24th of September:
The day before I was thinking what is so special with this Wahhan valley, just stony not green at all. Only thing we met were some Camels from Afghanistan which "illegally" crossed the border. Ok for them it is just a river (:). But going on I understand; we were just on the top/entrance of the valley and now we go into it. The street close to rocks goes down in serpentines, below us the river or the border to Afghanistan. Sometimes we have to drive in a side valley the street on the other side just 100 m away. A deep canyon in between impossible to cross. At the Afghanistan side there are also side valleys which go south. They open the view for us to the 7000m high mountains of the Hindu Kush in Pakistan. This views are great, hard to describe and also hard to keep on a picture. To make the picture perfect we can see the Afghan caravans on the other side, which let us feel like looking back in time. We go down and it gets warmer. Shepards and boys with their sheep herds coming down or up from the steep madows to walk back to the their village. It is already afternoon when we arrive in the first village of the valley. We try to get some bread in the magazine. But they do not have. Everybody is doing his own bread. But in one magazine the guy tells us just to wait he will get some from his home. During that time a lot of people coming to pick up two energy saving lamps. I ask why and they tell me that the President of Tajikistan gave this as a present. Every family gets two lamps for free. It is funny to see how the kids try to cheat. Everybody comes with other family names. The owner almost gets crazy but finally he is laughing and takes it easy. Anyway he knows his people in the village; 200 families and 400 lamps.
Meanwhile a police guy waits for us at the car and wants to see all documents. He looks angry and starts to complain about our black back windows. I start to laugh and ask him what he wants. He says it is not allowed in Tajikistan. I tell him there were no problems at the border, it is original and I just bought the car like this. What should I do?! Häää ????? He gives up.
We go on and find a nice place at the river to camp. In the late afternoon a guy comes with his son. The usual; where you come from and ..... He wears a old cap and his glasses look like the one from Candi just 1 cm thick. He seems to be a little bit of a drinker, but still nice person. His son looks quite cute in his traditional clothing. Finally his father tries to explain me that this wide deserted place is his territory. The place we stay is almost in the river since now it has low water. He looks at the car and at me and asks so how much would I pay. I do not know and actually I do not think it is his place. Anyway he says he will come back next morning, but we did not see him again. Maybe he forgot after a vodka that it was/is (:) his territory. In contrast to before we feel the presence of former tourist which travelled through here and changed already the minds of the people in the valley.
(N 37.00353°, E 72.54684 °)
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