Reaching fifteen minutes way by a day

by Ikronbegim Safarmamadova (Tajikistan)

A leap into the unknown Tajikistan

Travelling and writing are two things, which make me feel good and give me energy. I like travelling very much, especially with adventures. When I go for travel I pick with me a notebook where I take notes of the best, unforgettable, interesting, and surprising memories. Although I have much experience in travelling I would like to describe one of the memorable travelling. When I was in my first course at university, we had given a task to do research, as I studied in History and Right faculty. It was in summer four years ago. We started our way from Khorog town to Ishkashim, one of the rural places of Tajikistan. That took time about four hours to go by car. We reached to a village named Namadgudi Bolo. We put aside our things, and stayed in an old school, which was not used for a long time. In the morning after breakfast our teachers divided us to groups, some of students went to shrine, to castle, to old houses, but for me and three people was task that to find and discover the caves which were in that village. After division of the themes of research we went to the way. It was 9 a.m. we started to search the caves. We asked some local people about the caves, majority of them did not have any idea, but several people told us there is number of caves, they did not exactly know where they situated. With using the binocle we saw the caves from the village. The road did not seem so far, but it had a range of mountains. As we are mountainous people we decided not to take with us anything for eating and drinking. We thought it will take fifteen minutes to reach there. We took with us only a binocle and our phones. We started our way to the mountains. It was sunny day and the weather was very hot. When we climbed high and high to the mountains the weather become hotter than was in village. The village disappeared and we went too far from it. We faced many challenges in our way while climbing. There were big rocks and slippery sand. Gradually, we become thirsty; there were not any water to drink. Everyone climb to a rock and tried to find the road to the caves. When we used the binocle we saw the caves again and we were overjoyed and continued our way. The sand was very slippery and the boys hold our hands and help us to climb. We wanted to use our phones, but unfortunately there was not connection. The boys went for searching for a better road, but there was not any. We followed them and went high we could not go down, because it was as a cliff. We could not find the caves with binocle help as well. We decided to stop, to climb up and turn to the left. Although it was dangerous way, we did not have any chance. On the right side was impossible to walk or even to stand on feet. There appeared a hole. When we went closer that was a huge chine. Looking at that chine we felt dizzy. That was too high, but we realized that if we climb down, we could go to the village through it. It was about forty meters high. During our movement the stones crumpled and we stopped walking for some minutes. We hold by stones and helped each other to walk down. There was a narrow stream and it was very cold and clean. We were absolutely delighted to find water. When we walked through the chine we accidentally looked up and what do you think we saw? There were the caves which we were searching from morning till the evening. We just took a wrong route we climbed to right side of the chine, but they were by the left side. Finally, we went to the village extremely fatigue. Our course mates and teachers were searching for us some hours and were surprise to see us healthy and intact after disappearing in an unknown land.