Hospitality Arslanbob
Hyat Tarnikov likes to spend his afternoons in the Arslanbob teahouse talking to the foreign visitors. The teahouse extends over the narrow, rumbling rapids of a mountain stream, and the other patrons are all elderly men with long white beards, tall, embroidered felt hats and long coats. They remove their scuffed and muddy outer boots to expose soft leather shoes before pulling their legs onto the teahouse’s carpeted divans. The crowd changes very little from day to day.
Arslanbob is a home to 12,000 people, high in the mountains of southern Kyrgyzstan. There’s no cell phone reception, and everyone shares the one satellite phone in Hyat’s house. In Soviet days it was a popular resort, but now the economy relies on the surrounding walnut forests. When the harvest is bad, Hyat says, the long mountain winter is particularly bitter and sometimes people starve.