I awoke today to an unfamiliar sight, rain! A steady drizzle and grey sky that I last saw over 3 weeks ago in an antipodean little town called Melbourne. I cursed inwardlay as I have paid a hefty $200 US for a day trip to Alexander Lake (Iskander Kul).
92% of Tajikistan is mountain and the northern Fan Mountains are not on the itinerary for my adventure up the Pamir Hwy hence the effort to get here now that I have a day spare here. It is a 3 hour drive from the capitol Dushanbe and the mountains intrude some 20km out. We drive by the palatial president’s holiday house and the road narrows and there are more frequent concrete tunnels to protect the road from avalanche and snow. Some 2 hours out we reach what our driver euphemistically calls “bad tunnel” an 18 minute drive through a pitch black hole that seems to lead into the very core of the planet. The road surface is grossly pitted and corrugated so the only way through is to drive in a sinuous serpentine fashion playing chicken with the oncoming traffic. This is not an adventure for the claustrophobic. Some of the craters are veritable lakes and I wonder at the sense of having a nice white Mercedes as our vehicle rather than a 4 WD.
Iskander Falls
Snake Lake
This thought becomes even more sensible as after the tunnel the road descends down vertiginous hairpin bends before turning int a narrow dirty potholed dirt track. Somehow are car negotiates all of this with a minimum of fuss and we are at the stunning turqoise blue lake. We have time to walk down to the waterfall and up to snake lake before our trip home through the “bad tunnel”.
In a couple of hours I pick up Anthony for our 11 day tour up the Pamir Hwy to Osh in Kyrgyzstan. This trip is in a 4 WD and involves high altitude trekking, homestays and yurt stays. I would be surprised if there is any internet at all along the way so this may be a bit of a hiatus. Stay tuned, I will be back in about 2 weeks from Kazakhstan. (Home of Borat!)