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The Pamirs, the roof of the world (My trip to Tajikistan. Part 1)   

Tadaima!
I am sure many of you were wondering ‘where is Assel?’ It has been long time since I wrote my last blog, and I was off for 1.5 month. So, last Saturday I was very very very happy to meet with you guys :-D

Well, this spring vacation was an interesting one for me, though it was not like a vacation at all^^ I went to a Central Asian country called Tajikistan (u can take a quick look at a map) on my fieldwork, let’s say a small research (I hope it was so...). I spent over there more than a month, enjoying local delicious food (plov, mantu, lagman, etc.), landscapes of the Pamirs (go to Wikipedia if you don’t know much about this part of the world!), talking in Russian (yatta!)..., though I was a bit busy with interviews&collecting data in libraries. The one thing I really hated was the weather. I expected to have very sunny, warm and ‘dry’ days, but mostly it was snowing and then melting, sometimes raining.

If you ask about the research results, well, they do not satisfy my expectations. But, I could meet and talk with the political party leaders (oppositionists), officials, experts, and even asked to give a lecture to the Slavic university students (it was really enjoyable). And my worst memory is that it was just like a torture to work at the library where it was always so cold. I felt sorry for the stuff who work there in winter time with no heating. I know some of you guys are really interested in my research so we can talk about it later in details^^But here, I would like to share with the impression of my trip to the Pamirs.

If you looked at map, you already know that the Pamirs lie at the mountainous heart of Asia, and I would say in addition, that 93% of the Tajikistan territory consists of mountains. The Pamirs are also called as the roof of the world, and it was an intersection spot of the British, Russian and Chinese Empires, later their Central Asian diplomacy has been known as the Great Game.

From Dushanbe (a capital city) to the main city of the tajik Pamirs (Khorog city) it took 15 hours of driving (about 500 km). And it was indeed the most extreme road I have ever seen. At night no lights, somewhere it was hardly called as a road. But for a traveller who makes his first visit to these lands this inconvenience may be not so important and worthy of note, because he is so delighted with the landscapes come into his view and just gazing out of a car window at the mountains with the white snow hat, or at the Panj river (which flows hundreds of kilometres from East to West, being a natural border between Tajikistan and Afghanistan), either at the afghan mud-house settlements on the other side of the river. So did I. I was so much busy to take photos, with a happy face, all the way :-D perhaps, that’s why my tajik fellow-travellers looked at me as I got mad...

Pamirians are very open and kind people, and I would say pure and naive to some extent. Most Pamiri people are Ismaili Muslims (Shiit Muslims), they speak their native languages which are totally different from the Tajik language. Even in towns it seems like their relations are close to the community relations, they help each other in difficulties (e.g. funerals). I always appreciate the Central Asian hospitality, and this time could fully enjoy how the Pamirians treat their guests. By a lucky chance, I was invited to one pamiri house by a stranger (a Pamirian girl with the very beautiful black eyes) and stayed with her family for a couple of days. It was a lucky chance not only because I did know where to go at 2.30am after arriving in a new and completely unfamiliar place, but because I had a chance to know what is a pamirian family. I saw their traditional house, drunk their salty milk tea ‘shir-chai’, saw the way of praying, knew a lot of new and interesting things which probably I would not find in a book. Indeed, it was a great experience I will never forget!
To be continued...

Assel (Kazakhstan)
The Pamirs, the roof of the world (My trip to Tajikistan. Part 1)_e0169998_17194052.jpg
The Panj River forms a natural border between Tajikistan and Afghanistan.
The Pamirs, the roof of the world (My trip to Tajikistan. Part 1)_e0169998_17204022.jpg

by chitchatcafe | 2011-04-01 17:25 | 札幌 英会話 サークル

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