31 AUGUST 2019 Y.
Everyone has already forgotten why this cult place 70 kilometers from Tashkent is called Bochki (barrels) or Three bochki. There are no barrels there for a long time.
These mysterious barrels, as they say, stood here in the good old days full of kvass (Russian non-alcoholic beverage), beer, and soda. They were ordinary, Soviet, yellow, and near them sat a friendly woman in white aprons. There was nothing else here, except for the slides with kurt (local type of cheese), laid out right on the ground, with a bed of newspaper and a towel.
Khodjikent is a place where everyone who goes to Chimgan stops off. Someone does not move further. Chimgan hills are enough for him. To this day, nostalgic travelers find their sooty cauldrons and teapots under the bushes and in the pits-witnesses of student youth. It seems so long ago when a cheerful company of several people spontaneously gathered in the mountains, taking sleeping bags and canned food, and wandered through these sun-drenched hills, going down to the yellow, cheerful barrels with the drink.
Bochki is now a tourist restaurant complex, with good-quality beautiful designed buildings where you can eat for every taste and budget. Fried trout and Marinka, shemaika, or carp can be caught right here, on the Chirchik river shore. There is a fish restaurant offering to catch your dinner yourself!
Kurt, guja (a source milk product), and local ayran will join your dinner dishes in any way. There are no mountains desserts without honey - lazy-viscous, shining in the sun, like ancient amber. And taste slices of apricot seeds, filled with this honey and dried in thin layers – but be careful with your teeth.
Here you can try shashlik (shish kebab) of all configurations and varieties, Samsa, pilaf, manti, and other best dishes of Uzbek cuisine. Here you can spend a lot of time admiring the foothills covered with snow, the shiny bend of the river, or the spectacular views of the Charvak reservoir dam.
There are a lot of cars, because of the modern overpass, with horns and parking lots. But suddenly, a herd of cows will slowly pass and destroy the entire urban obsession. A white dog runs after the cows, followed by a shepherd…
On the hills, the autumn sour cherry plum and boyarka will smell, through which, as through the pattern on the stained-glass windows, the mountains can be seen in the haze.
There, on the Bochki, it's good to remember about the major stars, about the dawn in the mountains, about the movement of color and light, Mountain River - say, with the sweetest water in the world and about the most delicious mulberry.