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.
No one wants the drunken Russians to return, but Hyat is working to bring tourism revenue back to Arslanbob. He runs the local arm of Hospitality Kyrgyzstan, a national organization that arranges home stays, yurt stays, and local guides for foreign tourists. They set prices that are both a boon to the recipients and often shockingly cheap by standards in the West.
Hyat speaks English remarkably well for someone who has lived his life in Arslanbob. He wants to bring an English teacher to the village, but with the one road closed by ten feet of snow for much of the year it’s been hard to get anyone to take the unpaid job.
With his signature baseball cap and a mountain bike on which he dodges donkeys and rickety Russian cars, Hyat makes no secret he would like to be somewhere other than Arslanbob - at least for a while. Years of teatime chats have supplied an impressive list of places he’d like to visit, starting with the northern parts of tiny Kyrgyzstan. He’ll never do it, he says, because he’ll never have that kind of money. On these two topics - travel and money - a tinge of bitterness colors his words.
Mediating between western tourists and the families in the Arslanbob home stay program requires bridging massive linguistic, cultural and economic gaps. Electricity is rare. One Swiss man appeared in the teahouse the day after he had arrived for a weeklong stay. The water his hostess had heated over a wood fire for his shower had been unpleasantly cool; he had packed his things and come to demand that Hyat arrange a car to take him down the mountain. Nodding in sympathy, Hyat suggested moving to a different house and then - offer rejected - wished the man well and saw him on his way. Returning to his tea, he ignored incident and launched instead into a passionate tribute to the leadership style of Joseph Stalin.
It’s not uncommon for visitors to run away, but there are also those who rearrange travel plans to extend their stay. The fairy-tale forests, multiple waterfalls and crisp mountain air that made Arslanbob a destination for the Soviets all have a timeless appeal, and, for those inclined to enjoy it, the home stay program offers a warmly intimate experience of mountain life.
Arslanbob’s first visitors of 2006 arrived on skis on January 1, completely unannounced. The village sprang into action with walnut wood fires, roasted walnuts, sleigh rides, plenty of tea and certainly even more vodka, and never got around to charging their intrepid guests. When he tells the story it’s clear Hyat enjoyed this break from the winter monotony, but what really resounds in his voice is pride.
tagged with: arslanbob, central asia, grassroots tourism, hospitality kyrgyzstan, kyrgyzstan, travel
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