After Uzbekistan, we catch up with Noraly in Tajikistan.
Ep. 71 – Crossing into Tajikistan
Ep. 72 – Riding through the mountains to Dushanbe
Ep. 73 – Riding towards the Afghanistan border
Ep. 74 – Riding along the Afghanistan border Continue reading
Category: Tajikistan 🇹🇯
Landlocked countries shown in Green. Double landlocked are shown in Purple
History is full of long and legendary highways but none – frankly – come close to the Silk Road. It’s not just the magnitude (at least 4,000 miles, in more than 40 countries) but the mythic potency of the project. The world was cleft into east and west in the Middle Ages.
But long before, the Silk Road – which has existed in one form or another since the fourth century BC – breached any such divide. While trade was its raison d’être – Chinese silk, of course, but also salt, sugar, spices, ivory, jade, fur and other luxury goods – the road forged deep social, cultural and religious links between disparate peoples.
And
The Silk Road was not a road, but a network. The central caravan tract followed the Great Wall, climbed the Pamir Mountains into Afghanistan, and crossed to the Levant. Along the way were spurs branching off to river ports, caravanserai, oases, markets and pilgrimage centres. Journeys demanded meticulous preparation: the Silk Road and its tributaries cut through some of the harshest, highest, wildest places on Earth.
Read More at The Telegraph (paywall)…
Follow Gary and Monika Wescott as they travel in Tajikistan in July 2014 along the Silk Road on their quest to reach the Pacific Ocean.
The Tunnel of Death, Tajikistan
Visibility reduced almost to zero thanks to large sections with no lighting. Useless headlights which fail to penetrate the fumes. Carbon monoxide accumulation which has already claimed the lives of people delayed in the tunnel. All vehicles must have windows up and airflow on recycle. Potholes which seriously challenged ex-military trucks in permanent 4WD. Exposed reinforcing bars in the remaining concrete road surface had punctured the tires of 2 trucks whose drivers were changing them in the tunnel. Along the length of a mid-tunnel section there are holes as deep as 1.5 meters which are full of water. No roadworks signs and no traffic controls in this single-lane section or anywhere else.
Sounds like fun huh?