We were a bit slow getting underway this morning as we had to wait until our fellow campers moved their vehicles out of the way before we could manouver our monster out of the tight parking place.

Once under way we had a leisurely drive for a while on not-too-bad road and then gradually the road revealed its true nature. The river valley narrowed, the road surface deteriorated and we were driving through the most amazing river gorge winding our way along the steep side of the gorge on a narrow shelf road that at times was simply a pile of dirt and rock. Just to add spice to the driving challenges we passed through many small villages with their VERY narrow main streets where the roads surface was even worse than the main part of the road.

The narrow river valley gave us great views of activities on the Afghan side of the border and Nina was able to get many photos of the people going about their daily chores.


Towards the end of the afternoon we found a place on a high bluff with space for us to pull off the road and with a good breeze blowing so we stopped thinking this would be a good camping place, and it was for a few hours. But about 8:00pm a Tajik border patrol knocked on our door and through the usual sign language told us that "we could not park here" and that 3 km down the road was a place we could park. Indeed 3 km down the road we found a police check point, and a truck stop. The officer manning the checkpoint clearly knew we were coming because he pointed us to the "parking lot" almost before I asked him where it was.