Just for the anecdote:

In Sary Tash we found out that there was a sheep’s head in the fridge in our room…
Quite a surprising encounter!

At least it wasn’t a Yak head.

By the way I’m getting quite tired of the taste of mutton in every dish I got for almost a week… So today I went to have Indian food! Delicious.

And I also met a crew of Americans studying Farsi with the American Council in Dushambe… Quite interesting!

The Pamir Highway

But what’s that? Let’s see:
Last time I wrote I was in Osh, where there’s the biggest bazaar in Central Asia – which I did not see. Anyways, there I met a Swiss couple and we took a car together all the way to Murghab, a village in the middle of nowhere. Actually it’s not in the middle of nowhere; it’s in the middle of the Pamir, the remotest corner of Tajikistan, which was maybe the remotest republic of the USSR, and still one of the remotest country in the world. Also you people should not be fooled by the word ‘highway’ in ‘Pamir Highway’; indeed on the picture above is one of the nicest pavement experienced, and most of the time it’s just dirt road. Another specificity: most of the Pamir highway is above 4000m above the sea, with the highest pass at 4655m high.

One of the many stops on the way...

So, to resume: Starting from Osh we drove all the way to Sary Tash, 150km but strangely it took almost 8 hours! This is maybe because we had to stop every 20min to let the car – an old Russian jeep – cool down. In Sary Tash we got invited for dinner by some Kyrgyz guys who thought we deserved it.

Karakol lake, at 4000m above sea level

The second day we continued to the village named ‘Karakol’, which strangely lays on the shore of the lake ‘Kararol’, merely at 4000m above sea level. This was also the entrance to Tajikistan, although the landscape and people were pretty similar to Kyrgyzstan. I also had to deal with Yak derived products to my great tragedy (I really hate the yak taste…) but it remembered me Tibet.

Finally the 3rd day we made it to Murghab, which is in fact a village just as lost as Karakol. From there I took a minibus to Khorog, the last stop on the Pamir Highway. But for that I had to wait the whole morning that the car fils up, and then endure 9h of dirt road with the highest pass at 4200m high only .

But from then on the road started to go down all the way to Khorog, going in the bottom of a green vallee on the side of a torrent. There some houses were appearing more and more on the side of the road, with Tajik people walking or just hanging around the road. And what a surprise!!! Tajiks actually look much more European than any people I’ve met so far!

I’m really glad I’ve ended up here, and I’m looking forward to discover more of this country!

Bishkek main square.

Ah Bishkek! I could have love it, but actually I have started to hate it by now, and this needs an explanation.

Actually Bishkek has quite a unique ambiance, if I could say. I had no idea what to expect when I took my flight from Urumqi, China. My plan was to make a new Chinese visa, and then slowly go back to Kashgar, thus continuing my original itinerary. This would not have been so bad, more like a little alteration to the master plan, although more expansive.

Ha! This was before getting to Bishkek. Indeed, it was only when I came back from the lake Issyk Kul on Sunday night that I understood that [almost] everyone at this Sakura hostel knew each others, and more important why?

The reason is simply that Central Asia is a hell concerning not only the visa situations, but also transportation between the countries. It’s mountains everywhere, with only a few passes open, and even less open to foreigners. For example, to go to China there are 3 passes in 2 countries, and in these 2 countries (Kazakhtan & Kyrgyzstan) it’s at the time of writing impossible to get a Chinese visa. This is because a letter of invitation (LOI) is recquired, and in Urumqi they refuse to send them after the riots. Ah.

But in Tajikistan they don’t require a LOI, so I gonna go there! Easy! Ha. This is without counting on the fact that the pass going to China is forbidden to foreigners, so I would need to go back to Kyrgyzstan, but for that I need a new Kyrgyz visa, which costs 70$. Is your head spinning? This is nothing yet.

To go to Hong Kong in september the only way by land is through China, or maybe through Afghanistan, but maybe I should avoid this area…
So then I though I’m just going to travel around Central Asia, but in Bishkek all visas are complicated to get! An Australian friend waited 2 weeks for a LOI to get the Uzbek visa!!! This is rediculous!

So actually everyone in Sakura is on the process of getting a visa, for all different strange countries: Turkmenistan, Iran, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, China, India, etc… Why so complicated?

So this week has been absolutelu boring, yet funny in a way. As I was seating in the common area of the hostel I was watching the different people coming and going, with the redondant sight newcommers getting more and more depressed, almost to the point of crying, as travel plans get more and more alterated. Ah.

So now I am still thinking about what to do. I went today to the Tajik embassy to do the visa, and I’ll go there through the Pamir Highway next Saturday I think. In the meantime tomorrow I’ll go camping around the Kukuluk lake (something like that) untill tuesday, when I’ll collect my fresh Tajik visa…