Recently, I added a page on Cycling. It and the Trekking section are the most visited pages on the pamirs.org site.
I was recently contacted by someone who is planning a kayak tour in the Pamirs and thought
it might be useful to add a special page of "white water" links and see what response I get.
Please get in touch if you have information that might be of use to those planning similar tours.
The first thing to say is that white-water sports in the Pamirs are potentially dangerous:
several of the most interesting stretches are in uninhabited areas; water speeds are unpredictable
because of changing patterns of glacier and snow melt; and rivers are strewn with rocks.
2009 Russian expedition (see link below to photofile.ru)
During the Soviet Union, there were many
expeditions to the Pamirs for white water sports: several years ago I was taking a ski lift in Villars
and got talking to the person travelling up with me on the lift, who turned out to be a professor
at the EPFL in Lausanne. I mentioned the Pamirs and he
told me that he had been President of the student athletic association in St. Petersburg
and had organised white water expeditions to the Murghab river in the Pamirs.
Here are a few of the websites I have found. It will be no surprise that most of
the links are to Russian websites, but in many cases, there is a link to the
e-mail of the author, who may be willing to give advice in English. Some carry interesting videos. This
listing is by no means complete nor is it in any particular order. If your blog/website
is not here, or if you know of another useful site, please contact me at the e-mail address on the
Home Page.
http://pamirs.wordpress.com/about/
http://pamirs-trio.blogspot.com/2007/11/paddling-into-pamirs-prospectus.html
http://kayakussr.com/index.php?page=pamir
http://www.greatgametravel.co.uk/pdf/kayak.pdf
http://www.skitalets.ru/water/2008/pamir90_podyapolsky/
http://photofile.ru/users/irbis_mig/115633164/134341859/
http://www.marchroute.ru/guides/4/
http://ww-video.ru/mediadetails.php?key=9715fb08f9558da2535f
http://www.abvclub.ru/video.shtml
http://kayakussr.com/index.php?page=pamirs-kayaking
All text and
photographs (c) Robert Middleton 2002
Web master Romanyuk
Mikhail
