This refers to a group of seven lakes located in the beautiful Shing Valley in the Fann Mountains, nearest large town is Panjakent in Tajikistan. The lakes are at different elevations. They are said to be naturally interconected (underground)
Also named Haft-Kul in local language (The Seven Lakes), each lake has a different colour ranging between turquoise to emerald. The access road is narrow can only in certain places two vehicles are able to pass each other.
The closest township is Panjakent, which means The Five Settlements in ancient Persian.
We drove in from Dushanbe, which is the capital of Tajikistan. It's called the "City of Lights" - everywhere neons/LEDs, very beautiful at night - looks like Wesak everyday.
The drive from Dushanbe to Seven lakes takes more than 5 hours, bumpy roads. We stayed at a Guest house near the Fourth lake. There are NO hotels at the moment. Several new hotels are still under construction and expected to be completed by next year. The country wasn't open to tourism till recently and only now people arrive.
We arrived past 7 PM and the Guest house wasn't that bad but basic. They had two new bathrooms on the lower floor with hot water. They provided dinner, cooked by the mother of the person running the guest house and the food was quite tasty. a local veg soup served with BBQ Chicken, Potato, a salad and home made bread. Usually I prefer a bowl of rice and she cooked one for me.
The rooms were quite cold and they said it will be freezing later into the night and lit a special fire place (wooden fire) in the room. I kept it going at low heat as my wife doesn't like when the room gets hot.
Legend says one there was one lake and the father of seven lovely daughters lived near it. The youngest being the most beautiful. The local governer once saw this girl and wanted to marry her. First she didn't accept iit but later said that if he builds a castle up on the highest rock, she will.
The governor did build a castle and the girl had to marry him to keep her promise. On the wedding night the girl jumped out of the window to the lake and died. The other sisters were very sad, and wept for months, and thus the next six lakes were formed out of their teardrops.
There's another version of the story which says the father of the seven girls took a journey up the Fann mountains but failed to return. Days went by and the seven girls wept thus forming the seven lakes.
There are seven local names for these lakes and in English one is called "Eye lashes", "Shade", the fourth and the longest one is "Navel" or the "Belly Button", another named "A thousand springs" etc . (I don't really remember all the names now)
The elevations of these lakes vary from 1600m (lowest) to 2400m (highest)
Here are some photos taken recently and a video from the YouTube.....
The Snow Leopards are an endangered species and protected.
PS: These mountains contain Gold. Machines scrape the mountains to extract gold. The clear glacial water which comes from the mountains get muddied by the mining factories and its dirty water to the regions where people live.
Also named Haft-Kul in local language (The Seven Lakes), each lake has a different colour ranging between turquoise to emerald. The access road is narrow can only in certain places two vehicles are able to pass each other.
The closest township is Panjakent, which means The Five Settlements in ancient Persian.
We drove in from Dushanbe, which is the capital of Tajikistan. It's called the "City of Lights" - everywhere neons/LEDs, very beautiful at night - looks like Wesak everyday.
The drive from Dushanbe to Seven lakes takes more than 5 hours, bumpy roads. We stayed at a Guest house near the Fourth lake. There are NO hotels at the moment. Several new hotels are still under construction and expected to be completed by next year. The country wasn't open to tourism till recently and only now people arrive.
We arrived past 7 PM and the Guest house wasn't that bad but basic. They had two new bathrooms on the lower floor with hot water. They provided dinner, cooked by the mother of the person running the guest house and the food was quite tasty. a local veg soup served with BBQ Chicken, Potato, a salad and home made bread. Usually I prefer a bowl of rice and she cooked one for me.
The rooms were quite cold and they said it will be freezing later into the night and lit a special fire place (wooden fire) in the room. I kept it going at low heat as my wife doesn't like when the room gets hot.
Legend says one there was one lake and the father of seven lovely daughters lived near it. The youngest being the most beautiful. The local governer once saw this girl and wanted to marry her. First she didn't accept iit but later said that if he builds a castle up on the highest rock, she will.
The governor did build a castle and the girl had to marry him to keep her promise. On the wedding night the girl jumped out of the window to the lake and died. The other sisters were very sad, and wept for months, and thus the next six lakes were formed out of their teardrops.
There's another version of the story which says the father of the seven girls took a journey up the Fann mountains but failed to return. Days went by and the seven girls wept thus forming the seven lakes.
There are seven local names for these lakes and in English one is called "Eye lashes", "Shade", the fourth and the longest one is "Navel" or the "Belly Button", another named "A thousand springs" etc . (I don't really remember all the names now)
The elevations of these lakes vary from 1600m (lowest) to 2400m (highest)
Here are some photos taken recently and a video from the YouTube.....
The Snow Leopards are an endangered species and protected.
PS: These mountains contain Gold. Machines scrape the mountains to extract gold. The clear glacial water which comes from the mountains get muddied by the mining factories and its dirty water to the regions where people live.
TFS.
E.g. "rupiyal wissayi" in Sinhala and "Rs.100" in English, on toilets. Same toilet.
