czesc!
assalam alaikum!
privet!

why "light and silence"?
per analogiam - "light and sound" shows.
i made my own shows using lights of the stars and the moon, simultaneously with the lights of my car and headlamp, and the silence of the desert.

why the "white-red"?
these are colors of the polish flag. a small one, which has been travelling with me (on the antenna on the car) for last years, i gave to 77 years old polish woman, since 1960 living in vrang, pyanj river valley, tajikistan.
she was born near lvov before the second world war, formerly a polish city in present ukraina. then, after the war, when the polish-soviet border had moved to the west, she has been moved with her family to lugansk (by stalin, which generally means the soviet authorities). there she met her future husband, working as a miner. they married and later came to badakhshan (pamir) to a small border village - vrang.

six weeks of rambling, new altitude record for my car, huge stone balls of unknown origin, gorgeous canyon akergeshin, the sea that doesn't exist anymore, "light and silence" shows in the wilderness, more than 2000-years excavations, illicit-bought fuel, gold madrasah, passable once for several years bartang valley, a pole woman living on the tajik-afghan border since 54 years, hakim - a mysterious homelessman, hospitality asian customs and polish jesuits.
along the way, lots of adventures in the fantastic scenery - vast spaces of steppes and deserts, azure depths of alpine lakes and towering mountains of the pamir, hindu kush, and tien shan.
welcome to central asia:


light and sound - akergeshin canyon, kazakhstan.


mystery stone balls. such balls are widely found in many places in the world, varrying age (from 250 million to 5 thousand years old) weight, sizes and materials made of. in kazakhstan and uzbekistan, on the ustiurt plateau you can find singular balls or even entire fields of the balls.


"striely ustiutra" - the arrows of ustiurt plateau. paleolitic structures made for hunting, looking from space in the shape of arrow. hunters chased the wild herds into the structure. at the top of the arrow the animals felt into a cliff or a big hole. there were also small strongholds at the sidwalls for hidden archers. some of the animals hunted in paleolitic times still alive today - eg. saiga antelope (saiga tatarica, but less then 50.000 saigas has survived of more than 1,25 million in 1900 year, mosty klilled in early 20th century and after soviet collapse), or kulan (equus hemionus kulan), or turkmen black-tailed gazelle (gazella subgutturosa)


the wanishing sea - aral lake (aka aral sea). the soviets wanted to make soviet union the greatest coton producer in the world - they moved the water from amu-daria and syr-daria to the desert building the net of thousands canals. but most of the water disappeared in the desert. before the catastrophy the surroundings of both rivers were full of plenty oasis, great agriculture feeding not only the locals and making them rich. soviet sick and lame ideas destroyed the region for long, long years. there were ideas to move water from great siberian rivers back to present uzbekistan, also. happily, i didn't happen.


formerly the sea shore - now 70 meters high cliffs.


moynak - formerly rich fishing harbour and health resort, now a small poor settlement about 150km from the present seashore.


about 2300 years old excavations near nukus. archeologists from nukus university qualify these potteries as scrap.


dakhma - zoroastrian "silent tower". a place for funeral ceremonies. zoroastrians believe that the human body cannot contaminate the earth, the water, the fire or the air, so they place the body on such towers and expose it for vultures to eat. i write "believe" not "believed" - there are still about 200 000 zoroastrians, mostly living in india and iran. zoroastrianism is one of the oldest monotheistic religions in the human history - religion counting almost 3000 years.


khiva - the most beautiful medieval city in uzbekistan.


mabijon - tajik living in bukhara, owner of real bukhara-style house adapted for a small hotel. it is not a coca-cola hotel stylized for a bukhara house, it is real homestay. in soviet times mabijon was a sportmaster.


bukhara - nadir divanbeg madrasah (quran school). on the ivan (the portal) you can see two dragons (phoenix) carrying pigs (dirty animal for muslims). similar tile inlays you can see in samarkand (registan, sher dor madrasah) - there are two tigers hunting for antelope. yes, this is islam, but. my theory is: for the ruler (tiger, phoenix) all was halal - allowed. even iconoclasm breaking. and of course indian influence to central asia.


samarkand, tila kari. golden madrasah.


obikingob valley, pamir darvaza, tajikistan. a combat vehicle, destroyed during civilian war of early 90's. oh, i found a soviet general inside ;)


pyanj valley. tajik bank on the left, afgan bank on the right. and polish flag one the antenna.


vanch valley. russian geographical society glacier head morraine, 24km long, the south-west neighbour of the fedchenko glacier, the greatest in pamir (over 70km long). the bridge was demolished by "syl", a huge, abrupt, sudden flood resulting from the storm high in the mountains.


bartang valley, tajikistan. some kilometers forehead there is sarez kul - an artifficial lake new-created in 1911, resulting from the huge landslide - over 3 billion tons collapsed from the slope and blocked the murgab river. now the usoi dam holds almost 17 cubic kilometers of water (about one-fifth of genevian lake in swiss). the dam is very unstable - the water trickles not from the top but from the bottom of the dam! when the dam crashes (resulting an earthquake or another huge lindslide) the water will stop near termez on the tajik-afgan-uzbek border, some 800 km away, destroing all one the way.


bartang valley - passable only sometimes, depending on the weather. sometimes - it means once per few years. this (and previous) year was exceptionally dry.


bartang valley - anyway it took us (me and a friend from poland accidentally met in khorog) almost three days to drive over 300km.


karakul lake - 5 million years ago there was a meteorite landing here. and there is no one river draining it.


ak baital pass - the new record for my 20 years old "mazeno-bus" (4655m above the sea level), although this is not its first trip to asian mountains. and not the toughest place it has passed in the mountains.


did i mention about "tough places"? welding and bonding necessary. 15 hours of work. it happens on the road. and off the road ;)


hindukush mountains - the range in afganistan and partly in pakistan. on the right you can see noshaq (7492m, highest in afganistan, 2nd highest in hindukush), in wintertime climbed first and only by poles in 1973 (and then winter himalaism era started), and tirich mir (7,706m, in pakistan, highest in hindukush).

to be continued.

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