Tag: animals

A 50 meters high flame, Samarkand, and a jungle in Uzbekistan (May, June 2025)

We left our camp spot near the last lake in Tajikistan and searched for a spot with good internet in a small town near the border to Uzbekistan.
This mission turned out to be pretty difficult. After almost two hours of searching, we gave up and decided to cross the border to Uzbekistan and drove to Samarkand.
Samarkand was beautiful. It was Rackis and my anniversary and we had a nice dinner. After weeks in remote places, it’s nice to have some city life. We visited the most famous places in the city.
We are not so much interested in city sight seeing, but the light show on the most famous historical buildings was nice and beautiful.
This place was interesting as well. A center of self made, local workshops where you can even do workshops.
In Samarkand we met some other travelers. It had been a while. But for me most of the talks with them were not that interesting: where are you from… , where are you going… , oh, you are traveling for so long already…,  the locals don’t know how to handle trash…, do you have Instagram…
After some days in the city, we went up some low mountains to have it colder and to do a pretty long hike.
Our camp spot was beautiful.
The weather was not so clear, but still the hike and the views were awesome!
And we did some climbing to reach the top most part of our trek.
This is one of the summer camps the local shepherds and their families are using. Sometimes the men stay up in the mountains alone and sometimes their families are joining them.
Here’s our tour on komoot.
An original Snikkers cake in one of the many mini markets. It’s funny what stuff they have.
We went on and found a pretty nice, remote spot near a pretty touristic area. There we did another hike. These pavilions on the photo were very new and had a great view but not accessible for cars because the track leading there was closed. Here’s our tour on komoot.
We continued and cleaned Rosinante in a small car wash. A nice guy came by and gifted us some cola. He loved Germany and was so happy to meet us.
For us coming from Germany has never been a problem so far. Most locals even love Germany because they often see an opportunity to earn more money in it. Sometimes we tell them that the work mentality and demands could be quite different, sometimes we just nod and tell them that life in Germany is more expensive.
Some maintenance work in our next spot. It took us some years to recognize that we could sharpen our axe with the grinding pads on our electric driller instead of using our sharpening stone.
Racki continued making wonderful bracelets. This one was especially amazing.
She made it for a friend and it had so many beautiful details.
Our next spot was in a jungle near an offroad track leading to a waterfall. On our way there, we recovered an offroad taxi which had slipped in  the muddy ditch in a small village.
This is one of the offroad taxis. Most of them are old Russian jeeps. If these are the only cars you encounter and there are no ordinary limousines on a road or track, you know that the track will get serious.
The view from the jungle. Pretty rare in the stan countries.
From our jungle place we did a short hike to the beautiful waterfall.
Next stop in a small town called Shahrisabz and some sightseeing.
Old guy out of stone.
From there we went to the next water reservoir/ lake and found a nice spot.
It was pretty hot and everybody was looking for some shade or a refreshing swim.
As nearly always, a donkey rider came along and we had a conversation about this and that with Google Translate, arms, and hands.
From the reservoir, we went to a beautiful canyon.
We found a beautiful camp spot on a hill with a nice view.
And beautiful visitors.
One day, we took a longer hike. See it on komoot.
In the canyon, we found a lot of beautiful stones for Racki’s next macrame creations.
At our next spot, Racki made me this little alien friend called Helmut. We love him and since then, he’s been hanging around in our cabin.
The place we found, was located on a hill with a nice view to the mountains on one side and to the next city in the other. The approach was pretty offroady.
When we were driving on the road, we saw a pretty big flame in the distance and joked about that maybe the locals did something a bit stupid and that this might be the reason for the flame. But quickly we thought that the flame was just an ordinary flame of some gas mining or refinery.
But when we saw how high this flame was from our camp spot, we googled. Turned out that a year ago, there was an accident while drilling new boreholes in one of the gas fields. The closest villagers had needed to be evacuated and the flame had been ignited to prevent gases from injuring the locals living in that area.
This flame was huge. Especially at night, it looked crazy! We don’t know how high it was, but it must have been around 50 meters.
Our next spot, you can see Rosinante at the bottom of the photo, was pretty close to a settlement. We had a lot of visitors and short talks about Rosinante etc.
We did a nice hike to a waterfall we had found on the map. But there was no waterfall (anymore). But still the hike was nice. We met a lot of goats, sheep and their shepherds.
Instead of a waterfall there were only small springs. Here is our tour on komoot.
We went on and found another beautiful camp spot. The view was amazing.

Special: Rock climbing area “Varzob” in Tajikistan (April 2025)

With some research, we had found this rock/ sport climbing area in Vazob, Tajikistan. And from that point on, it had been clear, that we wanted to visit it.
The crag looked amazing!
And the scenery was fantastic!
It took some time from the road and our camp spot to reach the climbing area, but it was absolutely worth it.
And of course there were always some donkey friends to meet on the path.
The rock was located in pure nature and we loved climbing there.
Although the routes were sometimes pretty adventurous and it was often not obvious which anchor points we should use in the multi pitches.
So everything was a bit experimental and we would not recommend this area for beginners.
We managed to climb four routes.
This one here is the toughest one on that crag.
The overhanging is completely part of the route 🤣
We did not do this one…
With the multi pitches, it’s possible to reach the 110 m high top of the crag.
Some equipment in the wall was not in its best shape. The left bolt got completely destroyed. It’s hard to see on the photo. But we found ways to keep everything save.
We climbed for a couple of days and stashed our climbing gear next to the rock to not have to carry it on the 30 to 45 minutes approach every day.
And our camp spot was pretty special as well. Close to the main road but even closer to a big river so that the sound of the river was louder than the road.
Every evening some children from the next village came visiting us and gifted us food. After the first day we already had to much, but they wouldn’t have left without a successful delivery.
In return we gave them some chocolate and some of Racki’s awesome hand-made bracelets.

Detailed information about the crag, you can find on The Crag.

On the way back to Kazakhstan (September 2024)

From Osh we went in the direction of Bishkek and Kazakhstan.
This time we took the main road and stayed a couple of days at the Toktogul Reservoir.
We continued our tyre rotation and our cheap Chinese tyres still looked very good after all the gravel roads and stones in the Pamir region.
The brake pads of the rear brake too were in good conditions.
Rosinante’s warning indicator for the fuel filter went on again and so we changed the fuel filter.
Made new friends.
Chilled in the nice scenery.
And enjoyed the view.