Further Wanderings

We spent our first night in Tashkent lazing about in our hotel. The Hotel Uzbekistan was the sort of place that at some point in the 80s or 90s would have been the best hotel in the country. The flagship as it were. But somewhere along the way standards slipped a little and newer, nicer places were built. So it was still a pleasant place to stay, and much fancier than our usual accommodation. But it wasn’t anything tremendously special.

On our first night there we did some research and planning and concluded that in order to make the rest of our time in Uzbekistan flow smoothly we could only afford two nights and one day in Tashkent. So we set out the following morning to make the most of it.

Three Khumo (mythical birds that are a national symbol of Uzbekistan. I thought they were supposed to be storks or cranes at first given the number of those we’d seen in Fergana. These three sit atop an arch at the entrance to Mustaqillik square which is the government nominated, if not the popularly recognized, centre of Uzbekistan

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Northern Tajikistan, like the Eastern Pamirs, is almost another world from the rest of the country.
The north is wide, dry, rolling, fertile land, but is separated from Dushanbe by yet another range of mountains, the Fans.

While not the equals of the Pamirs or Hindu Kush in size, the Fan Mountains are more worn and rugged, presenting towering rock spires and jagged snow capped summits right next to the road. I’d hoped to spend some time trekking in the Fans, but the length of time it took to get our visas meant that we just had to admire them from the car as we wound our way though them. There were two mountain passes that must be negotiated in order to reach the plains of the north. The first was negotiated by a tunnel beneath it. And quite a tunnel it was. 8km in length, and positively Hadean in character. Bare rock walls and ceiling, and a road surface little better than dirt. Water sometimes dripping and occasionally pouring from the roof. No ventilation. And the only illumination provided by incandescent bulbs that lit the (many) locations where some poor souls were doing repair work in the middle of all this.

All in all it wasn’t a bad thing that the other tunnel was closed for maintenance. This meant that the journey took a bit longer, but that we got to enjoy the long, twisting climb up and the view from the top of Ayni pass. As it was only a temporary measure, this part of the road wasn’t paved, which left the car covered in a thick layer of dust that the driver stopped to wash off at an improvised car wash station near a chaikhana (tea house) on the far side.

Beyond these two sections, the road was actually the best in the country, as it connected Dushanbe with Tajikistan’s second city, Khujand. We were heading there ourselves, but on that day we turned off a bit early, making our first acquaintance with northern Tajikistan in the city of Istaravshan.

The Fan Mountains from near the top of 3378m Ayni Pass on our way north

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As with our time in Bishkek, it's really unfair to characterize our visit to Dushanbe as being "purgatorial." Both capital cities were actually very pleasant places, where we had many great experiences. But I suppose I used the ... [Continue reading this entry]

Leaving the Wakhan Valley, we headed north, still paralleling the Afghan border, but now in the western parts of the Pamir Range. The western Pamirs are much more like the Wakhan than was the eastern part of the range. ... [Continue reading this entry]

Crossing the Khargush pass was the last time we'd see the high side of 4000m during our trip to the Pamirs, but there were still plenty of mountains left. Indeed, the Wakhan Valley contains some of the biggest peaks ... [Continue reading this entry]

The Pamirs are a vast, remote and wild region of a fairly wild and remote country. Bordered by Kyrgyzstan, China and Afghanistan, the mountains and plateaus of the region contain 45% of Tajikistan's land area, but only 3% of ... [Continue reading this entry]