Temperature: chilly in the morning, beautiful  during the day! Altitude: highest point climbed – 2,100 m

With a day off driving we arranged for a guide to take us on a 15 km trek of the area to take in waterfalls, the panorama of the valley and the famed walnut grove, plus a delicious barbecue picnic. What a glorious day. The weather was clear, we were out of the car and had incredible scenery all around us – and it was so right to be out of the city.

The famed ancient walnut groves, tended by the villagers of Arslanbob but owned and controlled by the State

Our guide, Ziad, was a gentle mannered man in his mid twenties and relatively new to guiding, having been a herdsman, but knew the area inside out and gauged our capabilities and set the pace expertly. We chatted the whole day learning about his village and way of life while we helped him learn new English phrases and pretended our knowledge of French was better than it is! – he was keen to learn as much vocabulary and grammar as we could yield.

The view from 2,100m

By the ‘Big Waterfall’

Looking down into the village of Arslanbob

Confidently crossing the mountain stream!

From right to left, our guide Ziad, M, the BBQ cook and his daughter

Looking down into the valley

The ‘Little Waterfall’ 

Six hours of walking saw us back to our guesthouse and reverting to juvenile ways of secreting our stash of beer so we could have a ‘livener’ before another supper of plov. For anyone who has seen the series Ambassadors (a Warren and Mitchell production fabulously accurate in satirising diplomats in ‘Tazbekistan’) it was plov, plov and more plov – all with different names but basically rice with boot leather meat and very, very well cooked veg. We ate the lot!

Walking back up the steep track to our guesthousewe inspected at close quarter the state of the ground which we were to cover in the car the next morning (it also gave us a chance to catch our breath and ease the limbs after our long day’s walk).