Fan Mountains

It took me about a week to wrap things up from summer camp and do various things. But by Saturday I thought I had it all under control enough to go on a little excursion. So two of my 18 year old students and I set out at 6 am on Saturday morning the 12th. Our goal was Panjakent, Tajikistan. We hired a car, a RAV 4, to drive us there. We were in the back seat and other woman was in the front. It was a long and bumpy ride made even longer because we had to wait two hours because the road was closed due to repairs by the Chinese. But we got to Panjakent and went to the homestay place listed in the Lonely Planet. It was a great place with a friendly English speaking man who had converted his house into a sort of B and B for foreigners. Panjakent is a medium size city but the culture there is very different. The people there are very strict muslims and more conservative and less modern than Khujand people even their dialect of Tajiki is different. It is so different that my students had a hard time understanding it at times. A lot of people speak Uzbek there too. Sunday morning we went to a good (by Tajik standards) museum about the ancient history of Panjakent. Then off to the ancient castle in the city. It was mostly destroyed though.
Then we took a jeep taxi up a primative road that paralleled a river. We went up to a string of lakes 7 in all in this valley. They were called the Marguzor Lakes. The taxi dropped us at the 6th lake and we walked up to the seventh and had a picnic. I guess you can't drive to the 7th. Then we walked back to our accomodations which were a man's house between the 5th (Khurdak Lk.) and 4th (Padrut Lk). It took us about 2 1/2 hours to get back to the house. When we encountered village women on our walk back they would either hide or walk away from us. They were like afraid of us. It was interesting for Aziz and Moni they were almost as much foreigners as I was. After a good dinner prepared by the man's wife we slept outside listening to the sound of the river. It was cold at night this high up. We were the only ones staying at this man's house this night it was really beautiful and I wasn't cold because they provided us with warm blankets.
The next day we went back to Panjakent 2 1/2 hour drive. Then we caught another bus up another valley to the Poet Rudaki's Masoleum. It was a bumpy, dirty, slow bus ride. We looked around the masoleum and ate and then went up to the Camp Artush. We went with a local man's car it took a 4X4 vehical. Then we got up to this old soviet mountaineers camp and found a room. It was raining and cold so we couldn't do any hiking this day. The food wasn't very good and it was expensive and there was a disco party downstairs this night so it was too loud to sleep. But the next day Tuesday we got up and went on a good hike. We left at about 7 am and got back about 2 pm. We saw some high mountians and pristine alpine lakes. There were people living in huts near these lakes for the summer. One of the prettiest lakes we reached was called Kulikalon Lake. I'll have to put a picture. The hike was hard because we gained a lot of elevation in a short time and I'm not in that great of shape. But the weather was perfect. We made a loop and went out a less steep way than we came in.
After that we just wanted to eat, rest and sleep. It was a great hike the mountains, and lakes were breathtaking. When we were on top of a ridge resting and eating lunch an empty plastic bag got loose and got caught up in the wind. Aziz tried to go and catch it but it just elluded his reach. To our amazement the bag kept going up higher and higher like a balloon. We watched it travel a 1,000 feet or so up to the clouds so that it was just a little speck in the sky. We finally lost it in the white clouds but it was seemingly headed for space.
The next day Wednesday we took one car back from the camp and then another car back to Khujand. We would have been home at 1 pm but the Chinese closed the road from 7 am to 7 pm. We arrived at the fray at 11 am. So we had to wait 8 hours by the side of the road for the road to open so we could continue on our way. This is the main road from Dushanbe to Khujand. But in our direction (North) only 80 cars and trucks accumulated from 7am to 7pm. Going South I think it was more. So we didn't get back to HOT Khujand until 9:30 pm. I was dead tired. I was happy to be back to a modern city with "good" food. But the trip was unforgetable.