Rangkul, Tajikistan

Deep in the Far Eastern reaches of Tajikistan's Pamir Plateau, just kilometres away from China's Xinjiang and several hours drive from then nearest town, lies Rangkul, a village of just over 1000 ethnic-Kyrgyz. At an altitude of 4000m, with long, frigid winters and short, sweltering summers, and a lack of arable land - life here is difficult.

Nevertheless, the village provides enough for people to stay. After all, Murghob, the high-Pamir capital with a population of more than 4000 people, is only 2-4 bumpy hours away, depending on your choice of Soviet-Era Lada or early 2000s Japanese 4x4.

For certain species of birds, however, the landscape surrounding Rankgul is a paradise; in fact it's a protected reserve, as the two brackish lakes, the like-named Rangkul and Shorkul, attract more than 20 rare breeds of birds, some from as far as the Himalayas and Tibet.

An hour or so after departing from the 'main' road, driving along a rugged mud-gravel road, we saw our first glimpses of Rangkul Lake, almost matching the tone of the dusky sky. The jaggedness of the peaks here is representative of almost the entire Greater Pamir, a harsh and unforgiving landscape.

We woke up to a very heavy haze that had rolled in from Xinjiang - even though the border was less than 5 kilometres away, we could not see any part of China. After a slow start, we set out to see what we could, as we began the drive back towards the M41. For a little while we trailed behind this Soviet-Era Lada, which was handling the bumpy mud road surprisingly well.

Looking back towards the lake, the landscape still engulfed in the fog, we said goodbye to Rangkul and drove back towards the Pamir Highway and onto the Ak-Baital Pass, beginning our journey back to Kyrgyzstan.