Journey to the lost world. Baysun, Uzbekistan

Hello! In my previous posts I announced a two-day trip to the southernmost region of Uzbekistan - Surkhandarya. It's a shame to admit that for me Surkhandarya has always been associated with intense heat. Here is Termez - a city that constantly sets temperature records. In summer, it is always several degrees hotter than in Tashkent. But Baysun showed me another Surkhandarya. I only once visited Surkhandarya - about two years ago I went with the team of “Mysterious Uzbekistan” to Buddhist Termez and devoted this trip to a series of essays on Steemit.com under the general title “Directly to the South!". This region impressed me so much and therefore, when I saw the announcement entitled as a trip to the "other worlds of Southern Uzbekistan", I immediately became interested. After that when I saw the photos in the announcement, I signed up without hesitation.

"Mysterious Uzbekistan" announced a trip to one of the regions of Surkhandarya - Baysun. I knew just a little about Baysun - from the lessons of history, I remember that somewhere there is the Teshik-Tash cave, where was found the skeleton of a Neanderthal girl. I also heard that this find is like pain in the neck of a "classical" anthropology. Before it is believed that Neanderthals were primitive creatures. Later it turned out that they were not so primitive and the find in Teshik-Tash confirms this. That girl had a grave. Moreover, it was the grave into which some gifts were stacked. So, it means that Neanderthals were quite reasonable and moreover, they already had some kind of religious cult and some ideas about the afterlife. In addition, somewhere else there are traces of dinosaurs who lived here more than 60 million years ago. Well, perhaps that's all.

So, we left Tashkent on Friday night. I got the upper shelf in the compartment. By the way it was my first trip on the upper shelf - I usually try to avoid them. We rode and chatted until almost midnight, then the conversation faded away and I fell asleep under the snoring of my fellow travelers. Despite the fact that I overslept for about five hours, I woke up pretty fresh. On trains, I try to get up early to catch my morning exercise before the rest of the passengers wake up. Because the toilet will be always busy.

We arrived in Baysun at 8 a.m., unloaded onto the platform, where Choraka and his assistants were already waiting for us. Choraka (or rather Chora-aka, where Chora is his name, and “aka” is a respectful form of addressing a man) is a long-time partner and friend of Mysterious Uzbekistan. He has his own guest house and cars, and he is the actual organizer of all trips around Baysun and its environs. He is wonderful, funny, kind and helpful person.

The weather began to deteriorate and dark clouds were gathering in the sky. According to meteorologists, rain was expected only in the afternoon. Meteorologists were lied, as usual. Rainfall began not in the afternoon, but in the morning. Furthermore it was not a rain, but snow.

According to the previous plan, we had to immediately go from the station to our first location - the Daroi Kalon gorge. But almost the entire group woke up quite late and did not have time to have breakfast on the train. Therefore, we decided to first go to the guest house, have a snack there and only then go on. Having a quick breakfast, we loaded into cars and went to Daroi Kalon direction. On the way, we bought "tandyr gust" (literally "tandoor meat") - this is a popular and tasty dish of lamb cooked in tandoor (clay oven). The peculiarity of this dish is that lamb is covered with spices and juniper branches, and then baked in a tightly closed tandoor. The meat is very fragrant and soft. This dish is especially well prepared in Kashkadarya and Surkhandarya regions. In general, Surkhandarya is a region of meat-eaters - there is not enough water and it is expensive to grow fruits and vegetables, but there are plenty of lambs. Therefore, here is very difficult for vegetarians.

Our first location was Daroi Kalon gorge - translated from Tajik as "Great Gorge". Why is it from Tajik? Because it is closer from Baysun to Dushanbe than to Tashkent. Since ancient times, Zoroastrians Bactras have lived here, who later became Tajik Muslims. Different eras and different conquerors left a mark in the gene pool of local residents. Here the Greeks and Macedonians were noted, as well as the Turks with the Mongols. In general, it’s not easy to figure it out - the local story is rather complicated, but very interesting. If I start to go deeper, this post will never end :-).

So, we came to the village, the name of which flew out of my head and we hit the road. Passing by, I noticed that the local soil has a red tint because there is a lot of iron.

We walked from about a kilometer to the beginning of the gorge. The weather gradually deteriorated and became colder and colder.

We got to the gorge and went deep inside. So it is tempting me to say that "mighty rocks surrounded us, ascending upwards." But it’s not really rocks. This is not a stone, but clay pressed over millions of years, which is quite fragile. Once upon a time, the sea splashed here and bottom sediments were pressed against each other, but water and wind for many years carved canyons and caves from these bottom sediments.

On the way, I noticed that grass had already begun to break through and bloom crocuses. Feels the approach of spring.

We delved into the gorge, which had no end and edge. Exactly here I saw how quickly the weather could change. In this post, the photos are arranged in chronological order and the difference between the first and last photos is only a few hours. And in the case of Daroi Kalon - this is generally an hour and a half.

We climbed up the gorge. Soon a light snow began to grow, which intensified with every minute. Soon a real snowstorm began and the stones were literally covered with snow before our eyes.

We hid from the snow under one of the eaves and lit a fire. We took out our thermoses, cut the stocked “tandoor gusht”, and started to lunch but we haven’t a lot of time for relax. We waited a little and as soon as the snow fell a little, we went back very carefully, as the snow soaked the soil, turning it into slippery clay.

In the gorge it was still bearable, but in an open area a gusty wind and snow flying towards me pierced my whole face, and softened earth stuck to my boots.

Thank God, we finally got to our cars. The warm interior of our car seemed to me just a paradise. :-) We went to the next point of our trip. In Derbent Gorge there is a famous spring of Khujamoy-ota.

According to legend, this Khujamoy-ota wandered with his people. Not 40 years as Moses but still for a long time and at some point they began to die of thirst. There was no water around, and Khujamoy-ota prayed to Allah to help. Allah gave him a sign, ordered to hit the staff with a stick on the rock and Khujamoy-ota immediately did it. The rock split and a spring of healing water clogged from there. The place is very popular and revered by the locals and in the summer there is a lot of people The water in this spring is considered holy and healing. This is proved by the fact that it can be drunk without prior purification - simply type in a mug and drink and nothing bad will happen. At the same time, just 10 meters away, another stream flows across the road opposite and if you drink from it, you can poison or seize an intestinal infection. In those ancient times, people noticed this feature and endowed the water from the spring with magical properties. However, now it is the XXI century and scientists have found that the source of this healing spring is either glaciers lying higher in the mountains or ice masses accumulated in the voids above the spring. As the temperature rises, the ice melts, flows down through the numerous capillaries (also filtered there) and goes outside through the cave in the photo below. The temperature of such water is about 4 degrees Celsius and most harmful organisms do not survive in such water. On the other hand, water in a stream opposite the spring flows along the slopes of the hills, warms up and all sorts of bacteria appear in it. Therefore, you can drink it after heat treatment.

We took pictures near this holy place and went further into the Kaptarkhona gorge, which means “Dovecote” in Uzbek. The wind has carved numerous cornices here, in which it is very convenient to twist nests. True, I did not notice any pigeons.

Snow and cold wind did their job, so only the most desperate and restless went to Kaptarkhona. Guess who was among them? ;-). The rest team chose to stay in warm cars.

We quickly ran through the gorge but did not go further and after taking a couple of photos turned back.

The daylight was already drawing to a close, and it was still necessary to return to the guest house.

Snow stopped and the weather began to improve. The clouds parted, giving way to a blue sky.

We went to a hill with a magnificent view of the city of Baysun. See the mountains opposite on the below photo? We went there the next day. Very, very picturesque places, which I will describe in the next post.

In the meantime, we went frozen and hungry to the cozy and warm guesthouse of Choraka. On the way, we bought cognac, which was safely consumed during dinner.

Hearty plov, cognac, a cold but rich in impressions day did their job. We relaxed, chatted cheerfully and went to sleep. Since it was still a guest house but not a Hilton hotel, we slept all together in three rooms. Women in one room, men in two others. The most feeble member of our group gave the most deafening trills. But fatigue overcame his snoring and I fell asleep.

In the next post I will tell you about the amazing City of aeolian castles and the Martian landscapes of the Kyzyl canyon.

!steemitworldmap 38.195266 lat 67.204349 long Journey to the lost world. Baysun, Uzbekistan d3scr