. . . but, much more often, for animals!
The scenery was still great, but different than the prior days, with much less vegetation.
The Panj River was also narrowing considerably, such that I felt more and more compelled to cross over into Afghanistan. Instead, here, I settled for tossing a rock across the international border.
Further along, we saw a caravan of nine camels. They were visible with the naked eye, and they are in the photo below, but were really too far away to photograph effectively.
But, around the next bend or two, a whole herd of Bactrian camels had waded across the river to graze in Tajikistan! I was pretty excited to get to interact with them up close.
Eventually we turned north and said goodbye to Afghanistan as we began getting closer to the M41 again. First, however, we pulled over at the "trailhead" (never would have guessed it was a trailhead, so good thing we have a driver who knows what he is doing!) for the Panorama Ridge hike. Rick and Sarah were not up for the climb--we were at 4,000 metres above sea level now, and the hike involved climbing another 800. But, they seemed genuinely happy for me to do it, and the doctor friend I had made at the homestay last night, Aitor, was here, too, and so the two of us started climbing. This was an incredible hike, but very, very difficult, almost entirely because of the altitude. Aitor had hiked yesterday at a similar altitude, so was much more comfortable (quite possibly he is also in better shape than I am), but I struggled. I ended up setting a twenty second timer and climbing for twenty seconds, then stopping to catch my breath for twenty. Sometimes, I had to give myself another twenty seconds to rest, and once or twice even stopped for sixty seconds! Likely this was not an efficient way to climb, but I did not trust myself to go at a slow enough pace without making myself stop altogether. Anyway, Aitor ended up a good ten minutes ahead of me and summited before I did. He took this picture of me--I am the black dot way down the slope!
I did make it, however, and the views were epic. This photo is looking south and that mountain range is in Afghanistan, but the tallest mountains, behind the front ones, are actually in Pakistan!
We descended a slightly different route than we had ascended, and ended up wading through a bit of snow. Also, despite the apparent lack of significant vegetation (i.e., food), there were marmots everywhere!
Back down at the vehicle, I said goodbye to Aitor and our Land Cruiser got back on the road. The scenery at this altitude was entirely different than it had been in the Panj River valley, but we did still encounter water, although apparently most of the lakes are quite salty.
Our next stop was Bulunkul Lake, where there were many birds and what I found to be a surprisingly wide range of varieties. It was only here, an hour or so after descending from the ridge, that I began feeling like myself again (e.g., feeling the need for food).
At a village close by (I think the village is also called Bulunkul) we stopped for a late lunch of fried fish. While the ladies prepared lunch (in the yurt in the picture below, which is apparently their cookhouse), we had ten minutes or so to walk around the village.
The village was quite interesting, but it must be a tough place to live. Temperatures of -50 C are apparently quite common here in the winter! The average low in January is -24 C, which is more than ten degrees colder than the average low in Edmonton in the same month!
Yak dung is the main fuel for cooking and heating, and many of the houses had paddies drying in the sun.
We ate our meal in the main room of a homestay in the village. In this room they had a picture of a daughter who had recently graduated high school and is now in Moscow at university. Evidently, from the prominence of the photo, the family is very proud of her. We talked to a daughter-in-law of the family, who also went to post-secondary school, but closer to home in Khorog. The daughter-in-law also showed us this head of a Marco Polo sheep. It may be difficult to appreciate its size in a photo, but it is pretty close to the size of a cow head. Because of their size and their impressive horns, they are popular now for trophy hunting, but the daughter-in-law explained that locals can no longer hunt them, a fact she seemed frustrated by.
After lunch, we rejoined the highway, now the M41 again.
Our stop for tonight is Alichur village. Alichur is a bit bigger than Bulunkul, and seems to get more visitors due to its location more directly on the M41, but do not let that fool you, because it is still a very small place!
The homestay our driver took us to at first was full, but another family had plenty of room. This the house--you can see the solar on the roof, which is something you learn to look for to know if there will be electricity or not.
The electricity situation here is great, but in other ways this was the roughest place we have stayed yet. The toilets are holes in a shack out back, and the heat source is a stove in the corner (but believe me, this system does work!).
The lady who hosted us heated a bucket of water for me to shower with. This is the first time I have ever done a bucket shower, but to be honest I would take this system any day over a cold shower or one with poor pressure.
From the pictures above and below, you can see that despite the rough life by modern Western standards, they keep the house very clean and as comfortable as they can. I had the room below to myself, while Rick and Sarah had an adjoining room for themselves (we just had a curtain in between, and they had to pass through my room to go outside, so by our standards there was not much privacy; but, meanwhile, the family and our driver all shared the only other room!).
The photo below is of the main room, with the kitchen and dining area, but it was too cold this evening to eat in, so we were served dinner on a table in my room (which was heated by the stove).
Before dinner I walked around and here are some photos of Alichur village.
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