Pics 2 (Asia)

It took me almost exactly 19 months to zig-zag my way from Turkmenistan through to Australia. As the largest continent, and cradle of civilisations there is plenty to see, taste, explore and experience. I have had innumerable encounters with unfailingly lovely people, made some life-long friendships, tried a plethora of strange dishes, witnessed some spectacular(ly odd) ceremonies, seen breathtaking landscapes, and learnt  much about culture and history that have allowed me to understand the world a little bit better (I hope). I also hope that this knowledge has made me a better, wiser person

Mushy introspection aside Asia has been an agreeably cheap destination (apart from North Korea) and I've managed to average a daily spend of £11, of which I'm quite proud. That average will definitely not hold out in the following months though. I've also picked out a selection of some of my favourite photos (in no particular order) from the past 19 months that I haven't previously used in any of my posts. Some of them perhaps have some deeper meaning or political significance, whereas other I just found beautiful. I hope you like them as much as I do (what are your favourites? are there any that you particularly like? If so feel free to let me know by leaving a comment.).

Mongolian girl.

Pamir Travel Travails

From Langar the road follows the Pamir river slowly upwards. The mountains recede to the distance, hanbitations disappear as do the trees and the fields as you leave the valleys of Badakhshan behind and enter the high, desolate, windswept Pamir plateau. The land is parched and the driving wind coats everything in a fine layer of dust in an instant, seemingly forcing it into your very pores. There are few inhabitants except for Kyrgyz herders driving their flocks of sheep and goats from one sparse pasture to another, and a handful of settlements servicing them and the Chinese truckers importing cheap, shoddy goods (it's not just Westerners who complain about the quality of Chinese manufacturing, or lack thereof). But for the most part the plateau is an intensely inhospitable place, a fact noted by Marco Polo over seven centuries ago. The floor of the plateau rarely descends below 3500m and I could feel the effects of the altitude on my first day whilst crossing the pass from the Wakhan at 4300m - a shortness of breath and slight pounding of blood in my head.



The Pamir plateau is beautiful yet barren. Very little can grow at such high altitudes and with such little water and the winters are bitterly cold.



Wakhan Do It

Tajikistan is a poor country. It has the 7th lowest GDP of any non-African country, has no industry to speak of (one large aluminium smelting plant, though the ore has to be imported from abroad), few mineral resources worth mentioning (a handful of gold and silver mines) and only 7% of the country is arable land (whereas 50% is comprised of mountains). Its long and porous border with Afghanistan that the government cannot possibly effectively control makes it an important conduit for drugs. The evidence of the drugs trade can easily be seen if you take a ride north from Dushanbe along the Varzob valley where tasteless modern mansions line the river, the vast majority, according to my Tajik friends, built using drug money (the rest from government corruption). The only export Tajikistan has in any quantities is cheap labour for Russian construction sites.

As you can see from the map, mountains are the one thing Tajikistan has in abundance.

Fanatic

A slight disaster: the last post I wrote regarding arriving to Dushanbe did not get published properly. Furthermore the drafts were also lost. I have contacted Blogger and will hopefully retrieve the post and put it up again, in the meantime, rather than write it anew I will carry on from where it finished.

Having put in my application for the Kyrgyz visa I had a week to kill before I could set off along the Pamir highway. My destination was the town of Panjikent in the Zerafshan valley and the Fan mountains to the south. The Fan are an outlying spur of the Pamir-Alay range and with peaks reaching up to 'only' 5500m, and as such are a more accessible and amateur-friendly range than the giant Pamirs to the east. Getting to Panjikent required a little backtracking towards Istarafshan, but only crossing one pass, before getting off in the valley hoping to catch some onward transportation along the wild and narrow Zerafshan valley. My onward transport happened to be an old man in his battered Moskvich who picked me up and took me all the way. The road was in a poor state, but at least the views were compensation, with the scenery reminding me of a small version of the Karakorum Highway, with only 200m drops rather than 600m (although, at the end of the day, both are lethal should you try to test them out).

Along with pot-holes and dodgy drivers, herds of sheep are also a natural obstacle to be  negotiated on Tajikistan's roads.

Eschatology

Along my travels there are certain historical characters I keep bumping into, the most notable being Alexander the Great. I've seen traces of his conquering ways in northern Greece, Iran, Turkey and even in the Egyptian desert. And now, in the northern Tajik province of Soghd I've come across his furthest outpost, Alexandria Eschatae ("Alexandria the Furthest" - Alex wasn't particularly imaginative with the names he gave cities, naming at least 13 Alexandria), although now it is called Khojand (after a brief incarnation as Leninabad). There isn't really anything to show that Alex made his way through here, except for the unintentionally kitsch and funny local museum where 'authentic' marble mosaics depict Alexander's various exploits.