Our First Hike

One of the really great things about Tajikistan is the hiking.  When we were here the first time, we did a lot of hiking.  I love being outside, and I love exploring, so hiking is the perfect excuse to be outside for extended periods of time while exploring new places.  There are endless hikes in Tajikistan - literally any creek or river has a path next to it - and the only limiting factor is how far you want to drive for a day hike.  

I have been warning my family for months that the hiking was going to resume once we got to Dushanbe, and they have been dreading the resumption of them for months.  Until this past weekend, they've been able to avoid hiking as life has been busy with social activities, Brandon's work, settling in, and birthdays.  But this weekend was free, and when asked if the children would rather stay home on Saturday or go out (and hike), they all voted to go out (and hike).  So we went for a hike.

I had heard about an abandoned amethyst mine that wasn't too far outside the city, so we decided to go there for our first hike.  William has developed (inexplicably) a passion for amethysts, so he was very enthusiastic about the prospect of going to an amethyst mine where he could find his very own amethysts.  

A friend in the community had done the hike a few weeks earlier with his five year-old, so I figured that it wouldn't be a particularly difficult hike.  The hike was about 2 - 2/12 miles with 1500 feet gain in elevation.  Easy.  No problem.  We could theoretically have driven all of the way up to the mine, but the road reportedly got sketchy after a certain point, and part of the point was to hike, not just explore an abandoned mine.

The evening before our hike, a dust storm blew in, but we decided to head out anyway in the morning as we had plans and weren't going to let a little bit of dust stop us.  The temperature had dropped to the upper fifties, so Sophia decided that if we pretended that it was fog, it would make the whole day feel more like fall, which hasn't quite yet arrived in Dushanbe.

The drive to the hike was straightforward and easy - which was a good way to start out a hike, and not always the way that a lot of our hikes have started in the past.  We found the parking spot right before the road started developing serious potholes and ravines, parked the car (making sure to set the parking brake), and started walking.  Up.

After about twenty minutes of walking, Sophia turned to me and commented, "Somehow I managed to forget that hiking means taking a walk.  Up a hill.  I forgot about the up part." Elizabeth asked when it would all be over, and Brandon commented that his heel hurt from the three-mile run that he and Sophia had taken together the previous morning.  We had left Joseph home as he was sick with a cold, so there was one less person to complain, which was nice.

A good thing about this hike was that it was along a road, so there was lots of room to hike and it was clearly marked.  The unfortunate thing about this hike was that it was along a road, so it just kept going up, and up, and up with no break at all.  Usually hiking trails have some up, then maybe a little down, then some up, then some flat bits.  This was just up.  For two and a half miles.

Two and a half miles doesn't sound like a lot of distance, and usually it's not so bad on a flat road.  But hiking two and a half miles on an uneven gravel road that just keeps going up - for 1500 feet - is a much different prospect.  By the time we reached the mines, every single member of my family on that hike was very Not Happy with my decision to haul them out on a hike that Saturday morning.  Very. Not. Happy.

Thankfully the mine was at the top, and once the children started finding bits of amethyst scattered around the opening, all was forgotten and hopefully forgiven.  The mine was abandoned so theoretically we could have gone in and explored the passages (which friends have done), but we forgot our flashlights and Brandon wasn't very excited about the idea of exploring an abandoned mine.  Something about safety, I think.  

So instead we looked around both openings (there were two) and thought about how much rock had to be hauled out to make those long, dark passages leading deep into the mountain.  There definitely was no room for trucks, so most of the work was done by hand, and there was a lot of rock covering the hillsides around the mines.  

Sophia commented on how much more fun it is to go somewhere like an abandoned mine in Tajikistan, where it's literally just a hole in the side of the mountain where anyone who feels like it can go in.  There aren't any signs warning of the danger, no ropes keeping people out, and you can do anything you want because you're the one who will have to bear the consequences of any stupid decisions you make.  There are so many experiences that my children miss from not living in America, but sometimes I think that doing things like exploring abandoned mines make up for them a little bit.

By the time we started down, the children all had various rocks with bits of small purple amethyst embedded in them, treasures to be lovingly placed in their various hordes and carried around the world with them as a memory of that time we went to the amethyst mine.  Everyone was in a much better mood, which was helped by going down for two and a half miles instead of going up for two and a half miles.

While driving home in the car, everyone seemed to have forgotten their earlier trauma and were happy about the fun outing we went on.  Which makes me happy, because that means more hikes for me.