Порадую-ка я вас записками о самом мозговзрывательном из опыта похода в супермаркет.

Вот, например, в некоторых супермаркетах у персонала есть чудеснейшая функция - помогать покупателям заезжать тележкой на эскалатор. И съезжать. Это стоят два человека на подъеме и спуске и рукой хватают край твоей тележки и направляют ее к эскалатору, когда ты к ( Read more... )

Route: Karakul Lake - Kyrgyzstan

And finally, we were driving from Karakul lake into Kyrgyzstan. Apart from weird check points and border customs in the mountains, we were marveled by the colors. Mountains of Tajikistan are not just some gray, brown, and white. You sometimes see a beautiful palette of greens, blues, and reds in addition to grays and ( Read more... )

Route: Murghab - Karakul Lake

From Murghab to Karakul Lake we drove along the Chinese border for a while. Karakul Lake is very beautiful, but it was quite windy and chilly there. Knowing the weather, shepherd lifestyle of these villagers, and lack of vegetation, I thought that life there must be pretty rough.  It was very nice to walk around a ( Read more... )

Route: Murghab - Madiyan Hot Springs - Murghab

A few hours from Murghab there are Madiyan hot springs. They are located in a gorge next to a small river. These hot springs were very popular with tourists until a few years ago, when a landslide blocked the easy road to them. The roads to them through the mountains which we took are rough and then ( Read more... )

Route: Summer pasture - Murghab

We reached the highest point on our trip - 4655 meters, on top of Ak-Baital pass, on the way from Summer pasture to Murghab. There were very nice views of snow-capped mountains, the closest we have come to them. In love with the mountains.


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Route: Savnob - Summer pasture

Not that we haven’t seen mountains yet, but today we finally went up to about 4200 meters. In one day we saw a few quite tall mountains, including Lapnazar peak, 5990 m, near village Savnob, Revolution peak, 6974 m (only from far away), Soviet Officers peak, 6233 meters. The views of bright white snow-capped mountains ( Read more... )

Route: Bardara - Savnob

Rocks

The scenery on the way is often composed of thousands of rocks lying on the ground between the mountains and “the road” (which is just parts where rocks have been cleared). It is quite amazing and sometimes looks like Mars (whatever we picture as Mars). It is also interesting that Tajiks and Pamiris do with rocks. We’ve ( Read more... )

Route: Yemts - Bardara

Bardara is a really awesomely located village of 700-some people surrounded by mountains. It is largely covered by rocks from previous landslides and receding glaciers, so roads and tracks are basically just patches of fewer stones. Another large part of the village looks like a park with a variety of quite different looking ( Read more... )

Route: Roshan - Khorog - Yemts

We were invited to a concert/disco sort of thing at a teenage summer camp in Yemts. It was really bizarre and absolutely amazing. There were very cool-looking guys, but wearing Muslim traditional hats, and it was a strange combination. Girls were all wearing traditional Tajik costumes which is matching pants and a long ( Read more... )

Route: Kalai-kum - Roshan

Almost all day we drove along river Panj, which divides Tajikistan and Afghanistan. The river is quite muddy, fast, and mostly narrow, so we saw a lot of Afghan villages on the other side. Most people living there are supposedly ethnically Tajik who moved to Afghanistan a while ago. Sometimes there were steep mountains on ( Read more... )