A Silk Road Adventure: Jalal-abad

After four nights and three days resting and recuperating in Osh (after arriving in the city on a cramped four-hour taxi ride I could barely straighten my knee and was seriously wondering if I would need medical attention), I decided to get things moving again and head to Jalal-Abad with a stop in Ozgen.

Although in Soviet times you could go straight across the valley from Osh to Jalal-Abad, the direct route now involves crossing into Uzbekistan before returning to Kyrgyzstan, so everyone now takes the route that skirts Uzbekistan and goes through Ozgon.

In CIS countries, the marshrutka ("fixed route") is a staple of public transport. In Central Asia they're basically old Mercedes minibuses that have maybe 15 seats that travel a fixed route and pick up and drop off people along the way. Inside cities they can be jammed with people standing anywhere they can, while on inter-city routes they leave when all seats are occupied (though they may pick up standing-room passengers between cities) and not before. Prices are also fixed, and foreigners don't generally need to haggle. Share taxis between cities operate on the same leave-when-full principle, though haggling for prices in these sedans and minivans is essential (not least because many of them are simply private citizens or families making a trip somewhere and hoping to defray fuel costs). An added complexity is that on fares often changes depending on whether there is more demand in one direction than the other and whether there is increased seasonal demand. Perhaps the most difficult thing for travelers is that the places where share taxis congregate and leave depends on where they're going, and can change quite rapidly in ways that guidebooks can't keep up with.

Anyway, the trip to Ozgon was my first experience with marshrutkas, and it was actually quite easy since it left from the central lot near the bazaar, was clearly signed to Jalal-Abad, and only involved a 20-minute wait until it was full. Were that it was always so easy.

Ozgon

Ozgon gets a surprisingly tepid write-up in Lonely Planet, which usually turns on the hype over every little thing that could even possibly be described as an attraction. There isn't a lot to see, with the only real attraction other than its bazaar being an Karakhanid-era complex containing an 11th century minaret and a 12-century tripartite mausoleum.

Despite being relatively modest in comparison to other Central-Asian sites, in the Kyrgyzstani context they must be some of the most important cultural artefacts that remain in the country, and they remain impressive in my mind for their warm, red, monochrome design and the sympathetic restoration they're been subject too. These aren't the over-the-top reconstructions you see in China or Uzbekistan, but a fairly straightforward mix of modern and surviving brickwork.