Travel day – Kokand (Qo’Qon) back to Tashkent.
After recuperating in Kokand for all of yesterday, I am starting to feel better. The trip back the way we’d come was much more interesting to me now that I was somewhat cogent. The mountain peaks around us (not high enough to retain snow through the summer) as we drove had us craning our necks out the front and side windows of the car. Bekzod graciously stopped a couple of times, and even took us on a side route to the small village area of Chodak where there is a suspension bridge.
There is a river below the bridge and quite nice little mountain village nestled along it with a profusion of lombardy poplars and other greenery that mostly hid the houses and what not. The bridge itself was not really what we’d bargained for – being made of rather old planks of wood across three horizontal cables and then two higher cables to hang on to with some prima facie netting on the sides. It ran at least 200 feet above the valley floor and swayed venomously as we attempted to cross it. There are no side-to-side guywires to prevent movement and so it was heart-in-mouth for most of the traverse. I had vivid memories of the balloon ride I’d taken with family in Egypt in 2013 that resulted in, two weeks after we’d returned home, in at least one balloon catching fire and the unbelievable horror of people plunging hundreds of feet to their death. This scenario played through my mind on a loop as we staggered across the rickety thing.
Once again, temps in the mountains hovered around 25C or so and it was gorgeous to feel that (back in Tashkent this evening on arrival it was 38C).
So here are some thoroughly average images, but give you an idea of the day.
Across the valley was this odd sphere. Zooming in, it looks like a map of the face of the moon?
House nestled in the village below the suspension bridge:
First view of some of the bridge ‘victims’ ahead of us:
“Come on kids, get in!” “Noooooooooo”
Graveyard across the valley some ways down from the village (not drawing any suspension bridge parallels, but….):
Shot from the car while on the highway back:
