Advertisement
Published: April 20th 2018
Edit Blog Post
Day 5 and the 3rd day of our Wakhan Valley detour. We spent the day in Langar, we didn’t want to just rush through everywhere and given we were nearly halfway through we thought a rest day in Langar would be perfect.
We had a slow start and then we went down to the main part of the village which is very spread out across the road. We were staying up a level effectively on a flat piece of the hillside which meant that we got great mountain views.
As we were walking through the village we got invited in for chai by a family. The eldest daughter spoke good English and while we were there one of her brother’s turned up he didn’t speak great English, but did speak a little. He offered to take us somewhere beautiful out of town, so we negotiated a price. We didn’t really know where we were going, other than it was beautiful. We jumped in his car and bumped down the road, until we peeled off the road down some kind of 4WD track in his car until the car couldn’t go any further. Then by foot we walked up another
bloody big hill, out through some fields then across a ridgeline. We realised that we were going to a fort. Now we were wanting to go to this particularly fort and had got ideas about trying t walk there from our homestay, we knew it was a long way but we realised we probably would never have found it. We likely would have seen it from the road but it was unlikely we would have been able to work out how to actually get there.
It sits overlooking Afghanistan, the river border takes the form of a horseshoe and it sits out on the point. We walked past the fort to the ‘top’ of the horseshoe and were surrounded by Afghanistan on 3 sides. It felt slightly weird. The views were amazing again.
It was the heat of the day, but we just took our time and there was a slight breeze so it wasn’t too bad. When we came back he dropped us off at his family’s house again and we headed off on to try and find something resembling a shop. We were told that about 2km down the road there might be one, but we
ended up walking to the next village. We had no idea how far we’d walked.
We’d just decided to turn round and head back when the 2 Italian guys that we’d travelled with for our first 2 days on the Pamir Highway went past in a 4WD. The road was really really quiet, and at one point we’d sat at the side in the shade and just took a break, like the locals. We’d realised then when locals try and flag down any passing vehicles, because there really was hardly any traffic on the road. So we were amazed to see the Italians!
Emma managed to shout and whistle, and their driver heard and stopped. We jumped in and got a lift back to Langar with them. They were staying at a homestay kind of outskirts of the village, but we were grateful by then not to have to walk all the way back. We had chai at their place and then together we set off to find a shrine. We got rough directions from their driver because he spoke reasonable English. The small shrine is quite unusual, there are a lot of Marco Polo sheep skulls/preserved heads.
We were joined by some local guys and they gave us the download on it, which was pretty cool.
After that we walked up the hill towards our homestay and showed the Italians the path up to the petroglyphs, not that they were likely to find any more petroglyphs than we did, but you go up for the view as it is just so spectacular.
After a lot of walking the legs could certainly feel it, but it was nice to have a day of not being at all in the jeep.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.079s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 15; qc: 28; dbt: 0.0454s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Dancing Dave
David Hooper
Langar
So you endured the climb and saw the petroglyphs...well done. T'was too bloody hot so we did not do so! Any pics? And a different fort to the one we visited. Isn't it grand the views the soldiers would have had?