Hike in Shirkent - fossil country

Today the HikeTajikistan group went to Shirkent, a "nature-history park" about 90 minutes west of Dushanbe, past farmland and an aluminum factory, toward the mountains.

This place is known for evidence of amazing geologic activity, as this slab with a record of ripples of sand on a beach shows...

at the outset of the hike

...and as do the up-ended layers in the mountains:

We followed a mountain stream up through what became a canyon.

Unfortunately, a group of five slower hikers, including me--in fact, I was in the lead of this slow group so it was my fault--lost sight of the people ahead of us, and chose a wide path, instead of the narrow (dare I say, invisible?) path along the stream. This led us up a steep hill, which we climbed for almost an hour before leader #2 got a bit of cell phone signal and leader #1 came back to connect with us and direct us to "keep following the stream."

"Wide is the path that leads to..." the poor slow hikers having to add lots of unnecessary altitude (left arrow)

There's a spiritual lesson in there, right?

Eventually we reached a spot where Lee had been looking for us and then the lunch spot by a beautiful waterfall. 

 The other hikers had gone on to the next destination--a spot on the stream across from which one can view dinosaur footprints in the cliff. Since we didn't make it, I'll have to use a photo from the internet, alaya-reisen.

 We did get to see other cool things, like these fossilized mollusks and this crystal formation inside a rock. (Thank you, German geologist Jan, for good-naturedly finding and explaining things to us.)

Besides rocks, I also had to take at least one photo of a wildflower:

The wild red tulips had either all been picked (I've seen village women selling bunches in Dushanbe) or were past blooming--but here was one!

This reminded me of Psalm 1:3--a tree planted by streams of water...

Lee's app said he walked 8.9 k.  I probably did 10 with my detour.

We ran into a few locals on our hike. This woman was gathering wild arum or calla lilies.

These women looked like they were coming from one higher-up village to visit friends lower down:

There were several groups of guys picnicking, usually with a carpet to sit on and a little fire to grill shashlik.

When we got down to where the cars had parked, we saw even more picnickers:

And one of them even insisted on giving us a bag of wild rhubarb. Tajik kindness!

A day with much to be thankful for!