Tajikistan (Summer 2009):
Shakhdara range and Vanch valley
In
the summer 2009, I did two treks in Tajikistan. The first was in South-Western
Pamir across the Shakhdara range, in the area of Marx and Engels peaks. The
second was at the Eastern end of Vanch valley in Central Pamir. To reach the
start of the first trek (Vrang village in the Wakhan corridor), we drove from
Dushanbe to Vrang through the towns of Kulob and Khorog, along the Panj river
that separates Tajikistan from Afghanistan.
An excellent website on Trekking in the Pamirs is: http://www.pamirs.org/trekking.htm.
The blue rectangles delineate the two trek areas. The red-dot line is the road itinerary to reach Vrang village from Dushanbe. The yellow-dot-line is the itinerary between the end of the first trek (Jelondy village) and the start of the second (Poimazar village). The green-dot line is the itinerary that we took to return to Dushanbe.
2. Trek across the Shakhdara Range
3. Trek in Eastern Vanch valley
On
this trip I was accompanied by Victor Kanonir, a wonderful guide and great
mountaineer from Tashkent. The logistics (transportation, permits) was arranged
by Boris Karpov, who had already arranged my previous trips in
Victor in
town and in the mountain
Pictures from the Dushanbe area:
Hissar fortress
In the bazaar of Hissar
Valley of the Siama river, about 50km north of Dushanbe
