Photo Link:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/jVuwb4j2nzTu3UNN9
It felt great to finally be back abroad for an extended period of time (COVID pending of course!). Spent a couple of days in Dushanbe, the capital city, before embarking on my 10 day Pamir highway roadtrip. Dushanbe itself was a drab ex-Soviet city, without any of the charm of being ex-Soviet, as a lot of that old Soviet style architecture has since been torn down. There’s a main street that is nice and green but filled with decadent glass buildings. I would say it was a nice but forgettable city…tons of green avenues and modern buildings. But the logic in building up a nice capital city when most of the country is dirt poor is interesting to say the least. Though I suppose most cultural tourist sights are the massive building projects of meglomaniacs who disregarded the plight of their people (ie Pyramids, Roman ruins, Hindu temples, etc.) so the Tajik president is no different than most rulers in human history. One thing that I have observed while travelling is that the more pictures you see of the ruler (like here in Tajikistan), the more corrupt the ruler is. That said, I still enjoyed my few days here before (and after) the roadtrip since I am a sucker for Soviet shit in general. I loved that everything was in Cyrillic script so I was kept busy while walking around in the sweltering heat by trying to read and pronounce all the different signs, which is always fun. Though it was definitely tougher because the words were primarily in Tajik and not Russian, so it was harder for me to check if my pronunciations were on point since I’m a bit iffy on some Cyrillic letters. But it will be nice to continue to work on my Cyrillic reading in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. And it felt fantastic to go to restaurants again where my entire order interaction is Google translate and grunting and nodding. Honestly incredibly enjoyable. I suppose this shouldn’t be a surprise given how Babur, the founder of the Mughal dynasty in India, is from the Fergana Valley (which straddles Uzbekistan/Kyrgyzstan/Tajikistan), but there were tons of similarities to India here, from the colorful kurtas that the women were wearing to breads like non (aka naan) and kulchas – which both bore minimal similarity to their Indian counterparts. But on the other hand, there were foods like plov (effectively Indian Pilau/Biriyani rice) and samsas (aka samosas) that were very similar, and I know for these two that they are common throughout Central Asia. A lot of the food I had in Dushanbe, from the plov to the manti, I had in Russia as well so that was also pretty nice. I’ll be spending a day or so in Osh in the Kyrgyz Fergana Valley during my ~3 weeks in Kyrgyzstan, and also a few days in the Uzbek Fergana Valley with my dad in late September, so should be seeing more of those Indian similarities there.
Anyways, the Pamir Highway roadtrip, which was the sole reason I came to Tajikistan. What can I say. This was absolutely the greatest road trip I will ever take. Strictly from a scenery standpoint, this was probably the second most beautiful place I have ever been to, after Ladakh, and clearly ahead of Wadi Rum and Namibia which would be 3/4 on my list (would probably put the general American southwest at #5). If anything, the main edge that Ladakh would have here is that the Buddhist monasteries really fit in with the setting and give it that extra oomph. Overall, 2021 has been a fantastic year so far for travel, since I’ve been able to visit numerous spots that I would classify as “once in a lifetime” had I lived the rest of my life as a corporate slave taking only 2-4 vacations a year, especially since many of these spots require way more than one week – Uganda, Jordan, Guatemala, Tanzania, and now Tajikistan.
I went through a company called Roof of the World, which I found on Caravanistan. Caravanistan is, simply put, the greatest online (or offline) travel resource I have ever used. The world would be a better place if there were similar websites for other regions of the world. If you want to ever travel in Central Asia, you can’t not use Caravanistan. Literally every single person I met out here used that website as well. There were two others in my group – an American dude a year older than me (who is of course a management consultant…) and a Swiss girl in her mid 30s who is a super experienced trekker. Bryce, the American, and I actually had a few mutual acquaintances – one girl who was a bridesmaid in Arjun’s wedding, a girl from my freshman year dorm, and a kid from my frat a year younger than me. Small world. He was also a huge LOTR nerd which was cool since we both shared a habit of relating all of our outdoor experiences to LOTR. And the driver we had, Fez (who was beyond awesome), actually drove around an NYT journalist for an article on Silk Road travel that was published last March!
So long story short, beyond the scenery, what made this trip the best roadtrip I will ever take are: a run in (of sorts) with armored Taliban vehicles, an impromptu invite to a village wedding, and a car breakdown in a beyond precarious location. I’ll get into all three of them as I write about each day of the 10 day trip, but to be honest it all sounds way crazier than it actually was.
So our first day, we left from Dushanbe to our first stop, the village of Kalai Khum. We got picked up from our hostel (Bryce and I happened to both be staying there). The hostel was full of stickers for people advertising their beyond insane road trips – Mongol Rally teams and just regular dudes mountain biking from Europe to China/SE Asia/India. Puts my whole thing into perspective and makes me realize how I still have many, many, many more levels to reach before I get to the point of just badass travel that I would like to achieve. We actually met a couple of Dutch cyclists who we would run into again while driving back to Dushanbe on our second to last day. Anyways, the first half of the drive the first day was pretty uneventful, just driving through some generic, vaguely mountainous scenery. However, it really got amazing in the second half, where we descended down this large mountain road to hit a river valley…this was the Panj river, which is the border between Tajikistan and Afghanistan. The Afghan president had actually fled Kabul the day before our trip, so as of the first day of our roadtrip, Afghanistan was fully under Taliban control. We spent the next 4-5 days driving exclusively along the Afghan border. This first day of driving was actually the most narrow stretch of the Panj river that we saw…Afghanistan was at times quite literally less than 10 meters across from us. However, the river had some of the strongest rapids I have ever seen – a lot of these would easily be classified as class 5+ rapids if Afghanistan ever becomes secure enough for a rafting venture to take off in the border, which it should because it would be a ridiculous amount of fun (another cross border venture that could really take off in the future is mountain biking here). This definitely added some zest to start the trip – our order was also great, since this road trip could be divided into three parts. The initial Afghan border, the Wakhan Valley, and the Pamiri plateau, with each part better than the last for me. The scenery here was fantastic – winding roads alongside soaring, cathedral like rocky mountains with lush Afghan villages across the roaring, bright blue Panj river. The colors of the river here at parts rivaled that of the Ladakhi rivers i saw, which is super high praise. Kalai Khum itself was a generic small town, and our homestay was decent enough. One other random note – our car was, of course, a Toyota. Jeep has really squandered the huge lead they had with rugged vehicles. I feel like anywhere abroad that requires insane off road driving, they use Toyotas, whether it was this Pamir highway trip, an African safari, or rolling through the deserts of Namibia or Jordan.
Day 2 was much like Day 1 – driving across bumpy, windy gravel roads while hugging massive rocky cliffs, while waving to Afghan villagers on the other side. One interesting note is that while in Tajikistan, the females wear traditional clothing, the men all wear western clothing (except for the occasional small round hat that men wore along the Tajik-Afghan border). On the other hand, all the Afghans we saw, regardless of gender, would wear traditional clothing. We actually started the day by going up one of these cliffs to the ancient ruined city of Karon. This was a silk road city which had a really cool fortress overlooking the Panj river. Definitely one of the best pre-Wakhan Valley viewpoints of the trip. It was also on this day that one of the more surreal experiences of my life happened. We were at a stretch that was about 50 meters away from the Afghan villages, when we heard some sirens. The driver stopped, and across the river, we saw about 10+ vehicles filled with armed men, with each car proudly waving the Taliban flag. Each car was blasting the same radio message (in what I assume was Pashtun), presumably as an announcement for the local villagers that Kabul has fallen. Funnily enough, there was a pothole on the Afghan side directly across from our car, because every single car stopped parallel to us for a brief second before moving on. Each time they did, my heart jumped a little, but honestly it was such a thrilling experience. I was actually so taken aback that I didn’t even process anything, so was not able to switch in my big lens to take a photo or video. Bryce managed to grab a quick grainy cellphone video which is in the Google Pics link at least. Definitely a somber moment, especially when you consider that the Afghans who live along the border are (like their Tajik border counterparts), Ismaili Shias (this is the sect headed by the Aga Khan) while the Taliban are hardliner Sunnis. Speaking of the Aga Khan…his foundation is pretty much single handedly keeping the Tajik side of the border region from sliding into abject poverty through his foundation plowing money and development into the region. We eventually made it to our homestay in the town of Rushan. Another sobering experience here – we went to play soccer with the local kids, and at some point the military dropped by. At first I thought they would join in, but they grabbed a couple of the older kids (in their late teens). It turns out that these were Afghans who fled across the border but someone had snitched on them to the military.
On day 3, we took a quick drive from Rushan to the starting point of an overnight trek. This was a bit away from the Afghan border. We approached this massive, grey, rocky gorge, where there was a perilous looking tightrope bridge to cross the river. The bridge itself was obviously very secure, but it was still pretty crazy to walk across it. We then hiked ~5km and ~600 meters up to the village of Jizew. It was a pretty straightforward hike, and this village, along with all others in the Bartang Valley, were only accessible via hiking. So the villagers had to hike their goods down, pre-arrange a car transport (because the road to the bridge is not heavily trafficked at all), and then drive to the local Rushan market to buy and sell goods once a week. Obviously they use donkeys for transport on the hike, but still. Just a ridiculously difficult life. We checked into our homestay, hosted by a man named Gulshan. Just a super nice person. Hospitality as a whole was beyond fantastic this entire trip, and Gulshan was the embodiment of that. How someone with such meager means can still open up everything to foreigners (granted, we are paying, but still). Honestly probably beyond Jordan as the most hospitable nation I have been to with regards to the way total strangers treat you. This was also by far the best bread of the entire trip… we saw Gulshan’s wife put the yeast into a basic outdoor brick oven they had built to actually bake the bread. In every Tajik homestay and restaurant, you are given giant loaves of bread (always non) that you quite literally break into pieces to eat. They still actually follow the medieval custom of breaking bread and it’s awesome. Funnily enough, a few days later in a homestay, we were watching TV and they showed a clip of Taliban leaders breaking bread while getting interviewed. Just amusing to see them follow the same customs we were. Another Tajik custom is the incessant offering of tea, or choi as they call it. The tea here is obviously not as good as Indian tea (no tea is), but it was interesting to see a similar culture to India in terms of the tea offering to guests everywhere. Also cool to note the similarities in the word for tea…apparently countries that call it “tea” or something along those lines, tea was traded via ship. While countries that call it something similar to “chai” (like choi in this case), tea was traded overland via the Silk Road. After dropping our stuff off in the homestay, we proceeded another ~5km and ~500 meters in elevation to hit over 3k meters in elevation. The end of this hike (you can continue for a week+ of trekking up this valley so this was nothing) was a picturesque, bright blue lake with towering mountains behind it. Hiked back down to Jizew and spent the night there.
On day 4, we hiked back down to the bridge and got picked up by Fez. Then drove to the town of Khorog, which is the largest town in the Afghan border area. Had half a day to kill here so we just wandered around…Khorog surprisingly had a super nice park, and also had a really cool modernist building which was the local Ismaili center (they apparently don’t use traditional mosques). Honestly one of the coolest modern architecture buildings I have seen and been in. Obviously both the park and center were built by the Aga Khan foundation because the Tajik president is too busy beautifying Dushanbe while ignoring the rest of the country.
Day 5 was the start of the Wakhan valley portion. Drove along the Afghan border for a few hours before turning and driving directly east. The Wakhan corridor is a narrow strip of northeastern Afghanistan that was basically granted to Afghanistan to separate British India (aka modern Pakistan) from the Russian empire (aka modern Tajikistan) during the Great Game in the 1800s. At its’ narrowest point, the Afghan part of the corridor is like only 15km wide, separating Tajikistan and Pakistan. The valley is a lot like the Grand Canyon in that pictures do not do it justice at all. It is a vast, vast valley which almost looks like a drainage basin at points. And all the way at the end of the valley, you have large brown mountains and behind that is the towering Hindu Kush range, which is the 3rd tallest range in the world after the Himalayas and the Karakorum (in Pakistan). Hindu Kush literally means “Hindu Killer” as Central Asian warlords would bring over North Indian captives after raiding the subcontinent (though Hindu probably means Indian here as the Brits were really the first to classify all indigenous Indian religions as “Hindu” to categorize people in India, along with exacerbating the caste system, but that’s another essay). The mountains were quite majestic, and it was an amazing 6+ hour drive along this valley. Just such a cool, cool location. The highlight of this day was definitely the Yamchun Fortress. It’s an old Silk Road fortress that overlooks the valley, and there is just a ridiculously scenic viewpoint where you see the fortress and then the towering Hindu Kush directly behind it. Just an awe-inspiring view. We then drove into the village of Hisor for the night. This was probably the best overall food of the road trip (which is a very low bar…given that these are poorer villages it makes sense, but every meal was literally a meat and potato soup). That said, every stop did have incredible fruits, nuts, and melons (melons and fruits like apples are indigenous to Central Asia), and the fruit jams that we had every breakfast were also out of this world. One weird/cool thing about the Wakhan Valley in particular was that the people here looked straight up white. Like we saw locals who were pasty pale gingers, and locals who were blonde haired and blue eyed. Probably because Alexander the Great’s soldiers got isolated in these mountain communities, since a similar phenomenon exists in some hard-to-reach Pakistani valleys as well. Most Tajiks are sort of swarthy white looking…a lot of the drive prior to the Wakhan Valley reminded me of the bits of Michael Palin’s travel docs to the poorer parts of the Balkans. Another benefit of being brown while travelling is that I sort of passed off as an ambiguous brown here, with random people sometimes asking me questions in Tajik or Russian.
On day 6, we finally drove away from the Afghan border, cut north, and began to enter the Pamiri plateau. After the Hindu Kush, the Pamirs are the 4th tallest mountain range in the world. The next couple of days were the true highlight as the landscapes were as close to Ladakh as I have seen yet – just vast, windswept, dry plains at a super high altitude (3.5k+ meters) with towering snowcapped mountains all around. Very lunar-esque in parts. I just love that desolation, there is barely any vegetation in sight. Apparently this area is also a big Snow Leopard spot (like Ladakh) in the winters…maybe I need to go to all the Snow Leopard spots since apparently those are my favorite landscapes to visit (and I might actually catch sight of the snow leopard! It is the holy grail of wildlife sightings after all). We went to the village of Bilinkul for the night. Once we got there, we discovered that there was a wedding being held. This was on the groom’s side…the next morning, he would drive off to a neighboring village to “kidnap” the bride (obviously this is based on a tragic custom, but now the kidnapping process is incorporated into a mutual relationship). The wedding was crazy fun and was yet another example of Pamiri hospitality. Once again, the women were all wearing traditional clothes that looked very Indian (I suppose the entire stretch from Iran through Central Asia to India has similar female clothing) while the men wore western clothes. The music also sounded incredibly Indian…Pamiri is apparently an Iranian offshoot, but there were certain words like “Zindagi” which mean “Life” in both Hindi and Pamiri, which makes sense given the geographic proximity of Tajikistan to Pakistan (where Urdu is basically the same language as Hindi). And the music heavily featured the tabla as well, which is a distinct Indian drum. The dancing was also very Indian, with a lot of hand and arm movements, but it was just a really really enjoyable night.
Day 7 was definitely the most memorable day. We were driving on one of the highest roads in the world, as the highway was consistently above 4k meters in elevation. The peak of the highway was a pass that was just under 4700 meters. As we got closer, heavy winds and snows began to pick up. We got to the top and got off to admire the view, but when getting back into the car, the car would not start…turns out the battery had died. The weather was bad enough, and we also found out that maybe 5 cars at best drive through this pass per day (our entire roadtrip took place in the GBAO province, which is 45% of Tajikistan’s land but 3% of its’ population). Gotta say, and not to toot my own horn, but while the group as a whole handled the whole crisis pretty well, they were definitely freaking out a bit more than me. This was really my first time in a legit crisis in my life and I just felt…alive? Honestly I enjoyed the adrenaline rush, I don’t know. Anyways, Fez, our driver, remembered driving by a lone solitary house a few km back. We trudged ~3km and ~200 meters down, and lo and behold the house was occupied by a Kygyrz nomad family (a lot of Kygyrz live in the stretch of eastern Tajikistan north of the Wakhan Valley). They somehow had a spare car battery that they used for their walkie talkies (obviously no cell reception out here) to communicate with the nearest town, Karakul, which is where we were headed. Of course, no one in that town owned a car so we would have been reliant on a supply run vehicle seeing us and rescuing us within the next ~24 hours, so it wasn’t quite life or death. But still. Anyways, we lugged the battery back up (as my experience in Kili can attest to, climbing 200m at 4500 meters of elevation is a sloooooow process. Gotta go pole pole!), and thankfully the battery started the car back up. So we drove back down and returned the battery to the family before making our way to Karakul. This was by far the most Ladakhi landscape yet. Just by looking around you knew you were high up (4k meters to be exact). Just a flat endless dry expanse punctuated by rolling brown and tan hills, with soaring snowcapped Pamiri mountains behind these hills. Definitely the highlight of this trip for me. And these hills and mountains ringed the bright bright blue lake (Kara Kul…Kul means lake in Kygyrz). At our homestay here, they provided Yak butter for the bread (like Ladakh!), though the tea was the same generic green/black and not the yak butter tea like in Ladakh.
Days 8-10 were spent driving back to Dushanbe. My favorite driving stretch of this entire trip was from the ~4700m pass to Karakul, so it was cool do to this stretch again on the way back. God I miss the plateau and rising mountains from it…makes me really want to go to Tibet which (even more than here and Ladakh) I feel is the be-all-end-all for this sort of landscape. We ran into another minor issue of one of the tires leaking air on this drive, so had to stop by in the town of Murghab on the way back to Khorog (this was a marathon ~12 hour driving day) to replace the tire. Murghab was also where we were supposed to refill gas, but apparently there was no gas officially being sold as they had ran out, so Fez had to ask around and we finally found some janky outpost where guys would pour gasoline directly into the car from a jug and funnel. In general, it’s crazy to me how expensive fuel is in developing countries (it was over 3.50 USD a gallon here) given how cheap share-taxis/transport generally is. Anyways. this tire and fuel experience, along with quite possibly the most intense roads I have ever seen, along with our car breakdown, are why I would never, ever do a self drive in a location like this. Fez was fluent in Russian, Tajik, and Pamiri (as well as English) and was a lifesaver for situations like this. After Murghab, we got lunch in the town of Alichur. I got stroooong “Cafe at the end of the World” vibes at our lunch spot (sort of like the Restaurant at the End of the Universe in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy), in that this cafe was in the most desolate and abandoned town possible, yet was packed to the with locals who were travelling from village to village, other tourists, and truckers. We then bypassed the Wakhan corridor (no way to drive back on that road given the time) and took the Pamir highway straight to Khorog, where we finally got back to the Afghan border. Days 9 and 10 were basically identical to days 1 and 2, and it was a nice loop to the trip to be back alongside the border before cutting north and heading to Dushanbe.
Overall, even without the car breakdown/Taliban/wedding, this would have been one of the highlights of my retirement, as it is the 2nd most stunning spot I’ve been to after Ladakh. But those 3 events unequivocally make this the best roadtrip I will ever take. Just a wonderful wonderful time. The only thing that would have made this trip better was having no moon…much like camping in Glacier, the full moon ruined what would have otherwise been pristine night skies. Would have also been nice to do some legit hikes to really climb up the mountains, so I could also be over the clouds like in Kili or Acatenango. But really, it was just an unbelievable trip. Definitely has me craving some more “risque” locations, and I am strongly looking into Iraqi Kurdistan end of October – Iraq proper is probably a step too far for me right now. One thing I really got out of this trip, which I think I mentioned before in another post, is an appreciation for being American. Everyone here loves when they find out you’re from the US, and even being across from the Afghan border makes you appreciate the stability of your country and power of your passport.
Spent a few more days in Dushanbe at the end to recover and reload, before flying to Bishkek in Kyrgyzstan. I’ll be there for like 3 weeks for horseback trekking, regular trekking, hiking, and some sightseeing before meeting my dad in Uzbekistan for 2 weeks. My rough plan after that is Georgia (for trekking + sightseeing) and Armenia, and then Iraqi Kurdistan through the end of Oct/early Nov. Was thinking Europe for a bit after that…maybe Greece and then England? Or a Transylvania road trip? Honestly not sure, obviously a lot depends on COVID.