Arslanbob, capital of walnuts... and tapshans ! Thanks to Hayat, the friendly local coordinator of CBT (Community Based Tourism) for his help.
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| Hayat (à droite) en compagnie de jeunes touristes dans la chaïkhana Soy Buyi. |
Just emerging from the car, a man indicates me the location of the CBT office. Community Based Tourism is a concept which promotes a responsible tourism according to four principles : stay in local homes, have a glimpse into traditional life, management and benefits remain with the community, respect for the environment. This kind of tourism is very developed in Kyrgyzstan. CBT Arslanbob organizes the accommodation in private homes, sets up personalised nature activities and proposes addresses for guides and drivers. Its overarching aim is to participate in "The spiritual enrichment of each" as it is written in the brochure. The man takes me with him in a chaykhana where are three members of the organization with four young tourists. I join the group on a tapshan and lunch with them of laghmans, a spicy noodles dish with mutton. Hayat, the CBT coordinator, seems to know a thing or two about the tapschans from here, which he calls "suri". He proposes to accompany me in my visits. He is native of the area and respected by everybody. Doors will open easely.
- Arslanbob is the capital of walnuts, he begins.
The Lonely Planet confirms. The 11000-hectare plantation is in a 60000-hectare walnut forest between Ferghana and Chatkal massifs.
- It is the oldest and the vastest walnut forest in the world. Trees are protected. It is formally forbidden to cut them.
- Thus, no walnut wood for tapschan manufacturing ?
- Craftsmen take trees cutted before the ban.
- People who live here do not look like Kyrgyz.
- No. We are all Uzbeks.
Some people will tell me later that Arslanbob population is from Macedonia, came in the reign of Alexandre. These Macedonians would have got married to Gypsies and it would be their ancestors who live today in Arslanbob. The proof ? The walnuts which constitute the richness of Arslanbob come from the Balkan Peninsula. But another legend says exactly the opposite : Alexandre soldiers would have brought walnuts in their kits and would have introduced the walnut tree in Europe.
- Arslanbob is the capital of walnuts, he begins.
The Lonely Planet confirms. The 11000-hectare plantation is in a 60000-hectare walnut forest between Ferghana and Chatkal massifs.
- It is the oldest and the vastest walnut forest in the world. Trees are protected. It is formally forbidden to cut them.
- Thus, no walnut wood for tapschan manufacturing ?
- Craftsmen take trees cutted before the ban.
- People who live here do not look like Kyrgyz.
- No. We are all Uzbeks.
Some people will tell me later that Arslanbob population is from Macedonia, came in the reign of Alexandre. These Macedonians would have got married to Gypsies and it would be their ancestors who live today in Arslanbob. The proof ? The walnuts which constitute the richness of Arslanbob come from the Balkan Peninsula. But another legend says exactly the opposite : Alexandre soldiers would have brought walnuts in their kits and would have introduced the walnut tree in Europe.
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| Le déjeuner des "Barbes blanches" dans la chaïkhana Soy Buyi (le lond de la rivière) à Arslanbob. |
Arslanbob is a village of clean stoned streets climbing to the hill. Mountains with snowy summits make it a beautiful backdrop. Streams are singing between the houses. Many trees, poplars, apple trees, plum trees and, naturally, walnuts trees. The male passers-by greet me with a chin movement, sometimes with a sober "Salam aleykoum", the children hum "Hello !" and the women do not look away. Along a stream bed, carcasses of stranded cars are rusting. The village smells donkey dung. In its upper part, a holiday centre seems abandoned. Yet, everything is there. Swimming pool, restaurants, playgrounds for kids, sports fields, wooden bungalows, small shops, a bakery with its bread ovens and even a dance floor. But everything is empty and releases a melancholic atmosphere. "Welcome to Turbaza Arslanbob !" is written in Russian at the entrance. There are tapschans everywhere, a whole garden of deserted tapshans. Not ruined however. I look through the window of a small house in a better state than the others. Documents on a desk, eyeglasses, a pen, accounting books on a shelf, a Kyrgyz hat, a strong-box, a clock stopped as the time in this park. Maybe the director continues to come every day in his office, just like that, as if the park was still filled with the children's laughter and the music from chaykhanas, and as if the air was scented by chachliks and marshmallow. Later, I meet an old man riding on a donkey. He looks like the statue of Nasreddine Khodja in Bukhara. He tells me that all of this around belong to him and that he is executing a surveillance tour.
I try: - Nie rabota ?
- Da, rabota ! Cegodnia zakriti. Kanikoul rabota.
In spite of appearances, the holiday center is still in activity, but only during summer holidays. I also smile inside in hearing the Russian word "kanikoul" (каникул) which means summer holidays in Russian, which is closer to its etymology than the french word "canicule" (heatwave). Canicula means "little dog" in Latin, other name of Sirius star, and relates originally an annual period from July 24th till August 24th during which this star sets and rises up at the same time as the Sun. I show a structure with strange shapes, cob walls and rusted metal roof, which is reachable by using a long stairway made with large badly adjusted stones.
- Disco-bar Babur, answers the man.
That sounds rather surrealist in the mouth of that man who seems coming from the time of Marco Polo and the Hashashines. Hayat will tell me later that this man is not named Nasreddine because he is Tirkash, nicknamed "Apache". The Babur club is on a height. Cigarette butts strewing the ground give reason to the man on his donkey about site activity. I imagine the partiers staggering when coming out the small night club and being about to roll down the stairs. More than one must break his bones here. I would like to come back during the season. Hayat will tell me also that the center was created by the Soviets ; he will confirm that the disco is always crowed with Russians in summer. The local girls do not set foot there but the boys of the village are waiting the whole year that the summer comes back.
I try: - Nie rabota ?
- Da, rabota ! Cegodnia zakriti. Kanikoul rabota.
In spite of appearances, the holiday center is still in activity, but only during summer holidays. I also smile inside in hearing the Russian word "kanikoul" (каникул) which means summer holidays in Russian, which is closer to its etymology than the french word "canicule" (heatwave). Canicula means "little dog" in Latin, other name of Sirius star, and relates originally an annual period from July 24th till August 24th during which this star sets and rises up at the same time as the Sun. I show a structure with strange shapes, cob walls and rusted metal roof, which is reachable by using a long stairway made with large badly adjusted stones.
- Disco-bar Babur, answers the man.
That sounds rather surrealist in the mouth of that man who seems coming from the time of Marco Polo and the Hashashines. Hayat will tell me later that this man is not named Nasreddine because he is Tirkash, nicknamed "Apache". The Babur club is on a height. Cigarette butts strewing the ground give reason to the man on his donkey about site activity. I imagine the partiers staggering when coming out the small night club and being about to roll down the stairs. More than one must break his bones here. I would like to come back during the season. Hayat will tell me also that the center was created by the Soviets ; he will confirm that the disco is always crowed with Russians in summer. The local girls do not set foot there but the boys of the village are waiting the whole year that the summer comes back.
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| Le gardien du centre de vacances Turbaza. |
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| Tapchane dans le parc de vacances Turbaza déserté. |
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| Tapchanes dans le parc de vacances Turbaza déserté. |
I follow a steep-sided path which leads at a place called Little-Waterfall. Near the waterfall, about ten old Uzbek women are sitting around a tablecloth on which are arranged various foods. Chicken, bread and a kind of polenta. When they see me, they wave at me for coming and sharing their meal. I am hesitant with the sticky polenta into which they plunge hands. After a few minutes, after they had fun with my presence and after I am getting ready to leave, they invite me to make "omin" (hand gesture to thank God) three times with them. By coming back down to the village, I approach a house. A man comes to meet me, a baby in his arms. He authorizes me to takes pictures and offers me to share tea and bread. Then, a woman offers me walnuts. In the village centre are a few stores and some chaykhanas. Nights are cold. It is difficult to get warm under my quilt stuffed with cotton. The rise is icy and for the toileting, it is only a hut with cold water at the back of the garden.
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| Abri de jardin dans une maison sur les hauteurs d'Arslanbob. |
Tapshan day with Hayat. Worthwhile day because, besides a consequent wealth of photos, we are invited at each step to share a snack. I note that there are many houses under construction.
- Many people went to work in Russia. This enable them to build beautiful houses where they will live after their return. If they come back one day.
To build traditional houses, it is still used adobe which offers impressive heat insulation characteristics and is economical. Walls have a frame of timbers where the spaces are filled with rammed earth. Often, the earth is plastered with mortar. The richest houses are stone-built with a standard architecture. They all have a big garden where is a bread oven and everything for cooking. A beautiful sculptured wooden tapshan in the venranda and sometimes an other one in the garden for the wealthiests, a simple metal tapshan for the others. Many tapschans are equipped with a canopy to protect them from the rain or from the sun. On my first visit, I see some black rough bricks under a rustic tapshan.
- We cannot use the walnut wood for heating in winter, explains Hayat. Then we make these bricks by mixing coal dust and dung. You put a brick in the "sandal" (Uzbek stove) and it makes an efficient heating.
We meet the handyman of the municipality, at the same time taxi driver, roadman and tapshan manufacturer. Ghulam Hadj has a lot of work because Arslanbob is a town of 13000 souls. He is also beekeeper like almost everybody here. On the edge of the road, women are watching over pyramids of jars filled with golden honey.
- In this village, says Ghulam Hadj, people have always lived modestly. During USSR era, we all had work at the kolkhoz or the leskhoz (State forestry). Now, you have to manage with your own means, it is more difficult. We plant gardens, cultivate fields, raise animals. It is a lot of work but we eat plov and we drink green tea. That gives us energy.
- People want to stay in the village, continues Hayat. Even young people wish to marry and to work here.
Near the mosque, we meet Mulla (the Mullah ?) who participated in his construction. The tapshan with its impressive roof does not go unnoticed.
- What a sumptuous tapschan ! I exclaim.
- This one is an aïwane, corrects Hayat.
I should have remembered the definition given by the cabinetmaker in Dushanbe. We visit several houses and the welcome is always warm. Soy Buyi Chaykhana, next to the river, is almost like the Tapshan House. There are different models with different sizes because it is necessary to adapt to receptions with numbers of guests. We end with Maksum house. The tapshan is curiously crafted, different to that I saw before.
- I carved it by myself, says Maksum.
- The shape is unusual. What kind of style is it ?
- A little bit Kazakh. But it is mainly of my imagination.
The man is retired Red Army officer in Kazakhstan, in Russia and in Caucasus. After the Independence, he has worked in Moscow, like his son now. That enabled him to build this big house. But this big house is empty and nobody is there to enjoy of it, except him. He asks me to say something in French because he loves the sound of the language. I recite then "Je m’en allais, les poings dans mes poches crevées / Mon paletot aussi devenait idéal..."
He cuts me off at the end of the first verse and exclaims :
- Palto!
- What palto ?
- Palto! Palto! Eto po ruski.
That is how the admirer of the French language likes my poem ! Because he recognized in the word "paletot" the Russian word "palto" (палто). I remind of this story read in an ethnology book by an author whose name I do not remember. A movie about the life in a French village was showing to a African primitive tribe for studying natives' reactions. At the end of the showing, they were questioned. "But what happened to the hen ?", they asked. A hen had indeed crossed the screen in the movie. And the hen was the only thing they recognized in the flood of images incomprehensible to them. It was the amazing meeting point between two worlds so alien to each other. I will not hold grudge against Maksum for his intervention because I am not sure to remember well - Shame on me ! - the sequel of this magnificent Rimbaud poem.
- Many people went to work in Russia. This enable them to build beautiful houses where they will live after their return. If they come back one day.
To build traditional houses, it is still used adobe which offers impressive heat insulation characteristics and is economical. Walls have a frame of timbers where the spaces are filled with rammed earth. Often, the earth is plastered with mortar. The richest houses are stone-built with a standard architecture. They all have a big garden where is a bread oven and everything for cooking. A beautiful sculptured wooden tapshan in the venranda and sometimes an other one in the garden for the wealthiests, a simple metal tapshan for the others. Many tapschans are equipped with a canopy to protect them from the rain or from the sun. On my first visit, I see some black rough bricks under a rustic tapshan.
- We cannot use the walnut wood for heating in winter, explains Hayat. Then we make these bricks by mixing coal dust and dung. You put a brick in the "sandal" (Uzbek stove) and it makes an efficient heating.
We meet the handyman of the municipality, at the same time taxi driver, roadman and tapshan manufacturer. Ghulam Hadj has a lot of work because Arslanbob is a town of 13000 souls. He is also beekeeper like almost everybody here. On the edge of the road, women are watching over pyramids of jars filled with golden honey.
- In this village, says Ghulam Hadj, people have always lived modestly. During USSR era, we all had work at the kolkhoz or the leskhoz (State forestry). Now, you have to manage with your own means, it is more difficult. We plant gardens, cultivate fields, raise animals. It is a lot of work but we eat plov and we drink green tea. That gives us energy.
- People want to stay in the village, continues Hayat. Even young people wish to marry and to work here.
Near the mosque, we meet Mulla (the Mullah ?) who participated in his construction. The tapshan with its impressive roof does not go unnoticed.
- What a sumptuous tapschan ! I exclaim.
- This one is an aïwane, corrects Hayat.
I should have remembered the definition given by the cabinetmaker in Dushanbe. We visit several houses and the welcome is always warm. Soy Buyi Chaykhana, next to the river, is almost like the Tapshan House. There are different models with different sizes because it is necessary to adapt to receptions with numbers of guests. We end with Maksum house. The tapshan is curiously crafted, different to that I saw before.
- I carved it by myself, says Maksum.
- The shape is unusual. What kind of style is it ?
- A little bit Kazakh. But it is mainly of my imagination.
The man is retired Red Army officer in Kazakhstan, in Russia and in Caucasus. After the Independence, he has worked in Moscow, like his son now. That enabled him to build this big house. But this big house is empty and nobody is there to enjoy of it, except him. He asks me to say something in French because he loves the sound of the language. I recite then "Je m’en allais, les poings dans mes poches crevées / Mon paletot aussi devenait idéal..."
He cuts me off at the end of the first verse and exclaims :
- Palto!
- What palto ?
- Palto! Palto! Eto po ruski.
That is how the admirer of the French language likes my poem ! Because he recognized in the word "paletot" the Russian word "palto" (палто). I remind of this story read in an ethnology book by an author whose name I do not remember. A movie about the life in a French village was showing to a African primitive tribe for studying natives' reactions. At the end of the showing, they were questioned. "But what happened to the hen ?", they asked. A hen had indeed crossed the screen in the movie. And the hen was the only thing they recognized in the flood of images incomprehensible to them. It was the amazing meeting point between two worlds so alien to each other. I will not hold grudge against Maksum for his intervention because I am not sure to remember well - Shame on me ! - the sequel of this magnificent Rimbaud poem.
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| Vieux tapchane en bois de noyer avec sa provision de combustible chez Tirkash. |
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| Chez Sobirjon. |
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| Chez Sobirjon. |
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| Tapchane avec antenne parabolique chez Shakirbek. |
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| Tapchane construit par Bultur hadj à côté de la mosquée Mulla Mirkashev. |
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| Chez Salahiddin (avec les pains) avec Hayat. |
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| Mirzorahim possède plusieurs grands tapchanes à louer pour les réceptions. |
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| Tapchane à motifs d'inspiration kazakhe chez Maksum hadj. |
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| Tapchane chez Ghulam Hadj. |
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| Cuisine de jardin à Arslanbob. |
More photos Arslanbob
More photos Arslanbob
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