t know why I still thought like that as I’m pretty well travelled, but when I got there I didn’t think it should be so hard to find the place. The one thing that puts people off when hunting it down is that it’s not like your average backpackers and it’s basically an apartment being used as a guesthouse. It could also appear as thought it’s in a run down area, but that’s just because its in an old soviet style apartment block, so here’s the lowdown.

I assume you’re carrying a Lonely Planet Central Asia book or similar (we weren’t). I won’t reproduce the map here for obvious reasons, but basically if you’re on the main road ‘Kyrgyzstan’ then it shouldn’t be too difficult. If you land in town from the border, you’ll probably pass an area on ‘Kyrgyzstan’ that’s got a small square with quite a few people sitting around, or follow round to the general area from the bus station.

You’ll probably have an idea when you’re in the right area on the main road so here’s what you want to look out for :

If you’re heading away from the market, look for a large building with ‘Megacom’ signs on it. This is next to a small lane – you want to go down this small lane. At the end of the lane, turn left, and you’ll see a view like this :

You then want to head over to the right, past the silver shed, and walk up the tree covered lane :

When you get on this lane you take the third door on the left, and walk right up to the top of the stairs. The door is normally left open and you’ll be greeted with the small lettering of Osh Guesthouse as below :

You may not like the look of what you’ve seen here but it is what it is – a budget backpackers guesthouse in Osh. Although it’s not your average western hostel you can get a wealth of information from the owner. You can contact them in advance to get picked up, arrange long distance taxis, or see if he knows of anyone else wanting to follow the same route as yourself. The last bit alone could save you a small fortune if you want to cross over to China and can share the costs with someone.

Of course he’ll hire you cars, drivers and guides for your entire stay if you want. At the time we were there (May 2010) I think a car for 5 days was around $290 to Bishkek (taking in sights on the way), and $500+ for a sightseeing week with packed itinery and guide.

Directions to Osh Guesthouse, Osh, Kyrgyzstan is a post from: Budget Travel Notes - Your guide to budget travel hints tips and tricks.

Kyrgyzstan – Entry through the Osh Border

budgettravelnotes — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 06:53:38 +0000

We crossed the border at Osh into Kyrgyzstan on 18th May, by which point Kyrgyzstan had been taken off the British Foreign Office ‘don’t travel’ list. This wasn’t a huge concern apart from the insurance aspect of it – if something did happen and the insurance had to be used it would effectively invalidate the policy. For situations like this I think the Foreign Office can be a bit heavy handed as I reckon the risks to foreigners were very low and only likely to be a potential issue around Osh, Jalal-Abad and Bishkek anyway.

The border crossing was very straightforward for us – a quick ‘salam ailekum’ to the soldier, shake of his hand and we were through to the checkpoint. For some bizarre reason which I don’t understand we had to swap cars just before this point, even though our driver wasn’t coming through the border with us. We had been in the same car all the way from Tashkent.

Unlike what most people report, our registrations for out nightly accommodation weren’t checked which was a bit of a surprise to us as the border guards had little else to do – the border was still closed to locals apart from exceptional circumstances. After about twenty repeated pronunciations of our names, and finding out that we weren’t married we had passed out of Uzbekistan.

After walking the 50m through no mans land the Kyrgyz border guard had to be shouted over from his game of chess – that’s how busy the crossing was when we were there!

We were met at the other side by Daniar from Osh Guesthouse who took us to his apartment (the guesthouse), which was in a soviet style apartment block.

Kyrgyzstan – Entry through the Osh Border is a post from: Budget Travel Notes - Your guide to budget travel hints tips and tricks.

Tashkent to Osh using Osh Guesthouse

budgettravelnotes — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 06:18:54 +0000

To get us from Tashkent to Osh we hired a car from Osh Guesthouse to take us from Tashkent through Fergana valley. Despite this not being a total budget option, we took it as we still had it in our head that we were pushed for time in Kyrgyzstan as we were aiming for an early June flight from Almaty, Kazakhstan to Olgii, Mongolia. We also wanted to stop off at Margilan overnight so we could see the silk factory in the morning before heading for the border.

In hindsight, this isn’t the best option if you are tight for cash and have the time available, but it is a lot less hassle. Normally this route would probably involve :

Tashkent metro to shared taxi point for Fergana, shared taxi to Fergana, shared taxi to Margilan, shared taxi to border (which may mean going back to Fergana which isn’t far). If you avoided the Margilan bit I think this should cost around $30 each in total if you get lucky with the prices. Our taxi for 2 cost $130, but it was faster and had less sitting around time – it would probably have been the same cost for 4 people though.

The major downside about this trip for us though is that we expected to get some help getting accommodation and it didn’t quite materialise. We spent about an hour circling Margilan trying to find the silk factory and unfortunately the silk factory owners weren’t letting us stay in their homestay that night due to some issues with the toilet or something. The driver got some information about another hostel from a very helpful guide at the factory and he told us it was about $25 a room and central so we could walk to the bazaar and get some food. After asking directions several times, the driver ended up taking us to some hotel in a housing scheme on the outskirts of Margilan where we couldn’t eat, and were too far out to walk to any other places, even thought we think the hotel should only have been minutes away. After some confusion we said we wanted to be closer to the centre, spoke to some owner on the phone, the price was misunderstood, and we got dropped in the fairly central ‘Hotel Aslan’ which ended up costing us a whopping $50 per night! By this point we had been circling Margilan for around 3 hours and we hadn’t done anything so we weren’t really in the mood to try and discuss any alternatives as the driver spoke no English, and us no Russian. We don’t know where the driver stayed that night but we’re convinced his car never moved, and convinced he never paid $50 a night…..but maybe we’re just being paranoid.

In the hotel we were told there was a restaurant, but it ended up only being used for breakfast, and we were walked 50 yards along the road to the manager’s restaurant and ate there. He has said a meal was 8000 each, yet the menu price which we paid directly was about half of that. When we checked out and tried to pay in dollars (as the room rate was displayed in dollars) he tried to use an inflated exchange rate (it was even inflated at black market rates!) so we had to punch another exchange rate into his calculator and offered that instead. On the plus side, the room was massive, but the TV never offered any foreign channels so it really wasn’t worth it for us – a $6 a night room would have been fine.

We visited the silk factory (see other post) in the morning and crossed the border into Kyrgyzstan soon after.

All in all, it was a very easy taxi ride for us between Tashkent and Osh, and it got us our night in Margilan and to see the silk factory. The major downside for us is the way the accommodation worked out which is partially due to us not just booking somewhere ourselves, and because the homestay wasn’t available which Osh Guesthouse did try to give the driver details of. In hindsight it would have been better just to stay in Fergana for the night (despite it pretty much being the anniversary of the Andijon massacre, which is when there can be occasional incidents).

Tashkent to Osh using Osh Guesthouse is a post from: Budget Travel Notes - Your guide to budget travel hints tips and tricks.