At the start of August we crossed into Tajikistan, winding up and down through the precipitous passes of the Fan mountains. After a bumpy 12 hour ride we arrived at the Hotel Mercury in Dushanbe, where quite by chance I ran into an old friend from London, Celia Topping. Celia was en route back from Afghanistan, having trekked to the source of the Oxus at the behest of Time Out magazine. Celia had accompanied a ground-breaking new outfit called Secret Compass, who put together one-off trips to some of the world’s most wild and neglected places. You can see her article here.
In Dushanbe we hooked up with Said and Gulnazar, friends of friends who were to be our companions for the next fortnight. They drove us south, skirting the Panj river, roiling greenly like lava made from jade. On the far bank Afghanistan began with a few scattered houses and a steep mountainface stretching thousands of metres upwards. We were in the mighty Pamir mountains – sometimes called ‘the roof of the world’, or ‘the feet of the sun’. To our left stood the Hindu Kush, straight ahead the Tien Shan. The Altai range not far beyond, the Himalaya close behind. In Tajikistan, you see massive mountain peaks in every direction, more of them than I ever thought possible.
The Pamir mountains are overwhelming, but the people who live there are the greatest attraction of all. Their hospitality is fabled, and their sense of humour is something you don’t forget. They’re for the most part Ismaili Muslims, adherents to a branch of Shia which reveres the Aga Khan. The Ismaili faith is especially strong in the Pamirs, as the entire region would have been decimated by famine, it is said, during the Tajik civil war of 1992-97, had it not been for the Aga Khan’s intervention. Pamiris love music and dancing, and it seemed to me that the women are very much in charge of their households. The Ismailis of the Pamirs are a great antidote to all the unhelpful stereotypes of Islamic life that we’re so often subjected to these days.
Anyway, to the music. Here’s a short excerpt, father and son on rubab and drum. This was played in a traditional Pamiri house, in the village of Yemts, in the Bartang valley, Southern Tajikistan, at about lunchtime. It strikes me that a lot of the music from the Pamirs has a similar lopsided rhythm.
This next vid is a very short one, because it’s not even nearly in tune or in time. I still sat enraptured by this gentleman’s songs of faith and devotion for at least an hour. And then we ate some salty fried eggs. His name is Khoshqadam, which I’m told means ‘Happy Gait’.
If you want to find out more about Tajikistan, see Robert Middleton’s excellent website. Or you could buy his new book. I don’t believe I’ve ever read a better guidebook, of any country.
Next instalment: Xinjiang and Kyrgyzstan…
