Tajikistan - 2017

What a difference a day makes.  After yesterday’s incessant rain, including loud downpours overnight, I awoke this morning to look out my window and see a crystal clear, cloudless blue sky above the white, snow-capped mountain peaks around Khoja Obi Garm.  The beauty was stunning.

I wanted to go for a pre-breakfast walk around to take in the view, but unfortunately the overnight rain had shifted some large piles of snow from the roof, and all the exits were blocked by snow.  A team of men was busy shovelling snow to clear the doorways, with great efforts being made by the two masseurs I had met yesterday.

We set off at 9:00am for what we all knew would be a long drive.  The distance to be covered was 350 kilometres, which might take about three hours on an American freeway, but in the mountains of Tajikistan it was 10 hours of travelling.  But what fabulous travelling!!!  I can recall very few days of travelling anywhere that was as beautiful, as spectacular and as diverse as today’s drive, and the clear weather showed it to perfection.

We made a brief stop to get some photos of Khoja Obi Garm in the beautiful morning light (which are the images I used for yesterday’s diary entry), and then headed back the main highway, which we joined and headed northwards.  The mountain scenery of Khoja Obi Garm continued as we drove, becoming if anything more spectacular as we proceeded.  The impact of recent heavy snowfalls was evident as we saw several snow avalanches, and indeed, in several places the road cut through some avalanches, with cliffs of snow rising vertically on both sides of the road to a height of five or six metres.  Tunnels had been built in several places to protect the road from avalanches, and these clearly worked well as they all had heavy covers of snow above them.

Travelling north involves crossing the Hissor Range.  This high range of mountains presents a formidable barrier, which became evident as the road climbed relentlessly, twisting back and forth as it did so.  Two tunnels cut through the highest points of the ridge.  We stopped at both ends of the first tunnel, the Anzob Tunnel, which was built by the Iranians.  Colloquially known as the Tunnel of Death because of its lack of lighting, markings or ventilation, it is 4.5 kilometres long and begins at an altitude of 3,500 metres.

Emerging from the Anzob Tunnel brought us into a different landscape, much drier and with less snow and vegetation cover.  In fact, the landscape was an alpine desert, no doubt caused by the rainshadow effect of the ridge we had just traversed.

At the town of Zeravshan II, we took a turn left onto an unsealed road to head to Iskander Kul (Alexander Lake).  We weren’t sure until we got there that it would be possible to reach the lake, because the road is poor and the risk of avalanches sometimes makes travelling hazardous.  However, the advice from locals was that the road was fine, so off we headed.  It was a slow and bumpy journey through a spectacular valley with wondrous geological formations, including some of the largest scale badlands scenery I have ever seen.

After about 50 minutes driving, we were rewarded with our first glimpse of the lake in the valley below.  We descended to the edge of the lake and got out to admire the view.  Iskander Lake contains blue water because of the glacial powder it carries, and it was stunningly beautiful under the blue skies surrounded by snow-capped peaks.  The water was almost still, so the reflections added to the effect.

Iskander Kul is a natural glacial lake, but during an earthquake about a hundred years ago, an avalanche blocked the exit from the lake.  When the waters burst through, the area of the resulting lake had increased substantially to its present size.

Some historians assert that Alexander the Great (after whom the lake is named) stopped for a while at the lake during his conquests – given the scenery I can understand why he might want to call in!  There are lots of local legends surrounding the lake, including the most famous one, which is that if you stare into the waters of the lake at midnight, you will see Alexander the Great ride forth on the back of his horse.  Sadly, we didn’t have time to put that to the test, as we hadn’t had lunch and it was not possible to get any at the lake, so we headed back to Zeravshan II, found a roadside truckies’ stop, and had what we all thought was one of the best meals of our trip – simple local soup and lamb – all in view of a beautifully decrepit Soviet-era factory with some fading but still impressive socialist mosaics.

The road climbed again as it proceeded northwards, and after an hour or so we reached the second major tunnel, this one built by the Chinese and known as the Shahristan Tunnel.  This tunnel was lower (at 2,500 metres) and shorter (at 2.5 kilometres) than the Iranian Tunnel, and wider and better-lit inside.

Once again, emerging from the tunnel brought us into a different environment, this time the fertile lowlands of the Ferghana Valley, also known as the Sughd region.  Much flatter than the landscapes we had been driving through so far, much of the land was irrigated farmland growing crops such as wheat, rice and apricots; the apricot trees made an eye-catching sight as large groves were in full blossom.

We reached our destination city, Khujand, at about 6:30pm, but our hotel was out of town so another half hour’s drive was needed.  We reached our hotel, the Bakhoriston Osoishgokh, at 7:00pm.  The hotel is located beside the reservoir of the Syr Darya (the river that flows from Kyrgyzstan through Tajikistan and Uzbekistan to the Aral Sea), just north of Qayraqqum, a town of Soviet-era flats built by German POWs after World War II after an earthquake destroyed the earlier settlement.

The hotel set a new record for checking-in time.  After waiting about a quarter of an hour, the receptionist suggested we go to dinner and the registration process would be done when we had finished.  We returned at 8:00pm, only find that an additional quarter of an hour was required.  That didn’t mean we could get our keys – we then had to go to the separate building where our rooms were located, where another person undertook the lengthy process of sorting and handing out keys.  Getting to our rooms at 8:30pm was quite a relief after the long day, despite the effort of carrying our bags up the stairs from the ground to the 4th floor because there are no elevators.

The spirit of Soviet efficiency lives on, it seems.

Day 6 - Iskander Kul and drive to Khujand

Tuesday 28 March 2017