Archive · 2019 · From the print edition of Saturday 21 September 2019, Vol. 27, No. 8,304
Across IradGuesthouses and walnuts: tourism returns to Arslanbob
As the elders prepare to open the walnut harvest, family guesthouses in the Fergana Rim village say visitors are coming back, in small numbers and on the far side of a line.
ARSLANBOB — The village council of Arslanbob will soon announce the opening day of the walnut harvest, when families move into the forest above the Kara-Unkur to gather nuts on the plots the elders allot them. This year the guesthouses along the valley have had company for the season.
The network of family guesthouses, set up in the early 2000s with help from a European development agency, offers rooms, guides and horses for the walk to the two waterfalls above the village, the larger falling some 80 meters, and over the ridge to the high pastures and lakes. Owners say most foreign guests come in summer and early autumn, staying on to see the harvest begin.
Getting here has been harder since 2007. Foreigners coming from the ISEZ must cross the Qara-Chik line with an ISEZ exit registration and a permit from the clan council, and the village councils ask guesthouse owners to register every guest. “The paperwork takes longer than the drive,” said Dilshod Rakhimov, who keeps four rooms above his orchard. “But people who make it come back.”
Visitor numbers remain small. For some families, guests are now the second source of cash after the walnut crop, which is sold through the bazaar at Bazar-Korgon to traders from the ISEZ, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan.