05/16 – Silk Factory and Kyrgyzstan

Our first stop this morning was a silk factory in Ost.  

We met a little silkworm…

and the ladies that boil the little silkworms in their cocoons and extract and spin the silk threads.

We also saw a demonstration on how they bind portions of skeins of silk to create the patterns on the ikat that they make.  Ikat is a pattern of fabric with the threads dyed in a pattern rather than stamped on the fabric or woven into the fabric.  The process itself is pretty straight forward but figuring out what to tape in order to get the desired pattern looked pretty complicated.

We also saw the weaving room. 

And of course, they had a great showroom so there was some window shopping and buying.

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More Silk Factory
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Then we hit the road for a couple of hours for the border and Kyrgyzstan.  Departing Uzbekistan was a bit complicated.  Tara particularly seemed suspicious to the Uzbek border guards and it took her a while to get through.  Once through there we headed over to the Kyrgyzstan border.  No problems there.  In fact, we all dutifully got into the passport control line.  Almost immediately one of the border patrol agents yelled out something to the people standing in line and the next thing we knew we were being ushered to front of the line.  We were out in less than 10 minutes.  Maybe they wanted to get us through so we could start spending our tourist dollars.

The city of Ost is right on the border and is second largest in Kyrgyzstan.  We had lunch and then went to our first site, the Sulayman National Historical and Archaeological Museum.  Our local guide seemed to want to show us evvvvvverryything and tells us all there is to know about the items.  It was a bit slow going through the museum, but it was interesting.

There was also a three-tiered yurt (a tent used in Central Asia) in the park outside the museum. 

Then it was on to the Sulyman-Too Cave Museum.  For more information and explanations.

Then the group headed up Sulyman-Too Mountain... 

to the top for views of the city.

There was a cemetery along the way

and petroglyphs.

Some of the group hiked down the trail.

A Rock Slide

And we saw a building called Babur’s House.  Babur was from the area but went on to conquer India and was the founder of the Indian Mughal dynasty.

We have visited three of the Stans on this trip - Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan.  And we have discovered that bread plays a huge part in their lives.  

Every lunch or dinner they bring us 2 or 3 or 4 large loaves for the table for our little group of 6 plus guide and driver.  We have managed to start getting them down to 1 or 2...as we are now a group of only 4, as two of our group are not going to Kyrgyzstan.

Our guide said that often for lunch they will just get a beverage and a loaf of bread and be quite happy.  

And the bread is always very good and very fresh 

Some other sites in Ost.