After picking up Rick and Sarah we made good time getting out of Dushanbe, and the highway was fairly good for most of the day, albeit it with one or two places where some donkey or cow dodging was necessary.
The first place we stopped was above the Nurek Reservoir.
Further down the highway, about two and half hours from Dushanbe we stopped in Pingan, where there is a museum and fully restored Silk Road fort.
I think it was the collection of presidential books I found most interesting!
The Hulbuk Fort is across the street from the museum, but for some reason at the moment it is not actually open.
The bridge between the two countries is closed, mostly, although it does open once a week for a few hours to allow local trade to take place on or near the bridge. I gather this once-a-week-opening is common now along the Panj River wherever there is a bridge. The people living on the Afghan side of the river are Tajiks, too, and apparently some of the men appreciate being able to come over and enjoy alcohol, which is now forbidden in Taliban Afghanistan. You cannot make it out especially well in the photo below, but the Afghan flag is flying on the bridge, and it is the white flag of the Taliban, not the black/red/green tricolour flag that in some form or another had been the Afghan flag for almost one hundred years.
Here we are pulled over on the side of the road--that's Mammad, Rick, and Sarah chatting behind the vehicle. You can see here the quality of the road it quite good, but it is becoming less consistently so.
I went for a walk through the town before dinner, and had some especially nice interactions with children, many of whom were out playing in the streets.
There is a market by the lookout, where fruits and vegetables and nuts and homemade sweets were all for sale.
Further down the highway, about two and half hours from Dushanbe we stopped in Pingan, where there is a museum and fully restored Silk Road fort.
To be honest, the museum is a bit tired, and the overeager director a bit much.
I think it was the collection of presidential books I found most interesting!
The Hulbuk Fort is across the street from the museum, but for some reason at the moment it is not actually open.
After lunch in Kulob we began climbing upwards. I took this photo when we stopped at one of the checkpoints. There are both police and military checkpoints along the route, most of which Mammad handles, but in this case we had to get out and show our passports.
From that checkpoint, it was a fairly steep descent down until we reached the Panj River and the border with Afghanistan.
I got a better picture of the flag a little way further up the river.
We stuck with the Panj River for the rest of the afternoon, with a few more photo stops. It was stunning, in places surreal, scenery.
Although the scenery is serene and peaceful, the Tajik military has posts every ten or twenty kilometres, I would say, and there are crude pillboxes all along the river. This one stood out and is a bit more elaborate than many of them--often they are just forty or so rocks stacked up and blending in with the landscape extremely well.
We stopped above this Afghan village for a few minutes, and it was a nice opportunity to watch the children and adults below going about their day.
Here we are pulled over on the side of the road--that's Mammad, Rick, and Sarah chatting behind the vehicle. You can see here the quality of the road it quite good, but it is becoming less consistently so.
We ended our trip for the night in Kalaikhum, which is the first town in the Gorno-Badakhshan Autonmous Region, or GBAO, which is the region we will be in for the next several days. GBAO covers half of Tajikistan's land area, but only two percent of its population!
We are staying in a homestay here, but it is a large house, with separate rooms for the guests and a courtyard in the middle. This is the room I ended up in.
And this is the courtyard:
The home is right next to a small river which flows down to the Panj. This is the view from the outdoor dining area. This way is upstream inland into Tajikistan . . .
. . . and this is downriver, with Afghanistan across the Panj.
And, more houses on the other side:
I went for a walk through the town before dinner, and had some especially nice interactions with children, many of whom were out playing in the streets.
Back at the homestay, we sat down for dinner; the picture below was the lovely spread we started out with. Chicken and rice followed.
After dinner it was dark and time for bed!
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