Journey through Chaganian or the second day of terribly beautiful adventures in Boysun, Uzbekistan

Hello, today I would like to tell you about the second day of the terrible beautiful adventures in Boysun. This time there was much more beautiful than terrible. From my previous post you probably remember that the day before, we had been kneading the mud all day and soaking in the rain.

Nobody wanted a repetition of yesterday, so we made adjustments to the tour program. Instead of another hike, we decided to take a ride in the picturesque surroundings with a rich historical past.

We left before dawn and most of the way I dozed off in the car. From time to time I woke up, convinced that it was still raining and fell asleep again.

We left very early, as we planned to go for a ride around the vicinity of ancient Chaganian. Chaganian is a historical region, which today is part of the Surkhandarya region of Uzbekistan and northern Tajikistan. Now, on the site of ancient Chaganian, there is a modern Uzbek city with a Tajik name - Denau. It was in its vicinity that we traveled.

Frankly speaking, when writing this post, I planned to use a well-known and tried-and-true trick - to give a catchy title of the text associated with the ancient history of Uzbekistan (especially, we have no problems with historical sights), to lure the reader with some beautifully mysterious ancient oriental name and then smoothly move on to modernity.

And so in order to lure the reader I began to surf the Internet for information about Chaganian. It is somehow undignified and disrespectful to limit myrself to a couple of words from Wikipedia. And imperceptibly for myself, I was carried away by this topic. It turned out that the history of this area is much richer and more interesting than what is written in Wikipedia.

So, in the Middle Ages, there was the Chaganian region. Actually, in medieval sources this area is called Jaganiyan, which gradually transformed into Chaganiyan. It is believed that Jaganiyan is an Arabicized form of the name Saganiyan, which in turn is an ancient ethnonym associated with the Sakas, a people who lived here in the 2ndcentury BC.

At present, the territory of this medieval region is part of the Altynsay, Boysun, Denau, Kumkurgan, Sariasy and Shurchin districts of the Surkhandarya region of Uzbekistan.

And although the name Saganiyan first appears in the memoirs of the Chinese pilgrim Xuan Zang, who traveled here in 630, settlements in this territory were already at least in the 4th century BC during the conquest campaigns of Alexander the Great. By the way, according to the data of the abovementioned Xuan Zang, there were as many as five Buddhist monasteries in the "Chi-go-yen-ne" (Chaganian).

Such a fertile region as Chaganian always attracted conquerors and Chaganian was part of various empires - the Tocharian, Arab, Samanid ... But it was a very conditional part. As they would say today - as an autonomous region with very broad powers. For example, the Chaganians minted their own coins. Their rulers were called not governors, but chagan-hudats - i.e. The Lords of Chaganian. And to the capitals of the empires, which they were part of - the Chaganians sent not representatives, but full-fledged ambassadors. This, for example, is reflected in the wall paintings of the main throne room, found at the Afrasiab settlement in Samarkand.

Actually, at the time of the trip, I did not know all this. From my school history course, I remembered that somewhere here, relatively nearby, there is the famous Dalverzintepa - which is more than 2300 years old. But that's probably all. While preparing this post, I read a lot of interesting things about the local area and decided to come back here someday and combine mountain climbing with a city tour or some kind of ethnographic tour. No joke, the descendants of the wounded soldiers of Alexander the Great, whom he left here for treatment and recovery, live in this region. High in the mountains there are villages where fair-skinned, fair-haired and green-eyed people live, who speak the Tajik language and whose life has not changed for hundreds of years.

But let's return from the distant past to our days. On the site of the ancient city of Chaganian there is now the city of Denau, whose name is translated from the Tajik language as "New settlement". Why Tajik? Because before main part of Denau’s population were Tajiks in spite of the fact that this city locates on the Uzbekistan’s territory. Denau is also famous for being the only place in the former Soviet Union where sugarcane was grown and rum was produced. In addition, there is the Prayer House of the Intercession of the Mother of God of the Russian Orthodox Church. Unexpected for southern Uzbekistan, isn’t it?

We slipped through the just awakening city and plunged into the mountains.

It was cloudy and sometimes it rained. However, we moved exclusively by cars, from time to time going out to take pictures at observation platforms. Therefore, the drizzling rain did not bother us at all.

Falcons flew overhead. There were quite a few of them here, but it's a pity that they kept too high - it was impossible to take a detailed photo.

We climbed quite high - probably about 1000 m above sea level and therefore from time to time we were covered with clouds that moved very quickly. It would seem just found a suitable angle, but while you take out the camera - the whole panorama is already covered with clouds.

Almost all the time we drove in this way - entering one or another cloud. Sometimes the visibility dropped to almost zero and I wondered how the drivers could find their way accurately - because they didn’t slowed down.

We drove around the neighborhood taking pictures of everything. But the air was the greatest pleasure - fresh, clean and thick.

The clouds now opened a small piece of blue sky, then again everything was covered with white milk.

On one of the hills we found a large clearing and decided to dine there. The location is just great - a beautiful picture of the surrounding mountains opens up. Choraka and the drivers lit a fire and cooked fried potatoes with meat - a very satisfying, high-calorie and incredibly tasty thing!

In the meantime, while lunch was being prepared, I wandered around the clearing, photographing the surroundings.

But now, lunch is over and it's time for us to go back - we must have time to return to Choraka's house, take a shower, have dinner and catch the train.

Driving through Denau, I saw a funny fast food stall – DFC - Denau Fried Chicken. I think Colonel Sanders would be surprised at how popular he is in the south of Uzbekistan. :)

We passed Denau and drove towards the hospitable house of Choraka.

We returned just before sunset. While we had dinner and packed our things, it got completely dark and the moon came out.

We drove to the station along the familiar road, got on the train and headed back. Two days passed almost imperceptibly.

Well, here comes the end of a terribly beautiful adventure. It rained for the next week and I decided to take a little time-out. When the weather more or less stabilized, I signed up for a trip to the Tavaksay waterfalls. I was here in winter and I was very interested look at the waterfalls in spring. Looking ahead, I will say that the waterfalls did not disappoint me!

!pinmapple 38.581255 lat 67.964467 long Journey through Chaganian or the second day of terribly beautiful adventures in Boysun, Uzbekistan d3scr