Category: Tajikistan

This is part of a series describing our route through Tajikistan–please refer to my posts of 6.18, 6.20, 6.23, 6.24 and 6.25.

***

To get a sense of how remote Jalang is, if you have not read the posts leading up to this one, it is at least 16 hours from Dushanbe, the capital of Tajikistan, to Khorog, the capital of the Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Oblast, along a very rough 4×4 road. From Khorog to Murgab, the capital of the Murgab District of the Eastern Pamirs, it is another eight hours or so along a mediocrely maintained paved road. From Murgab to Jalang takes another five or six hours, much of it on an unpaved track that leads off straight into total wilderness and some of the most desolate scenery in the world.

The largest ethnic minority in Tajikistan is the Uzbeks (some 15% of the total population), who live in the west and north of the country, but almost equally visible, despite their much smaller numbers, are the Kyrgyz, who dominate the population of the Murgab District (roughly 13,000 out of 16,000 total population of that district). The Kyrgyz are semi-nomadic, living in settled villages in the fall, winter and spring but moving to their yurt encampments in the high valleys in the summer, where their livestock graze on the relatively meager grasses that grow in the high plateau.

Jalang itself had, we would guess, about six families. Surprisingly, one woman spoke quite respectable English (her father was a mountaineering guide in Kyrgyzstan), and told us that outside of the summer they live in the village of Karakul, which lies on the Pamir Highway between Murgab and the Kyrgyz border. She grew up in Kyrgyzstan and found yurt life in the Pamirs difficult, with no lowland pleasures such as fruit, no electricity outside of a solar powered battery and strained hygiene: “Life is hard here.”

But to us the picture was an idyllic one. As we arrived in the afternoon, the animals were just returning home, along with the young men and boys who were herding them, the sheep going to their pen and the yaks chained up for the night (the calves a good twenty feet from their mothers so that they wouldn’t drink all the milk). In the late afternoon light we saw balls of cheese drying on the rack and women weaving traditional kilims–we were told that it was to be a present for a daughter who was about to be married.

The yurts themselves were grand and comfortable, with a dung-fueled stove in the middle and plenty of cushions, bedding and quilts for a comfortable rest. A stream flowed nearby, and presented plenty of water for tea, food and washing. Thankfully, and possibly only because these yurts were prepared to accept tourists, a couple pit toilets had been built a hundred yards away.

As an afternoon snack they gave us a huge plate of fried, home-made noodles, delicious but also supergreasy in the way that almost all Central Asian food is. For dinner it was soup. As usual, every teatime and meal were served with huge pieces of bread torn by hand. Everyone, including especially the young son, liked looking at our pictures of New York, though they liked even more looking through the pictures in our Tajikistan guidebook.

We awoke to the sight of the ladies milking yaks, baby yaks standing by looking sad and hungry, and all of the menfolk shearing sheep. Breakfast was the usual rice porridge, eaten with ample butter and sugar. Derek made his 3-in-1 coffee. The father of the house guided us on a short hike to see some petroglyphs nearby–a solar symbol, a man with a bow, and an elk.

Payment was handled with more grace and class than it had been anywhere else–just as Derek started to fumble for money, the father left the yurt leaving Derek and his eldest daughter behind. She accepted the money and put it away without counting, thanking Derek.

From Jalang we were off to see some ancient geoglyphs and then, after a night at Karakul (Lake), the Kyrgyz border.

This is part of a series describing our route through Tajikistan–please refer to my posts of 6.18, 6.20, 6.23 and 6.24.

***

Murgab

Having arrived in Murgab late at night, fortunately on a minivan that had as a fellow passenger a man running a guesthouse in town, we slept, recharged our batteries (literally and figuratively–the guesthouse had electricity) and headed out the next morning down the street to the office of the Murgab Ecotourism Association (META). Set up with the assistance of a French NGO, META is a sort of one-stop tourism development company for the eastern Pamirs, helping develop, maintain and promote jeep hires, home/yurtstays and trekking/riding excursions throughout the region. Although some of the experiences available in the Pamirs could be arranged yourself (craft an itinerary, hire a car in the bazaar, etc.), going through META is by far the simpler and most attractive option.

META office

We were truly impressed by META’s operation. Set up in an attractive yurt-inspired custom-built building at the edge of town, with a pretty good gift shop to boot, META had descriptions and photographs of many of the natural and historical sights near Murgab, as well as a well-written brochure describing the archaeological sites in the region. Given our limited time (we had some four days before our Tajik visa expired), we put together with their help a tight but doable three-night/four-day itinerary with car hire all the way into Kyrgyzstan. META charges a 15% commission on top of the services they arrange, the rest of the payment going directly to the service providers–not a bad profit for them, but not too much for us either.

Our very friendly Kyrgyz driver, who of course spoke no English, got the paperwork set for our trip (all itineraries require approval from the Tajik KGB, as they still call it), while we went back to our guesthouse to settle our bill (a somewhat hefty $40, including meals) and pack up. We started off for our multiday trip in the Russian jeep around 2 p.m.

Our driver, Ismail

Day one was to be a hike over Gumbezkul Pass, starting from the Pshart Valley and ending up in the Madian Valley, both fairly close to the city of Murgab. The driver would drive us to the trailhead, and then pick us up at the end of the trail. META had estimated that the hike would take us four hours, because we “look like sportsmen.” Unfortunately, not being sportsmen at all and, as we have learned from many hikes in the past, having horrible navigational skills, the unmarked hike ended up taking us seven hours, including a rather scary part where we really didn’t know which way to go, along a slippery rocky slope. But we survived, and the scenery was quite beautiful from the 4700+ meter pass.

Pshart Valley

Yurts near trailhead

Looking up toward the pass

Looking down, from halfway up–note the yurts in the lower right

The pass. Note that we’re way above it, having overshot!

I think our driver was worried about our delay (the sun having set before we were off the trail), as we could see him blinking his headlights in the distance through the darkness. He had also borrowed a pair of binoculars from a local yurt to search for us on the trail. We took a surprisingly long and astoundingly rough (giving us a newfound admiration for Russian automobiles) drive to our accommodations–a yurt located near some hot springs.

When you arrive at a home- or yurtstay in the Pamirs, you are never announced in advance–the local people do not have phones and live very remotely–and so it’s quite awkward arriving late at night. Nevertheless, the gracious Kyrgyz family, when roused from their sleep, set up our bedding and served us tea, before layers of blankets were laid out and we fell asleep. The daughter was quite beautiful–a Mongol princess, as we termed her.

After a dip in the hot springs the next morning, we were off again, to a very remote yurt encampment called Jalang many hours away. On the way we passed yet more beautiful terrain, including the 4600+ meter Ak Baital Pass.

Mt. Muztagh Ata, in China, seen from Murgab

Pamir Highway, north of Murgab

Ak Baital Pass

Road to Jalang

This is part of a series describing our route through Tajikistan–please refer to my posts of 6.18, 6.20 and 6.23.

***

We woke up in Bulunkul to find that we were not only in the middle of nowhere, but what seemed like the end of the earth, on a nearly barren windy plain surrounded by mountains. Surprisingly big given the location, the town was populated with Tajiks mainly involved in animal husbandry. As starkly beautiful as the surroundings were, I thought to myself, “What did these people do to end up living here?” Our homestay was the most basic yet, an elderly woman who seemed to live alone although her adult children were also about providing assistance.

Our host

Weighing a yak

The Pamiris, as the Tajiks of mountainous eastern Tajikistan are called, are typically very fair in color–not at all like the typical Turkic people of Central Asia or even the relatively dark-featured Iranians to whom the Tajiks are closely related. Indeed, ancient Chinese and Indian records before the Mongol conquest indicated the fairness of certain Central Asian populations, and it is believed that the Pamiris represent the remnants of this red-headed/blond/blue-eyed group. The Pamiris’ light coloration highlighted the extreme altitude and sun exposure of life in Bulunkul, with people who looked essentially northern Europe tanned to a crisp brown.

For our trip from the town of Bulunkul back to the Pamir Highway, we decided to take a scenic detour along a very poorly maintained and little used road along the Alichur River.

Lakes near Bulunkul

It was a bumpy but beautiful and pleasant drive, until our Land Rover seemed to have greater and greater difficulty with the uphill stretches on the hilly road. Great black clouds of smoke were coming out of the tailpipe and the car’s ignition died with increasing frequency. Finally, our driver had to admit that the car was out of fuel. Now, such an error would generally seem the result of gross negligence, but in this case we do believe that the car was not behaving as it should (smoke as evidence), resulting in much faster than anticipated fuel consumption. (The lack of replacement fuel may have been the cause of the driver’s reluctance to drive up to the fort to look for Derek, see post of 6.23.) At any rate, we were in the middle of nowhere, about 10 km from a hot springs and 25 km from the nearest town, on a road with essentially no traffic. Fortunately, it was not too late in the day (3 p.m.). Without a word, our driver set out walking with a couple of empty containers. (Was he wearing his Muslim skullcap all day because he foresaw this problem?)

Now, there are no gas stations in most of the Pamirs and it is a very common site to see someone out of and begging for fuel; the only problem here was that we were so far from other vehicles, on a road that essentially no-one has any reason to use, with no way of getting help. We didn’t know for sure that there would be anyone at the hot springs (and if there were, if they could be of any help), or whether our driver would be able to make it back to the car by night. We took stock of all of the food we had in the car (a couple packets of halva that we had taken from an Iranian hotel breakfast buffet and a minijar of jelly from the Kuwait City J.W. Marriott), and with plenty of bottled water in the back figured that we could certainly make it through the rest of the day and the next comfortably, and with our sleeping bags not freeze in the car overnight. We created a backup plan of waiting for our driver until the next morning, at which point we also would set out on the road.

After waiting a couple hours, another tourist vehicle passed us, and not only gave us some more food but also the driver of the vehicle gave us the positive message (through nonverbal communication, since he didn’t speak English) that he had seen our driver looking for fuel and thought that our driver would be back soon. And he was–after a total wait (in a pretty pleasant setting, really, despite the uncertainty) of only four hours. Our driver was able to get assistance from a Kyrgyz family that lived at the hot springs, and when we stopped for tea at the house we expressed our profound thanks.

Our Kyrgyz savior

With enough gas, but not the confidence to drive us all the way to Murgab, our driver dropped us off at the city of Alichur. He was visibly distressed at his car’s condition, fretting that he would have to take his Land Rover all the way to Dushanbe in order to repair it. We hitchhiked on the side of the road, and soon picked up a ride on a minivan. We stopped for more fried fish at a restaurant popular with passing Chinese truckers (ferrying goods between China and Tajikistan over the Qolma Pass east of Murgab) and also briefly to visit a yurt, the first that we’d seen.

This is part of a series describing our route through Tajikistan–please refer to my posts of 6.18 and 6.20.

***

Arriving in Khorog after our 22-hour trip too early in the day to get breakfast or do much of anything else, we wandered around town before heading back to the bazaar, where local ladies were starting to set up food stalls selling laghman, manti, plov and other Central Asian classics, served with bread and a rich dairy substance that reminded me of clotted cream. [post on Central Asian food to come]

Food section, Khorog Bazaar

After having some soup and manti (the latter topped with a clear sauce which I believe was vegetable oil), we sat in front of the museum, according to the guidebooks a worthy stop, waiting for it to open. The museum is also home to the information center of the Pamirs Ecotourism Association (PECTA), a newly organized tourism development clearinghouse established with the help of the Aga Khan Foundation [post on the Aga Khan to come].

Khorog Museum

The museum was still some thirty minutes to opening when a French woman walked by, and stopped to ask where we were from and whether she could help us. Marielle had been living in Khorog for several years (when asked how many she simply replied “too many”) working for the Mountain Societies Development Support Project, an NGO operated by the Aga Khan Foundation. One of the aims of the MSDSP is the development of tourism in the region, including by helping establish organizations such as PECTA, and so Marielle was particularly well-equipped to help us. She was also curious to see our Tajikistan guidebook, which had just been published by Odyssey Publications and was not even yet available in stores. (Our friend Shan had purchased it directly from the publisher in Hong Kong and brought it to us in Uzbekistan, and so we believe that ours may be the first copy ever in the country.) Marielle contacted for us the director of PECTA, who arrived shortly. We went to the man’s office behind the MSDSP building, where we asked for a quote for a car hire for an itinerary that Marielle had suggested.

PECTA is new at its job, and it showed. The trip we were proposing was a four day/three night, 450 or so kilometer route from Khorog to Murgab via the Wakhan Valley, the Pamir River and the plateau settlement of Bulunkul. At first, PECTA quoted us a price based not only on our route from Khorog to Murgab but also the return trip along the same circuitous route. We pointed out that if we have to pay for the return trip, we would expect that the car, having dropped us off in Murgab, take the direct Pamir Highway back to Khorog, which is shorter by more than 100 kilometers. Even then, the fare at PECTA’s standard per kilometer rate (60 to 65 cents) was more than $600. The price was simply too high, and the drivers that they first contacted totally refused to negotiate, storming out in a huff upon hearing our objections. When we started gathering our bags to leave the office, the PECTA officer asked us to wait, while he came up with more creative solutions.

One solution, which we believe was Marielle’s idea, would have been to have a car drive down from Murgab, where they charge a much more reasonable 45 cents per kilometer, given that we had to pay a round trip price anyway. Of course, this would have had us waiting in Khorog for a day. Even better, PECTA was able to find for us a Khorog-based driver who would charge 45 cents per kilometer for our route from Khorog to Murgab, and only 35 kilometer for the shorter return trip, acknowledging that the return trip need not be as profitable, just a matter of covering actual costs. We agreed to this price, and off we went with Nazar (+992 91 9028539) and his Land Rover after picking up some supplies in the bazaar. (The total price in the end, after our many little sightseeing detours and a driver allowance of $15/day, came to around $400.)

Our driver and car

Before starting on our road south up the Panj River along the Afghan border, however, we wanted to make a first detour to see a pre-Islamic fortress and temple in the town of Bogev, some 15 kilometers in the opposite direction. Given that we were paying per kilometer we felt at liberty to suggest whatever detours we wanted, and this was to be a first test of our driver’s flexibility. Unfortunately, convincing him to go was tough–the man, bewildered, called PECTA seemingly to complain about our request–a bad portent for the rest of the trip. In the end, however, he drove us, and a lovely young lady living by the site helped us find the best route to the fort.

Pamir Highway, just outside Khorog

First car to drive the length of the Pamir Highway

Bogev, Gunt River Valley

On our way back through Khorog, the driver made a strange request–he asked if we would mind if his girlfriend came along on the trip. Now, we like being accommodating when possible, but having another person with us for four days didn’t sound too appealing. We felt we were paying a fairly dear price for the car hire, and didn’t want others’ agendas to complicate the trip. We told him no, the second bump in our quickly souring relationship with Nazar. Fortunately, he took it better than expected.

Heading south from Khorog along the originally planned route up the Panj River along the border with Afghanistan, our first stop was Garam Chashma, a hot springs located several kilometers off of the main road. The bath itself was not particularly memorable, especially compared to the beautiful springs we would visit later on the same trip, but I did notice one oddity–all of the bathing Tajik men seemed to have shaved genitals! I haven’t found the right opportunity to have this confirmed or explained to me. (As perceptive readers may have noticed, my ability to notice this means that the Tajiks bathe in the nude, unlike their Muslim brethren in most of the rest of the Islamic world. Ibn Battuta, the famous medieval Moroccan traveler, once chastised a hammam owner in Egypt for allowing patrons to bathe in the nude–he didn’t visit now Tajikistan on his world tour.)

Calcium deposits at Garam Chashma

Near Garam Chashma, Koh-i-Lal, a Ruby mine noted by both Marco Polo and Ibn Battuta

From Garam Chashma we went south to Ishkashim, where we spent the night in order to visit the next day the cross-border Tajik/Afghan market. The market was fantastic, a wonderful opportunity to see a bit of Afghanistan without the risks of actually crossing the border (see my post of 6.22 for more photos).

Market overview

The market is located in no-man’s land, and all of the merchandise has to be carried in.

Showing just how remote and undeveloped Tajikistan is, cans of soda were being imported from Afghanistan, where there are more bottling companies. Next to the Pepsi are cans of juice from Iran.

Carpets, mostly imported from Iran

Our market visit, however, did not go smoothly. As Derek was taking pictures at the market, an officer of the Tajik KGB (they still call it that) came up to him to demand that he not
take pictures. Now, this was somewhat silly as we were just in a market, albeit one located within the no man’s land between the Tajik and Afghan borders, and there were several tourists who together had probably already taken hundreds of pictures. The numerous other Tajik and Afghan police/military present seemed perfectly fine with the picture-taking. The second time the officer came up to order us not to take pictures, Derek stubbornly made clear his refusal, leading to an hours-long ordeal in which our passports were confiscated by the Tajik KGB. After a visit to their office in town, our passports were returned to us and all was well.

Our saviors. These young English-speaking ladies were essential to our eventual release by the KGB–we think that they guilted the officer into showing a little lenience and hospitality to the foreign tourists.

From Ishkashim we drove along the Tajik/northern side of the Panj River, with Afghanistan and the snowy Hindu Kush mountains steeply rising on the other side. At times the river would be relatively narrow, rapids coursing through a gorge, and at other times leisurely wide, with broad alluvial fans demonstrating millennia of erosion on the Afghan side.

Tajikistan, as poor and remote as it is, did benefit from much investment and development during the Soviet era. The Tajik side of the river has a decent unpaved road, while the steeper Afghan side often had only a dirt trail for people and donkeys.

Trail, Afghan side. These precipitous trails, called overings, are built along rocks and cliffs. [Addendum: We walked along nearly identical trails in northern Pakistan, as the crow flies very close to the Wakhan.]

Panj River, in one of its narrowest gorges, north of Ishkashim

Typical view of the Hindu Kush range, east of Ishkashim

Further east

The route along with Panj River is notable not only for its spectacular views, but for its long history as a major artery on the Silk Road. Xuan Zang, Marco Polo and countless others traveled this way, and the exposure that the valley had to different cultural influences remains in the form of both ruins and ethno-cultural quirks.

Pre-Islamic Khakha Fortress, dating from as early as the 3rd century BC

Solar calendar of a 19th c. Sufi astronomer, Yamg

Ruins of Buddhist stupa, Vrang. Xuan Zang noted the active Buddhist monasteries in the Wakhan.

Fortress, Zong.

One of the cultural quirks of the Pamirs, and there are many, is that the Pamiris, as the Tajiks who live in the mountains are called, are not Sunni Muslims like most Central Asians, but Ismailis. I will discuss Ismailis in a separate post to come (and also see my post of 5.28), but the most basic summary is that Ismailis are Shia Muslims who split off from the Twelver Shias (the brand of Shia Islam practiced in Iran–see my post of 5.20) in the 8th century at the time of the succession of the seventh Imam–the Ismailis believed Ismail to be the seventh Imam (their other name is Sevener Shiites) while the Twelver Shiites held Musa, Ismail’s younger brother, as the true Imam. The Ismailis were at one point the more important Shia group, being the faith behind the Fatimid Empire of Cairo and the Assassins, but are now relatively fewer, with their largest communities in remote areas such as the Pamirs and East Africa.

But the religious beliefs of the Pamiris are one step weirder. While the Pamiris are Ismaili Muslim, they hold on to what are clearly pre-Islamic beliefs. This is most evident in their shrines, which have a distinct pagan/animistic atmosphere (meaning that they must also be pre-Zoroastrian, the dominant pre-Islamic faith of the region).

Roadside shrine, Zumudg

Shrine at Namadgut, outside and in. In the interior are special green stones in the corners of the centerpiece, as well as a pile of elk and marco polo sheep horns in the center.

Outside the shrine at Ptup. Of the small villages we visited, Ptup had a special atmosphere, with a general store operating out of a truck and dandelion seeds blowing through the air.

The most memorable stop was at Yamchun, where we spent our second night. Our first stop near Yamchun, high up in a side valley, were the Bibi Fatima hot springs, which are the most beautiful we have ever visited.

The bathing enclosure is built around the original natural outlet.

Nearby the springs is a Soviet-era sanatorium, where we were planning on staying, but after the sanatorium offered us only a tent (which was perfectly fine with us but for whatever reason our driver reacted violently against, allegedly on account of price although of course we would be paying and not he), we were forced to seek other lodging. We stayed the night in a local home, the woman of the house being gracious enough to offer us room and board when stopped to ask her if any lodging was available nearby.

The homestay is in some ways an essential Tajikistan experience. Because tourism is still in its infancy in Tajikistan, there are not very many hotels outside of Dushanbe, leaving informal guesthouses and homestays to fill in the gap. While it is expected and customary that the tourist will offer some sort of payment ($5-10 per person for dinner, lodging and breakfast), the experience feels not at all a commercial one. The hospitality and graciousness of the Pamiris and the Tajiks as a whole were perhaps unmatched in our trip so far, even surpassing the warm welcomes of the Syrians and the friendliness of the Iranians.

The family we stayed with in Yamchun lived in a beautiful Pamiri house overlooking the valley from a considerable height. We’re not sure whether the woman had ever housed tourists before (it seemed unlikely given the way we ran into her), but she had the empathy to set out our first meal (what we thought was dinner but ended up being a sort of pre-dinner) in her yard, with an unbelievable panorama.

View from Yamchun

When the gentleman of the house returned home, another meal was laid out, this time served inside the house. In what must be a rule of hospitality given the relatively scarcity of the region, the man didn’t touch the communal food at all until it was clear that we were finished. We slept in the main room of the house, which was ceded to us, the guests.

The Pamiri house is another vestige of ancient customs. It is believed that the essential design of the house traces back thousands of years, and while the form has been ritualized and rationalized to Islam (the five pillars of the house, for example, being given names of the prophet Mohammed, his daughter Fatima and the earliest Shiite Imams), it is certain that the blueprint is at least Zoroastrian, and likely older. All of the houses in the region are essentially identical, with the five pillars, the design of the central skylight and even the number of beams along the ceiling being prescribed by
custom. [Addendum: Traditional Hunza houses in Northern Pakistan, we found out, have essentially the same layout.]

Pamiri home, Yamchun

The next morning, Derek woke up at sunrise and spent hours taking pictures around nearby Yamchun Fort, perhaps the greatest in the valley. His disappearance for six hours caused me much anxiety, forcing me eventually to force the driver to go up to the fort to look for Derek. (This required screaming at and hitting him, the same treatment that Derek got when he was recovered. Why was the driver so reluctant to go searching? In hindsight I think it must have been the lack of available fuel–more on this in a future post.)

Yamchun Fort

Herding goats near Yamchun Fort

The valleys of the western Pamirs are also noted for their linguistic diversity. Each valley, pretty much, has its own language, that of the Wakhan being the most unusual and incomprehensible to the others. While still related to Persian and a member of the Iranian family of languages, like standard Tajik and all the Pamiri tongues, according to our impromptu guide for the Buddhist stupa at Vrang Wakhi has quite a strong resemblance to Sanskrit, which makes geographical sense since the Aryans who entered India did so through the Hindu Kush, just across the river from the Wakhan (see also my post of 5.12).

Langar, where the Wakhan and Pamir Rivers meet to form the Panj River

From the town of Langar, where we met an army captain friend of our driver who needed a lift and returned the favor in advance by providing us a much needed meal, we headed along the Pamir River, Afghanistan still following us on our right until we hit the military checkpoint of Khargush, after which we began our ascent into the real Pamirs, the high plateau of the eastern Pamirs.

The rough road from Langar to Khargush, Afghan mountains on right

The Pamir River is much smaller than the Panj, bringing Afghanistan even closer to our road. This building was identified in one of our guidebooks as a Buddhist-era caravanserai.

After the sun had already set we arrived at the middle-of-nowhere settlement of Bulunkul, where another local family took us in for the night and made us a meal of locally caught fried fish at the late hour of eleven o’clock. The next day we would drive out to Murgab, the capital of the eastern Pamirs and the end of this stretch of our journey.

This is part of a series describing our route through Tajikistan–please refer to my post of 6.18.

***

We spent a day walking around surprisingly pleasant Dushanbe, a city with the comforts of modernity, a leafy charm and at times very exotic inhabitants. (Later, we were told that drug money is responsible for the recent boom.) Our next stop in Tajikistan would be Khorog, the capital of the Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Oblast, or GBAO, as the Pamir region is designated, and the only city of any size in that region.

There are two ways to get from Dushanbe to Khorog: plane or minibus/jeep. The Dushanbe-Khorog flight is famous for its astonishing views as the plane weaves through mountain valleys, but given frequent cancellations, my discomfort with heights and a desire to do it all overland, we opted for the 16+ hour car ride. (An American working for the State Department in Dushanbe told us that he had actually been in what was technically a crash on that flight, the tip of the wing of his plane clipping a mountaintop, and thought our decision wise.)

Planning to leave Dushanbe the next morning, we headed to the Badakhshan taxi stand near the airport to look into transport to Khorog for the next day.

Autocolonna 2927, also known as the Badakhshan taxi stand

The taxi stand, it being late in the day, was almost deserted and looked like an abandoned parking lot, but for a rather motley crew of drivers hanging about. One of the drivers said that he could take us in his Korean SUV for 200 somoni per seat (about $55), which was more than we had expected but seemed in line with the 150 somoni per seat that a driver of a (much less comfortable) minibus was also offering. We tentatively accepted and headed back to our hotel to return early next morning.

Arriving before 6 a.m., we found the taxi stand to be abuzz with activity. But as so often goes, the other seats in our Korean SUV sold slowly, with other vehicles filling up more rapidly and departing. In order to speed up our departure, be more comfortable and have access to windows on both sides for picture-taking, we paid for a third seat, thereby having the entire middle row to ourselves, with plenty of room for our small bags next to us instead of on our laps (our big bags being on the car’s luggage rack.) We ended up hitting the road well after 8 a.m., with a total compliment of driver and seven passengers.

Loading up–note the new luggage rack.

Our driver

The scenery was rewarding from fairly early on, as the road climbed up long valleys. [Derek would like me to note that many of the landscape pictures below were taken from our bumpily moving vehicle, limiting not only image quality but Derek’s ability to frame the image as he would have liked.]

Sometime around noon we made a lunch stop, where we had the choice of kebab (which turned out to be chunks of meat with noodles–see below) or shorpa (soup with meat and vegetables). Hungry, we ordered three portions–one shorpa and two kebabs–leaving us feeling a bit piggish when one of our co-passengers paid for the whole car.

Not bad!

As the road rose higher, the hills got greener and snowier.

Mid-afternoon, we came to what is known as the gateway to the Pamirs, from where the road would ascend to the 3200 m Saghirdasht pass and then descend to the Panj River Valley, shared between Tajikistan and Afghanistan. At the gateway, our passports were checked for the special GBAO permit required for foreign tourists in the Pamirs. (We had gotten ours along with our visa, see post of 5.30.) It would be the first of many, many passport checks in the Pamirs. [post on the military/police regimes of Central Asia to come]

Mid-afternoon was also when the car’s luggage rack began to fail. We were taking the higher, summer-only road over the mountains, which is unpaved and quite rough in parts. Our rack started by shaking at first, rattling to show its discomfort. The load on the rack was not unusually heavy–we think that this must have been the rack’s inaugral run. We slowed our pace to reduce stress on the rack. A lengthy stop to secure the rack to the car with wire proved fruitless, as the rack continued to shake loose. As the rack got worse, the driver explained that it would take days for us to get to Khorog at our rate, and we were forced to bring the luggage down into the passenger cabin. Fitting luggage for 7 people into the passenger cabin was quite a task, especially uncomfortable for the four guys who were sharing the small opposing benches in the rear compartment of the car. (We lost the extra seat that we paid for, and so negotiated a 100 somoni refund.) Laughing embrassedly, the English-speaking woman in the front explained, “This is how we live.” Given the condition of the roads and vehicles in Tajikistan, breakdowns are extremely common, and, we figured, the luggage rack is one of the most harmless parts of a car to go.

So the ride became more uncomfortable, but the scenery became more spectacular, as the road rose to the pass. As we entered the high summer pastures, we saw our first Kyrgyz people, as well as Tajiks who in the summer graze their livestock in the high altitudes. One flock of sheep was located on a high promontory overlooking what looked like half the world.

Just on the other side of the pass, we stopped at the encampment of a rosy-cheeked Tajik family selling milk and other dairy products to the cars that drove by. Livestock sometimes blocked the road.

As I mentioned, we had gotten a bit of a late start, and the situation with the luggage rack had slowed us down even more. Nor was our driver as aggressive (or as skilled, it seemed) as many others. The sun began to set, and we continued our ride in the dark. As the light dimmed we could see that the scenery was in many ways getting even more dramatic.

As it grew later and later, we nodded off to sleep in the moving vehicle. The car continued in the dark on a half-decent dirt road, now down in the Panj River Valley. At one point, we stopped at the side of a waterfall to refresh ourselves. Awakened by the ice-cold water, I got one of my first full views of the valley–the moonlight reflecting silver on the river in the distance and Tajikistan and Afghanistan rising steeply in a deep canyon. Everything was silence and stillness except for the rushing water of the waterfall and the river.

Eventually, at what must have been 3 a.m., our driver decided that he could no longer proceed safely, and we stopped for sleep in a village just off of the road–the driver in the car, the male passengers sharing a chai platform outside someone’s home and the sole lady passenger somewhere else I did not at the time have energy to note. Able to stretch out and warm in our sleeping bags, we were unhappy to be woken up extremely early the next morning by one of the pas
sengers, who was more eager than we to get to Khorog, which was now only a couple hours away.

The last part of the drive, Afghanistan on the right

Road sign, near Aini

We began our trip to Dushanbe, said to take about eight hours, at around 3 PM, when the share taxi that our Penjikent homestay had arranged for us departed Penjikent with one additional passenger in the front seat. Happy to have the back seat to ourselves, and after paying our 120 somoni (around USD 35) each, we drove up the Zerafshan valley, crawling up the mountains into central Tajikistan. The road was unpaved, as it would be almost all the way to Dushanbe.

Views of Zerafshan valley

About halfway through our trip, we came near the junction town of Aini, where numerous children with buckets of apricots ran up to passing cars, trying to sell the harvest. An entire bucket (4 kilograms at least?) cost about 4 somoni, or a little more than a dollar–plastic bag not included. Delicious.

Fuel stop (our driver in center)

As the sunset hours approached, the peaks got higher and we approached Anzob Pass, the highest point on the drive. A few times, we passed Chinese road crew repairing the road–a surprisingly common sight all over the world. We gave one man a lift to his camp, and learned by making use of my limited Mandarin that many of them came from Sichuan Province, where there are no doubt similarly precipitous mountain roads. We filled his helmet with apricots, which he remarked were similar to the ones back home.

Now, I had read that there was a tunnel under construction that was to replace the road over the high Anzob Pass, but I did not know anything else about the tunnel or its status. Right before sunset, we arrived at the entrance to the tunnel, amidst what looked like very active construction.

I took a quick look to the hole on the right (the one I assumed that we would be taking) and saw that it was completely flooded with water, perhaps a foot high. Just when I was thinking, “What the . . . ?” the car entered the hole on the left, which, as it turned out, was also flooded. The driver gestured to us to roll up our windows. Then began what was the strangest and scariest road experience I have ever had.

The tunnel was clearly an active construction project. There were Chinese workers visible throughout the tunnel, and machinery putting out smoke and gaseous fumes. The surface of the road was unfinished, and our taxi was driving through what seemed to vary between a few inches and almost a foot of water. The ceiling of the tunnel was leaking, and in some places the ceiling also appeared unfinished, showing just the rough-hewn mountain post-tunneling. Everything was just barely lit, every few hundred meters a side tunnel, dark and foreboding. When you could see the Chinese crew, they were breathing through cloth as filters–the tunnel was clearly not properly ventilated and the air unwholesome. We used our shirts, trying to breathe as little as possible. It was like an amusement park ride–somewhere between Disneyland’s Pirates of the Caribbean and the Coal Mine exhibit at Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry–and one which because of its unknown safety was truly frightening.

As it turned out, the tunnel was also exceptionally long, 7 kilometers in total, although at our slow pace and in the sinister surroundings it felt like 70. I recalled to myself a line from Big Fish, a movie I had seen. In it, the main character is fearless because he says that he knows how he dies, and this (whatever adventure he is involved in) isn’t it. While I do not have the benefit of such knowledge, I figured that it was extremely unlikely that I would actually die in a tunnel collapse in Tajikistan (after all, tunnels do not collapse too often, and, for better or for worse, there were professionals actively working in this one). (Derek notes that it wouldn’t be an extremely unsexy way to go. Returning from Laos after very nearly being trampled by a working elephant, Derek wondered what it would have been like for me to have to explain to people that he had been trampled by Laotian elephants.)

Later, I would find out that the tunnel had been built by Iranians, who had apparently botched the project so completely that the tunnel was often completely flooded. Eager to have a timely opening, the President of Tajikistan attempted to drive through it in a grand opening ceremony a few years ago, but had to turn back–despite having a snorkel on his jeep. For the last couple years, Chinese crews have been trying to fix the tunnel, but westerners we spoke to in Tajikistan believe that it is beyond repair and refuse to take it on account of safety concerns (including the horrible air inside the tunnel). But we didn’t know any of this when we were driving through the tunnel.

When we exited the tunnel the sun had already set, and we drove along cliffside roads offering what would be spectacular mountain scenery in the daylight, increasing speed down a canyon until we reached Dushanbe about 7 hours after we had departed.