She was a day tripper...

Took a day trip to Nurek on Saturday with a local friend that works at Sharon's school. 

We drove up to one of the lakes outside of Dushanbe, rented a small lakeside cabin and had a relaxing time watching the still water of the lake, cooking shashlik (pronounced sha-shleek - which is basically what we would call shish-kebob with only meat on the stick), and having basically a lazy day in a stunning country.

We ended up driving through the Norak Tunnel which is a very long tunnel of 2,223 meters long!  

** According to Google, that's 1.38 miles for you Americans not on the metric system yet :) **

We stopped at a small pullout area overlooking the Norak Reservoir where I was surprised to see some small tented eateries that act as a rest stop for weary travelers. 

Unfortunately, this time of year there is quite a lot of dust that blows into the region from Afghanistan so there is a haze over everything in the distance in all of the photos.  Hopefully we can get back up to the area later in the year (or in spring which we've been told is amazing).

You will notice a bridge that we were going to cross... that is until we looked to the other end and saw that it seemed to list slightly to the right :(  

On the way into the mountains

There's a great variety of mountain area in Tajikistan.

It's a bit hazy, but still a great view.

High and dry.

Some great rock formations around almost every corner.

View from the top - looking at one end of the reservoir.

The haze made it difficult to see very far.

Full-service food stop - washing up before eating lunch.

You can get some fresh vegetables.

Enjoying a nice lunch before getting back on the road.  

Not like the McDonald's we're used to seeing at a rest stop.

Here's our cabin that we rented.

View from the cabin balcony - like I said, relaxing.

The water was an amazing shade of blue and green.  

This is the reflection of the mountains in the water from the balcony.

The river was a great deep blue and moving steadily.

Some guys fishing in the river.

Here's the bridge we were going to drive across...yep, that's a few feet down on the right side there!

Walked to the end to see exactly why it was so out of sorts. 

I can't even fathom what could have happened to this bridge to cause this damage.

And we were all astonished to see a local truck driving all the way across!

We were concerned just walking it...Moose didn't even walk it :)