Any visitor to Central Asia, Iran, and a bunch of other places has probably noticed that just about every road is flanked on both sides by channels that flow with water or fill with trash. They’re everywhere. And even though they have a name, very few locals know it, let alone dictionaries, and despite their ubiquity, almost no one has researched or written about them. But given that falling into one is one of my funniest stories from when I lived in Tajikistan, it’s about time that I educated myself! Behold, let’s learn about the famous aryk (арык)!
By the way, these are also known as “aryq” (арық in Kazakh), and “jube” in Persian – like I said, they’re a fixture across the region, including in major international metropolises like Almaty and Tehran, which is the largest city in Western Asia.
Aryks are about one or two feet wide, and one or two feet deep. Some are dirt, some are concrete, and others are carried by pipes, particularly across intersections and in other areas. While this may seem leaky, they are all peforated in a few places to allow some water to seep into the surrounding dirt to keep the plants and trees happy and green.
In addition to being a free, gravity-driven watering method for street-side greenery, they also allow easy access to water across the city. In villages, people will simply block them and use them to irrigate their fields. You can also easily run out and grab a bucket of water from them whenever you need. This has been very useful to me on several occasions, because our water will often shut off for three days at a time, and for some reason it always happens right when I needed to take a shower. With the buckets of water, we can keep our toilet running, wash our hair, and keep cooking. One time, I was staying out in a village without running water, and I was able to just walk over to the aryk and wash my hair right there in it. Granted, when I do this, I try not to think about all the animals upstream, but still, you can easily see how useful this is to get water to people.
In Tajikistan, people will even place their watermelons and other things into the ice-cold water to cool them off and make them even more refreshing. Sadly, this makes them that much more likely to make you sick, but nevertheless, it tastes AMAZING while it lasts.
What’s impressive is that this entire system has been carefully designed and engineered to only use gravity. Sometimes, the concrete channels will even be elevated on stilts to accomplish this if there’s a big dip in the road. There’s even a few places where they cross entire rivers. In a city like Osh, they are fed by a few canals that run along hilltops, and then small amounts are diverted across neighborhoods.
During the Soviet era especially, these were carefully cultivated and cared for, and nearly all of them ran with water at all times. According to Walking Almaty, which has a fantastic article on the subject that I highly recommend reading if this topic is interesting to you, this is because the Soviets managed the networks from a central hub, and then in the 90’s it was divided up to be regionally managed in the city.
Now, because they aren’t always cared for, many run dry, while others fill with trash. To their credit, the Osh government is pretty good about cleaning up the trash, but the biggest issue is that the culverts that cross intersections often are clogged. In the spring in particular, with the heavy rains, this causes massive flooding in the city that is bad enough to knock out the entire city’s water system for days at a time (this also happens in Bishkek and Almaty). I’ve had to walk entire blocks out of my way to avoid half-foot deep puddles and torrential rivers racing across the street. Even main streets in Bishkek that are sloped can still have several inches of rushing water flowing across them. Thankfully this is a seasonal challenge that is more amusing than anything – it’s really quite fun to bond with friends and acquaintances on the street over these experiences. And that’s something that is globally universal it turns out, as evidenced by the number of hits and giggles when you Google “New Yorkers Jumping Over Puddles.”
Leaping across rushing aryks is a completely normal part of life here, but it also means that cities aren’t necessarily as accessible to differently-abled persons, particularly those with limited leaping ability or depth perception, which is probably the biggest downside to them. But, people are getting better about putting metal grates over high-traffic areas, or building miniature bridges across them to improve accessibility to homes and businesses.
Even when they’re in your way, though, you’ve got to admit that there’s something that is so wonderfully pleasant about the omnipresent sound of calmly flowing water that is just about everywhere in this country thanks to these simple yet elegant channels. They’re not going anywhere anytime soon!
Got a question? Have your own funny falling-into-the-sewer story? Let me know in the comments!
This blog is part of the BloggingAbroad.org blog challenge, responding to the prompt “I Never Knew…” Learn more at BloggingAbroad.org.
