Through deserts and oases of central Asia

by Ella Sykes; Sir Percy Sykes

From now onwards we saw much more of Nadir, who came from the Sarikol district, and showed his Aryan descent in his boldly cut aquiline features, his big dark eyes, black beard and moustache. He was strikingly handsome, and would have passed very well for a Spaniard, except that, when he took off his white felt Kirghiz hat, his shaven head looked oddly out of keeping with the rest of the picture. He was most intelligent on any matter connected with sport or the country, and was accustomed to the use of field-glasses, through which his keen eyes swept the hills unceasingly. Yet he did not understand a watch, and our method of computing time conveyed nothing to him; in fact, when my brother spoke to him of “hours” he said reproachfully that he hailed from Sarikol, where such things were unknown. I admired his gift of making every one work; for, although he was merely my brother’s huntsman, he arrogated much authority to himself and ordered about the guides, and even our servants, in the most masterful way. He could turn his hand to anything, was accounted an excellent singer and was quite aware of his fine appearance, being fond of decorating his hat with a bunch of primulas that set off his handsome face to advantage. He had of course the defects of his qualities, one of his failings being that he was so determined to pose as omniscient that he occasionally gave us wrong information; moreover, his deep-rooted contempt for the peaceful Kirghiz also led him astray, as he sometimes refused to pay attention to their advice as to tracks and camping grounds.

To return to the march, long boulder-strewn defiles led us eventually into a gravelly waste where we saw ahead of us the Great Karakul Lake, and a group of akhois gleaming white in the distance held out hopes of rest and food. But suddenly a violent sandstorm, one of those “mountain devils” that blotted out the landscape, came on so completely, that it was quite a surprise when I found that we had reached a stream, on the further side of which stood the beehive-like dwellings. I was half-blinded as I staggered into a dirty akhoi, smelling strongly of the kids and lambs that had lately been herded behind a prettily coloured matting; and, with my face swollen from the snow and sleet on the Katta Dawan, my eyes sore from the sand and my whole person grimy with dust, I did not feel at my best when four gaily attired Kirghiz women with towering white headgear came to call upon me. One was a good-looking, rosy-cheeked girl, who said she did not know her age, but thought it might be twenty. She had a beautifully embroidered headgear bordered with silver buttons and ending in bossed silver chains which hung over her ears.

I felt too tired to play the hostess well, and found the ladies rather inquisitive, as they fingered my pith-hat, slipped their hands into my fur-lined gloves and examined my habit; in fact the manners of this tribe were the worst I encountered, and so constantly was I peeped at through the many holes in the felt covering of my akhoi that I had to shorten all my toilet operations considerably.

Although our baggage yaks had started from camp at 7 o’clock that morning they did not arrive until 8 P.M., and of course we got nothing to eat until an hour later, and before I went to bed I had to open the store boxes in order to provide my brother and Nadir with three days’ supplies for a shooting expedition in the mountains bordering the lake, on which they were to start off at dawn on the morrow.

We were now in Russian territory, and at nightfall four Cossacks rode up to the akhois with orders to escort us, and next day they accompanied me and the servants to the Russian post where we were to stop. This consisted of a series of rooms opening on to a courtyard, the whole built of brick and surrounded by a high wall. It had evidently been cleaned up in our honour, and the corporal who was in authority here ushered me into a white-washed room with a table and a couple of stools, and was astounded at my request that he should open the double window. As soon as my belongings had been brought in I mounted Tommy and went off, accompanied by Jafar Bai and my camera, to see the lake. It is exquisitely situated, with a background of snowy peaks picturesquely serrated, the water and the great gravelly plain being ringed about with mountains partly covered with freshly fallen snow, the Trans-Alai range with the magnificent Kaufmann peak rising up into the sky. The water of the lake was an intense sapphire blue, with broad streaks of purple and emerald and a wide band of salt efflorescence round its shores, the whole reminding me of pictures of the Dead Sea.

Captain Cobbold, who visited the lake in 1896, mentioned the sandy ridge running north and south that divided it; but the water has risen since then, and at the time of my visit there was no sign of a division. He also spoke of its fish, and it was disappointing to hear on all sides that there was no life in its bitter waters: it is stagnant, no animal drinks from it, and the only birds I noted during my three days’ visit were a pair of Brahminy ducks and an occasional vulture and raven. The salt efflorescence made the ground rotten in places, and once the horses, which Jafar Bai was holding while I photographed the group, sank into a kind of quicksand, from which we had some difficulty in extricating them. This district is called the Khargush Pamir (Pamir of the Hare), and I felt that the name must have been given in irony, as it is really a desert, boulder-strewn in some parts, sand-strewn in others. The grazing is so poor as to be almost negligible (which probably accounted for the high charges that were levied upon us by our late Kirghiz hosts), and the Russian post-house overlooked a dreary waste of solidified ridges of sand, in appearance much like the low mud mounds raised over the dead. I thought it a most depressing view, but fortunately it did not appear to affect the spirits of the Cossacks; for, on the arrival of half a dozen soldiers who had driven from Osh with supplies, the whole party started dancing in the little courtyard. One man played the concertina, and another, small and well-made, clad in buff coat, blue trousers, long riding-boots and a grey sheepskin cap, would have been a worthy member of the Russian ballet corps so popular in London. He and his partner danced with tremendous zest and agility, though their faces never for an instant relaxed their serious expression as they rehearsed the old themes of attraction and repulsion, masculine boldness seeking to conquer maidenly coyness. Then on a sudden the tender melody would change to something wild and barbaric, and the dancers became warlike, were enemies, exchanged threats, feigned to attack one another and stamped their feet menacingly, somewhat in the manner of the blood-stirring ballet of Prince Igor.

There was much excitement at the post when my brother’s first trophy arrived; but the head was small, and as he and Nadir had heard that larger rams might be found elsewhere, he decided that we had better move on.

My readers will see that we had had some trouble in reaching the Pamirs, but when once we had arrived I was astonished at the ease with which we travelled from place to place. For the greater part of our tour we were on a high plateau which in reality consisted of valleys so filled up with the moraines of the glaciers of centuries ago that, as Sir Francis Younghusband puts it, “the bottoms of these Pamir valleys are level with the higher summits of the Alps.” Owing to this, the mountain ranges were often shorn of much of their grandeur as we surveyed them from a height of thirteen or fourteen thousand feet, though some of the panoramas we were privileged to see were unforgettable in their superb majesty.

I have travelled among the Swiss Alps, and know something of the Canadian Rockies, the Elburz Range and the Caucasus, but the mountains of the Pamirs are far wilder and more savage in appearance than these, because of the entire lack of life at their feet. In Switzerland, Canada and the Caucasus the foothills of the great ranges are clad with pine and fir; long grassy slopes gemmed with tiny flowers give a charm to the scenery, and there is usually bird life. Even the barren Elburz has juniper and other scrub on its lower slopes and there are grass and flowers in its valleys; but here we could travel for days in a desolation that was almost terrifying.

Often we did not see a human being during the whole day’s march, the only signs of life being an occasional vulture and sometimes a few snow pigeons, crows, choughs and the ubiquitous marmot. It was a red-letter day if I came across swallows, finches, desert larks or the handsome but uneatable Brahminy duck; indeed my horse would actually sometimes shy if we met a Kirghiz on the lonely track.