05/18 – Walnut Forest

More driving today, this time it is a day trip up into the mountains to the village of Arslanbob.  It was a rather long drive through the countryside

with a few waterfalls.

We saw horses along the river,

a number of men on horseback...

driving herds of cows and sheep down the road.

A man with a hat, riding a donkey.

We did a bit of people watching (and photographing) at a few stops along the way. 

The village is in a scenic mountain area and it was market day when we arrived…crowds of people everywhere.  We headed to the local tourist stop where we met Hyatt.  He is a mover and a shaker in the area, working to build a tourism industry. 

We boarded a jeep for a ride further up the hill to the walnut forest.  

This walnut forest is the largest in the world at about 60,000 hectares (~150,000 acres).  It is owned by the government and much of it is fenced into one-hectare plots that are leased for 49 years.  Much of the local economy revolves around the walnut harvests.  Some of the trees are over 500 to 1000 years old depending on the source and supposedly these older trees yield nuts with a superior flavor.  There are so many trees that Kyrgyzstan exports 1,200 tons of the nuts around the world. 

We took a short walk among the trees just to get a feel for the lush, green forest. 

Then we were driven to another area where we had good, panoramic views of the valley and the cliffs and walnut forests beyond.

And the mountains in the area are beautiful.

Lunch was at a local home that is run as a guest house.  It was very good.

After lunch we headed out to see one of the nearby waterfalls.  Apparently, there are two but the larger one is a harder trek so we hit the smaller one, which was still pretty impressive.

We also stopped in to see a walnut oil operation.  Some walnuts are milled/pressed in an antique heavy iron press from China (for their lower grade oil for the locals).

However, they also have a fairly modern cold press that makes a higher quality oil.  This was donated with the understanding that the locals can have low volumes of oil pressed for free (they pay a small fee for larger volumes)...a win-win.

The son of the owner was working on bottling and labeling some of the higher quality oil.

After taking in all of the local tourist sights, we were back on the road back to Jalal Abad.  We had decided to walk to a local restaurant for dinner.  However, as we gathered in the hotel lobby to get ready to go out the skies opened, and it started raining very hard.  So we had dinner at the hotel. 

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More Kyrgyzstan Countryside 
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