Welcome to the Wakhan: two nights in Langar

The eventful ride to Langar

After getting my visa I headed over to the taxi lot for Ishkashim and Langar. Walk through one of these lots and you'll be approached by people asking where you're going, and if you're lucky they'll either be going there or point you to someone who is. Then you start negotiating price, which can be tricky for locals and foreigners alike. The general rule is that you try to get to car lots as early as possible, although when traveling from a market town to nearby rural villages most cars leave after people have had a chance to shop at the market. Ishkashim itself is probably somewhere between the two options: it's lose enough that people may drive up to Khorog in the morning for the market, but it's also big enough that it has a decent market of its own. Langar is far enough away that no one would drive to Khorog just to do shopping, however.

Despite this, and despite my not leaving until the afternoon as a result of obtaining my Afghan visa in the morning, I was able to find a vehicle going all the way to Langar, for 100 somoni.

Of course, this being rural Central Asia, things are rarely as simple as they seem. Even though the car was full, we ended up making a stop at the nearby village of Dasht, which is just above the Khorog-Ishkashim road but utterly hidden from the valley below, so that we could pick up some cargo from one of the passengers' family. We ended up staying in Dasht for fifteen minutes or so, stopping at a couple of different houses before continuing on our way. Pretty standard stuff. One of the ladies returned from one of the houses with a big bag of apples which she shared with the car.

Poplar-lined road in Dasht village, above the road to Ishkashim.

Hay stacked precariously on the roof.

Rooster just wandering around the village.

A Tajik farmhouse, with Afghan mountains on the other side of the Pyanj river.

Looking north down the Pyanj towards Khorog: Afghanistan on the left, Tajikistan on the right.

Looking down the main street in Ishkashim, with the Hindu Kush in the background.