Hello! After almost a month of inactivity, I finally went to the mountains. We finished last year with climbing the summit of Kungurbuka, and then almost three weeks spent at home, recovering and resting.
The beginning of the year was very active for me. The projects that had been postponed from lockdowns finally began to come to life and for three weeks in January we worked like damned. But it's for the best. The lockdowns of 2020 clearly showed that it is better to have work than not. During this time, I have already managed to visit the mountains twice, but only now I have reached the posts.
In early January, "Mysterious Uzbekistan" announced a trip to the Chatkal ridge and I gladly signed up. Check out was not very early. Of course, not very early by the standards of "Mysterious Uzbekistan" :). We gathered at our appointed place, got into the car and hit the road. Our final destination was located on the southeastern slope of the Chatkal ridge, not far from the town of Yangiabad (translated as "New settlement" or "New city").
One of the reasons for my trip to this particular location (apart from the one that I just wanted to get out somewhere) was a video clip shot by the founder and leader of Mysterious Uzbekistan, Sharof Egamberdiev. In the splash screen for this post, you can see the peak located in the center of the photo. This peak is called "Miner" and its height is 3100 m above sea level. Sharof and his team, shortly before our trip, climbed the "Miner" and the views there are simply amazing!
Of course, while such ascents remain only in my dreams for me, but someday I will also "expose" myself in his films :).
Well, this later, and while we drove towards Angren, towards dawn.
After about an hour or an hour and a half, we stopped in the city of Yangiabad. This is a very interesting and unusual city for Uzbekistan, with a difficult fate (common to all small towns in the post-Soviet space) and good hopes for the future.
Yangiabad was founded in 1953 as a town of miners who extract uranium ore here. The deposits were depleted in the 80s of the last century, but reminders of this are still visible.
This town was built by German settlers They were immigrants, and not prisoners of war as many think - the object was secret and they were not sent here. The German presence was reflected in both the architecture and the quality of the buildings. Despite decades of devastation, the houses are very strong and reliable, designed for a 9-point earthquake. And in appearance they resemble houses from Germany of the XIX-XX centuries.
There used to be a music school here, and despite all the changes in the country, a monument to Peter Tchaikovsky remained here. This phenomenon is very unique for Uzbekstan. There are not a lot of monuments to Tchaikovsky, especially in Central Asia.
Before it was a fairly rich city, supported directly by Moscow. In Soviet times, people came here for scarce goods and clothing. Often, Tashkent residents also bought school textbooks here. But then uranium ran out, the Soviet Union ended and the town practically died out. In 2004, about 9,000 inhabitants lived here, five years later, just over 400 people remained. People sold apartments for pennies and left. And some just abandoned their homes. Now, a renovated three-room apartment in a residential building can be bought for $ 2,500-3,000. The same three-room apartment in an abandoned house can be rented for $ 400-500. And you can pick it up for free, provided that you invest in its repair and general improvement of the house.
Recently, oddly enough, housing has been getting more expensive here. The reason for this is the training base of our boxers. Now there are probably more boxers here than local residents. We joked that this is the most non-criminal and polite city in Uzbekistan - for defiant behavior here it is very easy to get a hook in the jaw. In addition, there is a base for the Olympic reserve, a camp site and areas for alpine skiing. They attract wealthy Tashkent and Angren residents who buy apartments and use them as recreation areas, coming here in the summer and winter seasons.
I really liked these cozy courtyards and three-story houses. I would love to live in such a house if they were in Tashkent. But alas, the infrastructure here suffers - electricity is intermittent, and gas has long been forgotten. But given the growing popularity of winter sports, the growing (very, very slowly) well-being of residents, as well as the state's attention to sports (and therefore the development of educational and training bases) gives hope that the town will be revived. It will be very, very sorry to lose it - after all, it is the same attraction as the buildings of the Timurids era.
Well, let's continue. We drove through Yangiabad along the main (and, perhaps, the only) street and went up to the bridge. Then we disembarked, went through a short briefing and went to the mountains.
On the way through a small village, a hefty dog jumped out at us, barking loudly. However, when it saw a large number of people armed with trekking sticks, it preferred to bark from afar. But on the way back, when I overtook the rest of the group and walked along the road alone, I came across it again. Seeing that I was alone, it jumped over the fence and rushed at me with a loud bark. I put a stick in its direction and swearing loudly, started to move back down the road. As soon as I turned back on dog, it immediately tried to get closer. As I later realized, it was just trying to kick me out of it territory. Because as soon as I crossed some invisible line, it stopped barking and ran back. But I realized this only later, when the adrenaline stopped seething in my blood :). The passage under the dog's escort took just a couple of minutes, but it was a very stressful couple of minutes in my life.
Apart from this incident, the whole trip was excellent. It was very warm and clear, and most of the way I walked in one thermal shirt.
After a couple of hours, we climbed to an unnamed peak, which was about 2000 meters above sea level. There was an excellent view of both the Peak Miner and the surrounding mountains from there.
We made a halt at the top. Some of the participants collapsed on the rocks and dozed off, the other part went to photograph the surroundings.
After resting for a couple of hours, we went back. During the descent, as I said, I ran away from the main group and met a local dog.
Since we descended quite early, we decided to walk a little around Yangiabad and return to the past. In my opinion, these locations are ideal for filming films about the 1940 – 1950 period.
This was my first trip in 2021 and it was very successful. I hope the rest will be no worse. A week later, I set off on a 21-kilometer intensive winter hike in the Tashkent region with access to the already familiar Syurenata. But more on that in my next post :)
!pinmapple 41.147603 lat 70.157918 long Hike to the unnamed peak of the Chatkal ridge, Tashkent region, Uzbekistan d3scr