Diversity

Start your leisurely stroll through the old bazaar with a piala, the traditional teacup, of fragrant green tea. Stop by one of the local teahouses in the old part of the bazaar. According to an unwritten tradition, a trip to the bazaar starts with a visit to a teahouse located along the Ak-Buura bank. Sitting on long benches, eating soft halwa or golden navat candy, enjoying tea and leisurely conversation, locals learn all the main bazaar news before going shopping.

The teahouse, like the bazaar, is open from very early morning, and is always full of people, with a huge samovar puffing nearby. The biggest teahouses in the old bazaar used to be located on the ground floor of the former Osh restaurant, opposite the Mir department store and the former caravanserai, and at the entrance to Navoy Park. Today many of them have been transformed into cafés and canteens, but retain their samovars.

After tea, you can stroll around the rows where spices and herbs are sold are a special bazaar enclave. Colorful mounds of spices beckon with their aromas. Every single dish of Osh cuisine is richly spiced. The rulers of Osh cuisine are seeds of zira (cumin) and sesame. In the old bazaar, you can buy local zira, which is darker than imported Iranian, and very fragrant.

Among locals’ favorite fragrant herbs, raykhon, a local variety of basil, is rightly at the top of the list. Large bushes of this purple-green herb can be found in almost every Osh courtyard. You can buy dried leaves of raykhon in the bazaar.

Depending on the season, the bazaar offers many varieties of local melons and watermelons. We advise you to visit the old bazaar in late summer to enjoy the taste of Osh’s famous figs. Here, in the vicinity of Osh, whole plantations of yellow and purple figs are cultivated, and many Osh residents grow figs and pomegranates at home.