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Thursday 2004-06-24 - Tash Rabat, Kyrgyzstan
What is Tash Rabat?
The Tash Rabat building, located at 3100 m height not far from the Chinese border, is somewhat of a riddle. It’s often called a caravan serai in the tour guides but looking at the structure that actually sounds rather unlikely: there’s no place to stable animals here; and usually at a caravanserai there’s a large open courtyard inside the outer walls but this smallish building is completely covered and has a large domed central hall with lots of rooms around three sides of it. Other theories are it could have been a mosque, a prison, even a Buddhist monastery. Unfortunately, no real scientific investigation or excavation has ever been done here; until that happens (if ever) it’s all guesswork.
It’s quite cold up here (again) but luckily we can sleep either in a yurt, put up for the purpose by the family living across from Tash Rabat, or inside their house (for which they free up their own living room and kitchen and sleep in a small side building). Although it costs a little extra, I’m quite glad to be able to sleep inside where it’s warm tonight: last night in the tent it was so cold I didn’t sleep well.
