Eganistan

This final episode of my travels begins and ends in Osh, Kyrgyzstan. My friend Nikhil remarked, on receipt of an email from me, that Osh is “somewhere that sounds like it was once at war with Narnia. ” In fact, it’s Kyrgyzstan’s second city after the capital, Bishkek. It’s older than Rome, they say, and was once a major trading post at the midpoint of the ancient Silk Road. But Kyrgyzstan is a country where nomadic pastoralism has been the going game for thousands of years so city-building hasn’t been high on their list of endeavours. Osh has a population of nearly half a million, and while it’s not a bad place to spend a few days, it’s pleasant rather than thrilling. And despite its claims to antiquity, it’s hard to detect anything in the built environment that pre-dates the Soviet Union.   I had a quiet first day in Osh, which mostly involved sitting in a café and taking care of various things that having a reliable WiFi connection for the first time in a week would allow me to t...