Travel Guide Sary Tash

At 186 km from Osh, the town of Sary Tash marks the border between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Just after the customs station, the road divides. The A 371 leaves to the east and follows one of the ancient pathways of the silk road leading to China by the post of Irkeshtam. It is now open to tourists, but it is absolutely necessary to have the Chinese visa before coming to the border. If you continue on the M 41, you arrive at the isolated house in the middle of the Kyzyl Sou valley, which serves as a Kyrgyz customs.Bordered to the north and south by a double wall of snow-capped tops where Lenin's peak tops, the valley is majestic but inhospitable. Clouds flow their huge shadows in this corridor permanently beaten by the wind. In winter, temperature can drop to less than degrees.The Tajik customs station is located at the foot of the Alaïski chain. Both customs and veterinary duties are checked on the documents of the vehicles, goods transported and passenger passports. It is impossible to pass without a Tajik visa specifying the towns of Murghab and Khorog. The expectation is not long, especially for trucks. But it is only the first of a long succession of Tajik positions: It is better to get to patience from the first…The road that leads to the Kyzyl-Art Pass, 4 282 m, is a patchwork of holes and bumps frequently visited by landslides, mud flows or avalanches. A laborious passage, both summer and winter. You can reach the collar in a few hours as you can stay stuck several days… Truck drivers sometimes tell stories to shake the city; all have remained at least once frozen in the middle of the winter, degrees or more, the fingers frozen, the supplies exhausted.The alien about on the beauty of the landscape, but the driver keeps a strange smile smiling: The Markansou valley is known as the Death valley. The Kirghizes are forgotten, and the only plant traces are the wood of the electric poles. Even in summer, the temperature falls well below zero during the night. The climate is dry, annual rainfall only reaches 64 mm and in summer, severe winds raise huge dust clouds.In this deadly valley, a few years ago, we could see corpses of horses and mummified camels, the tragic remains of the last commercial caravans. Due to altitude, vehicles drive less quickly, but the Kyrgyz people explain it quite differently. They tell that the prisoners who built the road, perished in hundreds, exhaustion, cold or hunger, and were left without burial along the road. Their ghosts still roam in the Markansou valley, do they want to return home or just have company? No one knows, but it is they who slow down trucks.After the pass of Kyzyl-Art and entry into Tajik territory, the road goes down to 4 000 m and Karakul Lake appears in a turn. This huge emerald blue lake - strangely, its name means black lake - is the largest lake of the Pamir, 380 km ² for a maximum depth of 280 m. It is also one of the largest high-altitude lakes since it is located 3 914 m. Its water is salty, and the Kyrgyz say it is a dead lake because no fish live its own. gelées depths. Yet the west bank benefited from the fresh water of the glaciers, and at the end of the s, apparently unsuccessfully attempted to establish fish colonies from the rivers of Siberia. The lake should be rooted in the fall of a meteorite or tectonic movements of the quaternary era. 100 million years ago, he occupied a much larger area and communicated with the valley of the river Kokouïbel to the south.The analyses carried out since the beginning of the st century show that the level of lake water is increasing again: Severni Island, located north of the lake, was still connected to the shore by a strip of land in 1900. One legend tells us that on the large peninsula south of the lake would be giant graves. A land road, which is practicable in 4 x 4, leads to one of the hunters'walls. It bypasses the lake at the foot of the snowy summits, where Lenin's Peak dominates the valley of the River Kokouïbel, and goes to the Bartang valley near Sarez Lake.The most photogenic customs checkpoint is also the most difficult for trucks. The Poste Lake position is particularly muscular for vehicles returning from Khorog. No one escapes the complete search of the vehicle, including air rooms. No one, except of course those who are not spoken and everyone knows; The road does not make its traffic mystery, but the tourist has every interest in ignoring them.The main road still runs along the border area with China for tens of kilometres. The real border is a little away, and the no man's land separating the two neighbours is the best hunting territory of all the Pamir. The border guards are, he seems, very fond of the «arak», which are locked in this huge barbed-wire corridor.At 4 655 m, humans are not the only ones suffering from altitude, we need to see trucks moving back to the rear, at 3 km/h, the open cover to avoid overheating. We forget his headaches. If winter has been tough and prolonged, yurts will be more numerous along the road because the alpine pastures are still snowy. Those who will have the means to travel more inside the plateau, in the valley of the Oksou, can meet a large number of shepherds and appreciate the hospitality of their yurts.Shortly before Murgab, a trail splits into China and allows to wait for the border crossing at the Col Pass. The border between China and Tajikistan is now open to foreigners, provided that appropriate visas are available in advance.