Cold storage in Arslanbob

It's amazing how much more inviting places ending in "bob" sound than those ending in "bad." For example, it almost seems by design that Pakistan named its capital in such a way that makes it sound foreboding and breaks down into "Islam-a-bad." What if it were transliterated as "Islamabob?" Doesn't that sound more amicable? Or better still, "Islamaawesome" or "Islamalanewlexus" or "Islamapillowmint" or "Islamabuyonegetonefree"... All friendlier-sounding transliterations and less like teenage posturing.

That said, from Osh, I traveled north to the village of Arslanbob, which is a bit like Kyrgyzstan's answer to Sesame Street. It's a simple, quaint ethnic Uzbek village located in the valley beneath towering mountain peaks from which flow numerous streams, waterfalls and bubbling springs. According to the local Community Based Tourism (CBT) Director, Ibrahim, the village was founded in 677 AD. There, I spent four nights at the home a local family (who shall remain nameless), who were invariably warm and hospitable to me, and who in the end, gave me a nasty spell of food poisoning. Their house was comfortable enough, if not subfreezing at night. The cold I resisted with a selections from their store of extremely heavy quilts (probably about 20 kg apiece; presumably cotton-stuffed).

That aside, Arlsanbob is an idyllic location. There are ample places for hiking and trekking, two pristine lakes, a sprawling walnut forest, mountains, waterfalls, and skiing during the winter. The locals are friendly, accustomed to foreigners, and unlikely give you "stink-eye" as one Peace Core worker described the suspicious askance to which locals of this region are prone. Like children in remote areas everywhere, the kids in Arslanbob love to have their pictures taken, and groups of kids leaving school often stop tourists to request pictures. Because it has been part of CBT for seven years, there is also a fair bit of English spoken around Arslanbob, and the thirteen year-old daughter of my host family spoke reasonably good English. On giving me a tour of their small farm, she pointed to a flock of geese, and for her upcoming fourteenth birthday, her father would slaughter the fattest one, she said, as she sliced the air with a stiffened hand.

Leaving Arslanbob and in a bit of a hurry to return to Bishkek, I shared a taxi with an Israeli couple who took three hours to collect their bags and negotiate a price for their taxi. "We have a lot of problems with tourists from Israel," Ibrahim apologized. But by this time, I was too distracted to care what the Israelis were doing as I slipped into a feverish nausea, which made an agony of the first 4 hours of our 10 hour trip and caused me to purge myself of yesterday's laghman while the others had dinner.

On arrival in Bishkek at 3 AM, the guesthouse attendant met us at the door, and said that there were two beds available in the house and some others in the much colder yurt. Knowing I was quite ill, "Sorry!" the Israeli woman snapped, claiming the beds for herself. But this claim was quickly rejected by the guesthouse owner as she remembered that rooms were freshly painted.