The Karatag Gorge

The Karatag Gorge lies on the southern slopes of the Hissar Range, 52 kilometres west of Dushanbe. It's the closest mountain area to the capital: leave in the morning and you can be sitting by a mountain lake by lunchtime.

The gorge forms part of the Shirkent National Park. Wild fruit trees grow in the lower valley — apple, mulberry, cherry plum — and higher up the slopes turn to juniper forest. The Karatag River runs through it all, and there's trout in the water.

The two landmark spots here are both landslide-dammed lakes. Timur-Dara sits at 1,970 metres, about an hour's walk up from the river; one shore is covered in coarse granite sand, which makes a good place to stop by the water. Payron lies higher, at 2,200 metres, where water filters through the rock dam and falls away below in a series of small waterfalls.

Near the village of Lyabijoy, thirty kilometres upriver, there's a grove where nightingales gather.

The road into the gorge ends at the village of Hakimi — beyond that it's on foot or by pack animal. That's exactly why these places stay quiet: you can't drive to the lakes, you have to walk.

Nearby, in the Shirkent Valley, are fossilised dinosaur footprints — one of the more unusual sights in Tajikistan.