Navabad, Tajikistan | 28 September, 2006 | $5.83
Although there are a few official home stays that are approved by a Tajik organization we spent most of our nights on the road in the Wakhan Corridor and Pamir Highway with our driver’s friends. Navabad was the first place we stayed after leaving Khorog. We don’t know if we were actually in Navabad but it was the closest mark on the map to where we suspected we were. These towns aren’t written up in any guide books or on their maps and I was very glad that I bought a detailed map of the Pamirs from the Swiss embassy.
We arrived at dusk and spent the remaining daylight outside on the road watching the farmers walking home from their fields and playing with the children that quickly discovered us. The house we stayed in had no electricity or generator, which seemed to be the norm for the Wakhan Corridor. After dinner we sat around a low table with only one candle while a grandfatherly man wandered in and spoke to us for twenty minutes in a language we didn’t understand. Without electricity and only an old man and a crossstich Lenin to entertain us we were in bed by seven. We paid our host what we thought would be appropriate and were fed breakfast (stale bread and tea) and dinner (noodle soup).
