Day 9 - Och
18 August ’18
Entering the Suleiman Mountain stairway
A couple on the top of the Suleiman’s Mountain
The temple on top of the Suleiman Mountain
The Mosque at the bottom of the sacred Mountain
Local costumes at the Bazaar
Children swimming in the city’s river
Outdoor restaurant
We wake up at 9 AM in a room at a local guesthouse, held by an English-speaking Uzbek woman who rents rooms in the three houses she owns in Och. We meet lots of European tourists and backpackers including a Belgian guy, a French couple and a group of Spanish bikers.
Our plans for today is to discover Och, the second city of Kyrgyzstan by population, and visit the Suleiman mountain and the city center.
Before reaching the mountain, we look for a bank to change our Chinese Yuans: not an easy task, since it’s Saturday and most offices are closed. We manage using our card at an ATM to withdraw 30€ in Kyrgyz Soms. Our first investment in Och is a breakfast: hot tea, cold tea, Bakhlava and biscuits, all of that for a little more than 1€!
The Suleiman mountain is a sacred place for Muslims as it’s the supposed place where the prophet Suleiman met God, according to the tradition. The Mountain is a rocky hill just in the middle of the city and a stairway leads to the top, where a small temple and a museum are installed. It’s a very pleasant place with an outstanding view over Och and the Kyrgyz mountains - and has been recently added to the UNESCO World Heritage sites.
After climbing, we get to the top of the mountain and have a quick chat with some locals, who ask us where we come from and insist for taking some photos with us. We are pretty surprised to see so many old people on the top of the mountain: it’s quite a hard stairway to the top, especially under the hot sun of midday.
We go down by another pathway, leading to the sacred caves of Suleiman and to the Mosque at the bottom of the mountain. The Mosque is closed, so we only can see its outside, which is quite beautiful.
It’s time to hit the local Bazar, a stripped down version of Kashgar’s market, but definitely more authentic: along the alleys, seamstresses and sellers of traditional outfits are very appreciated by local customers: as in Kashgar, clients are most of all ladies, often accompanied by their daughters and sons.
It’s time to get back to the guesthouse, before having dinner at an outdoor restaurant. The weather is perfect to eat outside and the place, serving meat cooked on a barbecue, is the best way to leave us a great memory of our short stay in Och.
But, once again, it’s already time to move on.