Walkenfeld Taxi Service -- Accepting Payments in Rhubarb

We took a drive into the mountains in a new direction today -- traveling out of town headed west, towards the fortress town of Hisor and the aluminum mining town of Tursunzode, but turning north at Shahri Nav (New Town), into to the Dairo river valley.


It was quite a day: we took the road beyond where it deserved that name; passed many young men either hiking, gathering various plants, herding cows, or driving groups of donkeys through the valley; and stopped for a short walk when we judged that the water we'd have to ford was too high. (You can see pictures mostly from this part of the day starting here.)

This valley was truly beautiful -- the most impressive thing was the great gushing volume of water in the river and all the creeks, streams, waterfalls, rivulets, and other flows feeding it, thanks to our unbelievably rainy spring. There were few people, beautiful deep green hills and valleys, and, throughout, the sound of the rushing water.



After our mini-hike (which Anya and we really enjoyed), Dan decided to have another look at the water and found that, while it was truly freezing, as I suppose spring mountain runoff ought to be, it wasn't in fact too deep for us to ford. So we went further.

Then we encountered an old Tajik guy walking, which tends to happen. As we passed him, he yelled something at us, so we decided to see if he wanted a ride. So we picked him up, and he was going to the village at the end of the road, so we kept driving, probably for about 30 minutes or so. He took us a bit further, so we could see how the passable road ended, and then we took him to where he needed to go. He brought us out some rhubarb (it is one of the plentiful things this season -- people say it grows in the mountains, and although it is sold in the markets in great volume, Tajiks I've asked say they don't actually cook it in anything, just eat it raw with salt) , and he said the next time we come we should spend the night and save time for hiking around the area. We met one of his many sons and exchanged phone numbers.

Then someone who I assume was another son, but might just have been another of the residents of Hakimi village, asked if we would take passengers back down, and we felt a bit unable to say no. So we took him and presumably his wife and daughter back pretty much all the way to Shahri Nav, and although these folks were probably perfectly nice, we didn't have much to say to one another as we sped down the valley, unlike on our shorter ride with Mr. Hajji. We definitely felt a little more like a taxi service at this point, but what are you going to do...

The main downside, which actually was not as bad as it's going to sound here, was when the daughter (maybe 8 or 9 years old?) segued from a consumptive cough into barfing -- luckily, apparently that was the commentary going on in Tajik with her mother seconds before the full transition, and the father asked us to stop and the mom got the door open in time. Not early enough to avoid the upchuck getting all over the lower door (plastic, yes, but also home to the rear speakers -- ouch).

Oh well, we mopped up what the mother hadn't and traveled on homeward, figuring we had done our Tajik mitzvah for the day, and certainly earned the rhubarb, which we have just sampled in the form of a rhubarb (with a little bit of strawberry) crisp. Mmmmm.

Oh, the postscript to the journey came when we turned into our neighborhood and noticed what looked like the last bits of unmelted snow lying around on the ground. We puzzled over it for a few seconds, until we realized that another huge hailstorm must have hit not long before. It must have been quite a downpour -- the trees and plants (including the poor, already undertended rosebushes) really took a beating!