Into the western Pamirs

After this past week's sybaritic visit to sunny Santa Catalina, it's time to pull myself together and confront the strenuous adventure that I -- for some unknown reason -- have committed myself to undertaking in September.

I've never been to Central Asia.  What do I know about Central Asia?  Well, it used to be part of the USSR.  It lies, historically, on the old Silk Route to China.  Its peoples were pawns in the Great Game between Britain and Russia in the nineteenth century.  And, of course, that Russian fellow, Alexander Borodin, wrote some rather nice music about the "Steppes of Central Asia."

That's about it.

Most of my visit this year will be not to the steppes -- the flat grasslands -- but to the mountains of Tajikistan.  These peaks, the Fann Mountains, constitute a western section of the Pamirs.  I'll be hiking with a British trekking company, a group of no more than twelve hikers.  We'll be hiking and camping in the Fanns for eleven nights.  Compared with my 2011 climb to Renjo La, in the Everest region of Nepal, the altitudes I encounter on this hike should seem somewhat trivial -- most of our campsites will be in the area of 12,000 feet.  We'll be doing a lot of up and down hiking, however.  We'll be hiking about six or seven hours each day, while dipping down maybe 3,000 feet into canyons and regaining the same elevation before dark.  

We also have a personal option, near the end of the trek, to climb to Chimtarga Pass at about 15,000 feet.  (I've discovered that these options tend to be "optional" only if one doesn't mind wholly surrendering the hard-earned respect of his fellow hikers!)

As a treat, once we emerge from the mountains at the end of the trip, we'll drive across the border into Uzbekistan, where we'll spend two nights in the medieval city of Samarkand -- a central city on the Silk Route, conquered in turn by Alexander the Great, the Muslims, and the Mongols, and made capital of his empire by Tamerlane in the fourteenth century.  A lot of history, a lot of architecture.

We end our trip by taking the train from Samarkand to the Uzbek capital of Tashkent, and thence flying home.

I have just four months to get myself in shape for some vigorous hiking, and to read up on my history of Central Asia.  The time will go fast.  I doubt if I'll ever get around to following the trekking company's advice that I pick up some useful phrases in Tajik before leaving home -- someone had better be ready to translate for me!