Pamirs At Last

Have finally made it to the Pamirs after 2 days on the road from Dushanbe and am now in Khorog, provincial capital of the semi-autonomous Pamiri region. I was travelling with 3 other tourists and we left round 9 am Friday morning, squashed into a Toyota land-cruiser designed to seat 8 at a push but loaded with 9 people plus luggage. The road out of Dushanbe we very good - paved with no potholes and hardly any cars, but our driver refused to drive any faster than 40km per hour as apparently the police use the excuse of a good road to charge people for speeding. Fortuanately, the road quickly deteriorated into a winding dirt track where worry about speeding was the least of our problems.

We specified to the driver before leaving that we wanted to spend the night half way along in Kalaikhum, as apparently the normal practice is to drive non-stop for about 20 hours, maybe pulling over for a 3 hour nap in the car on the way. We ended up spending the night in a nice homestay with a veranda over looking the river, but I fear the rest of the passengers ended up sleeping in the car.

Starting at 6am the next morning, the road followed the river Pyanj, which eventually becomes the Amu Darya or Oxus, through quite steep winding canyons. The river forms the border with Afghanistan, so on the far bank we could see Afghan people and villages and a road even worse than the one on the Tajik side. I've now met 2 people who have come through northern Afghanistan and the report is that it seems pretty safe but is very difficult to travel around.

We got to Khorog around noon on Saturday and are now installed at a very nice homestay just outside town. The Pamiri region is very different from the rest of Tajikistan - the people here are Ishmailis, a breakaway Shi'a sect. Every house here has a framed picture of the Aga Khan, the leader of the Ishmailis who lives in Switzerland, and the area has benefitted hugely from investment by the wealthy Aga Khan foundation. This is particularly apparent in the really excellent English that many people around here speak, far better than was common in Dushanbe. The natuve language is Pamiri, and each of the five Pamir valleys has developed related, but mutually incomprehensible forms of the language.

I am hoping to head off for a beautiful valley in the north tomorrow for a few days trekking so will post again once I return.