Welcome! Come in! Tea?

 

“Choi? Chay?”

These Tajik and Russian words will long echo in our ears and our hearts. They are more than an invitation for tea. They are a way into people’s homes and lives. They are reflections of a kind of hospitality people in today’s busy world don’t seem to have time for any more. These words have come to mean “Tajikistan” to us.

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Lost in the Long Stretches

We trudge forward. Hours drag on.

Each step brings us to another curve leading to a long stretch of alpine nothingness. It’s just us alone in the world, heads down and walking different paces alongside the Panj River that sometimes meanders a few meters below or rages through narrow gorges.

There’s comfort in solitude. There’s unity between the human spirit and the natural world. There’s also a simultaneous sense of bigness and smallness, being a speck in the shadow of mountainous greatness while having a heart large enough to notice the smallest rock sparkling in the sunshine.

It’s easy to get lost in these long stretches in between Pamir towns. The monotony invites a meditative calm, a peace that comes with moving at about three kilometers an hour. It often, too, stirs restlessness and a string of unconnected thoughts anxious for answers or impatience from feeling like we are going nowhere fast.

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Langar – Khorog

TORNEM A CAMINAR !

FINALMENT REPRENEM LA NOSTRA RUTA A PEU !!!!

Molt breument per qui no hagi llegit les nostres entrades anteriors, direm que caminades Tailàndia i Birmània, reprenem la nostra ruta a peu a Langar, una petita població a la vall de Wakhan, a la punta sud-est de Tadjikistan i davant d’ Afganistan, que es troba a l’ altre costat del riu.

Després de Birmània, no hem seguit per Bangladesh i l’ Índia per evitar el monsó i fem ara el centre d’ Àsia per evitar el seu duríssim hivern.

Per què Langar? Per que és possiblement el primer poble que ens trobarem / trobaríem seguint la nostra ruta des de l’ Índia i continuant per Pakistan. Anant cap al nord de Pakistan i suposadament creuant un trocet d’ Afganistan, entrarem / entraríem a Tadjikistan arribant a la vall de Wakhan. Fent la nostra ruta entrarem / entraríem per Langar, així que és des d’ aquí Langar que reprenem la nostra ruta a peu.

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