kugitang mountains

To the East of Turkmenistan and bordering Uzbekistan and Afghanistan, the Kugitang ridge of the Pamir-Alai mountain range contains Turkmenistan's highest peak at 3,137m.  Hojapil was a fairly bleak out-post but the stream was the centre of activity - washing, cooking etc.  There were frequent police checks all over Turkmenistan but these poor very-young guys didn't appear to have come across tourists before and, not sure what to do next, radio-d back to God know where for permission to let us proceed. It took a while and I'm not sure it would have helped our case if they'd spotted they were being photographed.