scree slope portage. Altogether a great first river for our Fann Mountains mission.

The following day we drove up one of the tributaries of the Fon Darya, the Iskander, checked out the stunning lake at the top of the valley and the terrifying waterfall flowing out of it, and then drove back down and put on the Iskander for a great paddle in beautiful blue water, with no portages!!

The day after we headed up the Yagnob, the other major tributary of the Fon Darya, to Bedef where the ‘road’ pretty much ends, and put on for a 30 km (ish), six hour mission packed full of great white water and more terrifying portages. We paddled from Bedef down to Anzob with Umed and the Commander shadowing our progress intraipsing round Dushanbe sorting out permits, changing money and more importantly finding the ‘Irish Pub’.

Friday night we all headed up into the hills to the north-west of Dushanbe, aiming for the Karatog river – Dave and Ben’s last run of their trip and the first of ours. We stayed at a fairly delapidated holiday village where we made friends with some very drunk russian characters who were pretty keen to wrestle. In the end Rich obliged with an arm wrestle but wisely decided that discretion was the better part of valour and let the wookie win.

Saturday we drove up the Karatog river as far as Hakimi, scouting as we went. Having seen some of the very chossy, boulder choked rapids on the drive up, Ben decided not to