Today was to become an active day – and as such a welcome change to the previous days, which were mostly spent driving.

Our first activity was a hike literally in the backyard of our homestay; the van took us for the three minute trip to the trail head, from where we started a walk up the mountain, first passing by the village cemetery – until we eventually hit a petroglyph field.

While the petroglyphs may be of historic significance, for me they were not the main attraction … there were simply too many of them, most looking fairly recent (rule of thumb: if it’s in Cyrillic, it is very likely not ancient); some depicted animals, but looked too new / too clean (considering this was on an open rock face open to the elements). So I am not really sure, what to make out of these.

But then however – was the incredible view of the valley, that got better and better the higher we made it (we made an elevation gain of around 200m – up to well above 3000m). There were perfect views of the Pamir river (flowing in left to right on the picture above ) meeting up with the Wakhan river (coming in in the middle of the picture) – thus forming the Panj river. Also we had some good views towards the other side of the river, i.e. the Afghan Wakhan corridor.

The walk – in and out – took more than an hour; it may have been taxing given the altitude … but it was nevertheless very rewarding … what we did not know at this point though … there were more and better views to come today.