National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

THE ULUTÖR, HUNSERAB AND UPRANG PASSES.

5

2

Between the eastern and the middle glaciers there was a little hanging glacier with a mountain ridge on each side. Its snout is visible at considerable height above the valley. Its front is vertical, and below it a front moraine falls in regular and

steep slopes towards the valley.

At the glaciers we were indeed at the southern boundary of Taghdumbash

Pamir. The drainage areas which were our nearest neighbours were to the south the Indus, to the east the Raskan-darya, to the west the Panj, to the N. W. the Ak-su, and beyond the Ulug-raóat the Gez-darya. We were in a region from which the water flows to the Indian Ocean, to Lop-nor and to Lake Aral.

The following information may be of some interest. In the upper reaches of the Ulutör valley no roads were said to exist and no passable passes known; the glaciers we had visited had no names. In the winter three Kirgiz tents are pitched

at the confluence of the Hunserab and Ululör, above which place nobody lives. In the cold season nearly all go down to Kara jilga, Ilik-su, Masar and other places. The Tajiks have their own Tajik beks under the Chinese administration. The Kesek Kirgizes of Masar pass only two or three months every summer in Taghdunzbash Pamir. The rest of the year they spend along the Raskan-darya. When returning to this river they take the road of Ilik-su and have from its pass a journey of three days to Raskan-darya, the left bank of which they follow upwards to Kok-task where the valley is broad and the grass good. Only in spring and autumn, and, of course, in the winter, this road may be used. At Kara-chukur about i oo Kirgiz tents were said to exist. The tent-dwellers belong to the Kipchak, Teït, Naiman and Kesek tribes. Their chief, Kasim Bek, who also had jurisdiction of the Kirgizes in the upper Taghdumbash, was subject directly to Mi Darin, the Commandant of

Task-kurgan.

In the region of Ulutör and Hunserab the winter is very cold and snow falls to a depth of about two feet. The prevalent winter wind comes from the Hunserab Pass, i. e. the west; the prevalent summer wind from Taghdumbash, i. e. the north. The ice we found in the Ululör brook and other watercourses at the same altitude, had remained from the last winter. In the autumn the brooks freeze, extensive ice-sheets are formed, and one layer accumulates above another. Finally everything is frozen. The ice-sheets remain during the spring and begin to melt when the warm weather comes. The year of my visit, 1895, very much ice was left even so late as the beginning of August, and it probably would not melt altogether before the autumn cold began. During warm and sunny summers all the ice melts.

As is known, the UUrang, Ilik-su, Sänkar and Kandahar Passes all lead to Raskan-darya. From the Hunserab Pass, as mentioned above, a road goes to the village of Gircha in Kanjut. The principal road to the country in the south goes by Min-leke. The two passes are not difficult, and there is no ice or snow to be

. ... J   . r._..