An Unforgettable Central Asian Experience

The following is a post by Alice Harrison, who recently visited Tajikistan with regional Defence Attaché David Harrison

May appeared to be a wonderful month to visit the Pamirs for those interested in flowers. Every village passed had banks of shaggy, bearded irises planted in its gardens and along the road.  The first of the eremus were opening, covering the grey screes with tall spikes of yellow and white, and poppies, what might have been a form of bottle gentian, and a small, pink form of nanus gladioli crowded grassy areas.  Lilac was just coming into flower and fruit trees everywhere were white with blossom.  Taking the road over the mountains at Shurabod, Judas trees dotted the hillsides, their purple colouring contrasting with the intense red of the soil.  Elsewhere large bushes of yellow potentilla were another reminder of how much English gardens owe to the early plant hunters in the Tien Shan and Pamirs.

With the car altimeter showing 2,500 metres on another hot day, the initial appearance of the hot springs at Garm Chashma, some 40 kilometres from Khorog, was not immediately enticing. The terraces formed by minerals in the water were stained an unattractive brown in places and the crude barricade of heavy, corrugated iron surrounding the bathing area, is not the kind of thing normally associated with places of charm.  There was a mild smell of bad eggs.  Persuaded by my husband to give it a go, enquiry revealed that it was women’s hour in the main basin.  Having stripped off in the open air on the edge of the pool, I joined the only other occupants, two Kyrgyz women, in the water, which was uncomfortably hot to begin with.  Once adjusted to the temperature however, I was able to loll back in the milky, turquoise water absorbing the amazing scenery around the springs, of bare, reddish mountains threaded in places with goat tracks, above a valley punctuated by poplars and, in the further distance, higher peaks covered in snow.  A circling vulture completed the scene, while the splash of the water cascading into the pool from the calcium deposits around it, and the chattering of the other pool users, who were busy scrubbing each other with an uncomfortably jagged looking stone, provided the soundtrack.  Afterwards, the owner of the springs led us up the hill behind them to one of the water sources.  This was enclosed within a dry stone wall and from a small crack in the ground, water oozed unprepossessingly through a veil of lime green algae.   A small shrine had been built in a niche in the rocks on which was laid a number of sets of Pamir Ibex horns.

A bit of banging on the gate eventually produced a gardener who, following the exchange of 10 somoni, let us through the entrance where a small, hanging valley, filled with blossom, opened up in front of us.  The Pamir Botanical Gardens, about 5 kilometres and a couple of hundred metres above Khorog in the Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Region of Tajikistan, are the second highest in the world.  Founded in 1940, today the upkeep of the gardens  is not what it might be but,  on a warm, early May day with the stark, golden screes and rock faces of the surrounding Pamirs visible against a sky of cloudless blue, they were a magical place to visit.  2300 species of plant from around the world are reputedly to be found here, many of the shrubs overgrown and largely unpruned, which helps to give the feel of having stumbled into a secret garden.  Fruit trees abound and were swamped in flower, while neatly planted rows of numerous types of iris, just bursting into bloom, were another highlight.  Our guide, however, saved the best until last, leading us past a beautiful, if rather dilapidated, choikhona to the lip of the valley, beyond a protective screen of Lombardy poplars; here the land fell away and the view in the clear air and evening sunlight, over the town of Khorog and down the valley of the Ghunt, was remarkable. Sadly for the future of the gardens, tourism, on which it largely relies for its income, is substantially down this year following the unrest of July last year, although the Foreign Office does not now advise against travel to the region. For me it was another unforgettable Central Asian experience.