We drove through a beautiful wide valley filled with fruit trees; farmers ploughing fields and small road-side stalls of apples, onions, melons and squash. The road meandered for a few miles following a dry river bed hemmed in by gentle sloping hills on either side. We eventually came across a track that crossed the river […]
Author Archives: barkertrax
Thoughts on Tajikistan
#1 No men riding horses (well the odd one or two but certainly nothing like Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Mongolia) #2 The Pamir Highway and the Wakhan Valley are beautiful. I recommend Autumn for travelling through them #3 Lots of pomegranates #4 School uniforms are terribly smart #5 Like the rest of Central Asia and Mongolia […]
The Pamir
The M41, romantically referred to as the Pamir Highway, connects Osh in Kyrgyzstan with Dushanbe in Tajikistan. It’s a road of about 1600km that rises to an elevation of 4655 metres. Much of it is unpaved or rough pot-holed tarmac; not much wider than a single lane and is carved out of the mountain sides. […]
Kyrgyzstan: Video
Here’s the lastest installment of our country-by-country video diaries – this time from Kyrgyzstan. Enjoy!
A blog about not going to Iran
When we started thinking about the route home we had three absolute definites: avoid the bureaucratic headache of driving in China, visit Mongolia again and travel through Iran. In fact, I would go as far as saying that Iran was at the ‘top of the list.’
Tajikistan Route
One of the ‘big ticket’ items on the drive home to Frome was always going to be the ‘Pamir Highway’ – a semi-paved roadway that starts in Kyrgyzstan and climbs up on to the Pamir plateau in Tajikistan before slowly descending to Dushanbe, the capital of Tajikistan. I can now report that we have successfully […]
Surprise, Surprise
Nine months passed between deciding that Fromeward Bound was going to happen and finally leaving Tokyo. During that time I did a huge amount of researching and planning – reading blogs and forums, pouring over maps, etc. – and created quite a clear idea in my head of how I thought things would play out. […]
Border Patrol (Night Two)
Setting Due to the road literally being honed from the mountain side with the river raging below; small picturesque villages have settled where the valley, on occasions, widens and flattens. As occasionally happens, dusk started to fall before we had found somewhere good to camp. And so it was we found ourselves having to stop, […]
Border Patrol (Night One)
Setting At the moment we are driving from Khorugh to Dushanbe in Tajikistan. The road follows the Panj River as it meanders between numerous mountains. On one side of the river is Afghanistan and on the other is Tajikistan. At times the river narrows as it flits through tight canons and you come so tantalisingly […]
Grand Design Containers
In the west it seems it’s all the rage at the moment to build houses from shipping containers. However, throughout all of Kyrgyzstan it’s old news and we have seen shipping containers being reused in all manner of creative ways.