Friday, October 20, 2006

Sakura's Guesthouse, Bishkek

I've stayed there long enough it deserves an entry of it's own...

Delightful guesthouse, run by Sakura and her parents, nice garden, seating/eating area, interesting guests from around Europe and Japan and was always a fun atmosphere.



Left: Sakura, whose guesthouse I am staying at.
Right: A music fan already and loves wobbling back and for to the sounds

Here's a link to their website created by Noda ("the professor") and Taichi. You'll need Japanese fonts to see it all properly, but there's a link to an English page too

http://sakuraguesthouse.web.fc2.com/

It was here that I actually met the first fellow British backpacker since Moscow around two months earlier, I did not meet any Brits throughout Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, not that it was a problem, just an observation ! Matt had cycled from "somewhere between Bristol and Gloucester" to Kyrgyzstan and was continuing onto China and over the Karakoram highway to Pakistan and India, proud thet he had cycled every single bit of the way, though he did admit to taking a boat across the Caspian Sea from Baku, Azerbaijan to Turkmenbashi in Turkmenistan, but insists he cycled around the boat while it crossed !! I have met quite a few cyclists doing similar things and it sounds amazing, maybe some ideas for my future trips !



Left: Sakura with 'Mama', Tolka
Right: (L to R) "Yogi", Yoshi (Sakura's Dad), Tim, Cat, Andreas, Justin and me

Most of the guests have been Japanese and the rest European or Israeli, strangely as I noticed since Uzbekistan, all the Europeans travelling across Central Asia are either, British, French, German and occassionaly Dutch, no more Swiss anymore and none from anywhere else with the sole exception of Andreas who is Swedish, but he has lived in Japan five years so fits into that group now !!.




Left: Kyrgyz ladies selling Kyrgyz shyrdaks (felt rugs)
Right: Some odd "synchronised mop dancing" I came across in Bishkek

While in Bishkek I have been out to various restaurants/cafes with various visitors at the guesthouse, the choice of food in Bishkek is pretty good, especially compared to the rest of central Asia and another of the reasons I have stayed a while, enjoying eating out at Chinese, Lebanese, Turkish and Italian restaurants. Central Asian food although good at times, has not so much variety, lots and lots of meat and no vegetables, so gets a bit dull after a couple of months. I enjoyed the dinners I had at homestays, Kyrgyz homecooking was great, but sadly local cafes do not even get close to offering the same kind of meals. Fortunately the pretty good range of internation cuisine in Bishkek's reastaurants makes up for this.



Left: Aisuluu (a friend of my friend Cath in Amsterdam) and me at a Turksish restaurant.
Right: Delicious Turkish lavash bread, yummy

2 comments:

Valley Boy said...

Get your mop out for the lads...

Anonymous said...

...please where can I buy a unicorn?