Langar-Khorog

We left early the next morning for Khorog, the capital of the GBAO region of Tajikistan and GBAO's largest city, with almost 30,000 people. But before we got there, we had a whole day's drive next to Afghanistan to complete.

We drove through the Wakhan Valley, which Tajikistan shares with Afghanistan. We had many great photo opportunites with mountains rising up on either side. We caught a glimpse between the clouds of the Hindu Kush Mountains in Pakistan, but unfortunately it was too cloudy to see much.

We spent most of the hours just staring across the Pyanj River, which had gotten a lot wider by this point, into Afghanistan. There were many villages and many Afghan people on the other side. They looked just like Tajik people on our side, so I don't know what all this talk about Afghans being terrorists is about ;)

The whole trip we were on a paved road that was the best we'd seen in days. The Afghan side had a dirt donkey path the whole length along the river, that in some places got quite scary. We stopped at the scariest part, which was built over a sheer rock face high above the river, which had a very very fast current. There were some parts where footing had been found in the rocks themselves, but there were more than a few places where wooden logs had been used to make a bridge that jutted out from the cliff. There happened to be a man and his donkey about to walk onto it, so we sat down to watch his journey across. He had had a big bag on the donkey's back, but before he got onto the bridge, he took the bag on his own back and led the donkey by a long rope. I'm sure he saw 6 of us sitting across the river, 3 of us with cameras, and it must have made his trip a lot worse... but we couldn't leave, we were just so scared and interested in how/if he would make it to the end. His donkey lost his footing once and I had to look away because I was sure it was the end, but he (very slowly) made it all the way across to solid ground that wasn't hanging over the river. We wanted to give him a round of applause, but feared that it might jinx him or something. I wouldn't have made it even one inch onto that section of the road. His crossing was bad enough, but when we imagined that someone actually had to build it right over the river, and someone had to be the first person to test if the bridges held... that should make it onto someone's list of worst jobs.

We stopped for lunch in Ishkashim, one of the few places where there is an actual bridge to Afghanistan. There are 2 other bridges- in Khorog and in Kalaikhum. Mike and I had thought for some time about getting a visa in Khorog and then going into Afghanistan from Faizabad to Kunduz to Mazar-i-Sharif, and then going north to Termiz in Uzbekistan, but some people I emailed on couchsurfing.com made it sound quite dangerous (plus I knew my dad would have had a heart attack) so we'd decided against it. We met an American in Murgab (he was from Wallingford, CT, and knew people who went to EO Smith) who had been in Afghanistan and absolutely recommended it, he'd had no problems and said it was beautiful, but I still didn't want to risk it.

The American told us there was a way to sort of get into Afghanistan- every other Saturday in Ishkashim, Khorog, and Kalaikhum there was a bazar in Afghanistan, where you could surrender your passport (no need for a visa) at the bridge, cross over, shop, and then come back. He said they had burkas for $5. I was really hoping to go to this bazar, but our taxi driver found out that due to some problems in Afghanistan, all 3 bridges had been closed and the bazars cancelled until further notice. Too bad!

There really wasn't much going on in Ishkashim, so after lunch we headed on our way again. We got stopped at a police checkpoint just as we were leaving the city, and 2 of the cops asked/demanded to hitch a ride with us for about 100 km to another village. You can't really say no to a cop, so we made room for them- one in our car, one in the car with Phillippe and Dominique.

We dropped them off and then turned off the road to Khorog to visit sulphur hot springs. We didn't swim, because the weather was pretty hot and the springs were outdoors, but it was really cool just to look at the giant white cloud-like shape that had been created by all the sulphur. Phillippe went in for a quick swim, and got out smelling like eggs.

We drove through a pretty little village, where some locals flagged us down and talked for a few minutes with our taxi drivers. We turned around and drove the other way for a few minutes, and our driver Vladimir explained that the Afghans were dynamiting some rocks off their road, and last time they'd done it some rocks flew over into the Tajik village, so they wanted our cars to be safe from falling stones. We sat and listened to the explosions, and I posted a video to facebook where you can sort of hear explosions over the sound of the river.

We got into Khorog in the evening, and our driver found us a homestay for $10 a person, with an indoor toilet and a shower, 2 things we'd hadn't seen much of since getting into Tajikistan. Vladimir told us there was an Indian restaurant just up the road, so we went there for dinner. I can honestly said that it was the best food I've had in all of Central Asia. It was great bread, chicken tikka masala, great rice, and RC Cola, which is hugely popular here (even more popular than Coca Cola).

I had a hot shower, and after almost a week of no shower at all, it was the most wonderous feeling! Unfortunately I somehow broke the hot water faucet, so that no one after me could take a shower (sorry Mike!). We had electricity too, so we uploaded all 600 of our pictures onto my computer. It felt good to finally be back into civilization, but also sort of sad that our Pamir adventure was almost over.