Lake Iskanderkul. Tajikistan

Tajikistan is an amazing country. If you compare it with Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, you can safely call this country optimal in terms of the ratio of beauty and diversity of nature, safety, prices and good attitude of local residents to travelers. The Fan Mountains and the Pamirs are the greatest, most beautiful places that cannot be forgotten. People are very kind, and the farther we climbed from the big cities, the warmer we were met. In general, Tajikistan is a great, almost ideal country for car travel. The main minus is that it is very far away (if we consider our option of a trip from Moscow).

I will start my story with one of the five incredible places in Tajikistan that the Lonely Planet guide strongly recommends. This is a mountain lake Iskanderkul.

Soon after Khujan, boring steppe landscapes gave way to mountain beauty. We were approaching the Turkestan ridge. Before us were its northern slopes, rather gently sloping, with juniper forests, as if stamped with threads by wires of power lines. Somewhere high in the dense haze massive glaciers could be seen.

Then we somehow sharply drove into the famous Shahristan tunnel, the longest road tunnel in the territory of the CIS countries. The opening of the tunnel in 2012 provided year-round automobile communication between the northern and southern regions of Tajikistan. Prior to this, in winter, the northern regions of the state were cut off from the main territory of the country for 6 months.

The length of the tunnel is more than five kilometers. For several minutes spent in this dark tube, the eyes managed to get used to the weak light. And so, when they emerged back into the light, we all went blind for a moment. Squinting and in a hurry lowering the sun visors, we got a completely different picture, as if we were teleporting to other lands, to other mountains.

Instead of forest sloping slopes, the road spun along steep rocky cliffs, now and then diving into the avalanche and anti-mudflow tunnels. The majestic five-thousandths of the Zeravshan ridge proudly towered over all this.

The road as a snake meandered and descended lower and lower to the Zeravshan river. He was laying his ears. Periodically, there were trucks that crawled like snails, trying not to burn the brakes. We drove no faster, because every now and then we stopped at photosets.

Initially, we planned before dawn to get to Dushanbe, or rather to the Teahouse of Rohat. But we did not take into account the fact that our path ran through the Fan Mountains ...

And the Fan Mountains is one of the five must-see points of “must see Tajikistan” from the guide. Therefore, we drove slowly, more even stood and took pictures)

The small village of Khushekat.

The life of provincial Tajiks. It differs from my childhood village memories only in the multi-tiered buildings.

The sun was setting fast. And by that time we managed to go only half the way. It was a pity to go to such places in the dark, so we decided not to rush to the capital, but to stay in the Fan Mountains for one night.

We rode between high cliffs and glanced around. There was nowhere to sleep in such places - perhaps right on the road. But here again a guide came to the rescue, which just prompted us about Iskanderkul Lake. It was only 30 kilometers to the right of the main road.

Initially, when planning the route, we somehow lost sight of this place and were not going to go here. But everything somehow happened by itself, and when the sun had already disappeared behind the mountains, we saw a lake in the distance. A lake is like a lake, nothing out of the ordinary. From this point, it looked like a small hydroelectric reservoir.

It was getting dark. We began to descend to the water. The road was bearable, accessible for cars. That's just a quick ride on it did not work.

Tents were already set up in the light of a bonfire and lanterns. There was no moon in the sky, but even in the light of the stars it was clear that we had arrived in some cosmic place.

In the morning it was very cold.

When the sun came out, we warmed ourselves up and realized that we were in a paradise.

According to legend, Lake Iskanderkul got its name from the name of Alexander the Great, who was called Iskander in the East. The word "kul" means actually "lake", hence the name - "Iskanderkul". Alexander of Macedon allegedly traveled here on his way from Central Asia to India.

One of the legends says that during his Indian campaign Alexander the Great came across a village that did not want to give up. Then he ordered to direct the riverbeds to this village and flood it, as a result of which a lake was formed.

Iskanderkul - is rightfully considered one of the most beautiful mountain lakes in Tajikistan.

The lake is located at an altitude of more than two kilometers, so for us it was a kind of acclimatization night before the Pamir route.

Charged with the energy of this place, we went to Dushanbe. Although the soul asked to stay in these places at least for another day ...

On the way to the city, another tunnel awaited us. Anzob. Not at all as clean and beautiful as Shakhristansky. Puffs of exhaust felled from the thick darkness of the northern portal of the tunnel. We took a big breath of air and hurriedly closed all the windows.

The tunnel was designed by specialists from the institutes Gidrospetsproekt and Tajikgiprotransstroy in the 1980s. Construction began in 1988, but was suspended in 1993 after the collapse of the USSR. The tunnel was opened only in 2006, but work on the completion of the tunnel continues to this day.

Unofficially, motorists call this tunnel "black ass".