Journey to Kashkasu waterfall. Uzbekistan

Hello again! As you remember, my previous post was about Climbing Greater Chimgan. Today I want to tell you about a trip to the Kashkasu waterfall, which is located in the Tashkent region. As usual I went there with the team of "Mysterious Uzbekistan". Also my thanks to my friend Ilya for their help in editing of the photos.. By the way, he his steemit-account - @cesspit

It was a rather difficult but interesting trip. Almost a half of the way we spent knee-deep in cold water, crossing numerous fords of the Kashkasu river.

That trip was in the early July and I decided to arrange a little test for myself - on Saturday to go along the difficult route to Kashkasu Falls and on the next day to take the easier route to Chukuraksu Falls. I will write about him in my next post.

As usual, we left Tashkent in the early morning and after a couple of hours arrived to the starting point. In such kind of trips I like everything except the early rise. I am a lover of sleeping and getting up at three to four in the morning for me is just a tragedy :). But the beauty of our nature compensates these inconveniences.

The river (or in Uzbek language - "say") Kashkasu is a large left tributary of the Aksagata-say. By the way, "Aksagata" translates from Uzbek language as "Lame Father". The river is named after a local saint. According to legend he creates this river.

Despite the relative proximity to Tashkent and local popular resorts, this places is wild and poorly groomed. Fortunately, it’s difficult to get here, tourists can’t drive on comfortable buses and there is nowhere to sit and the place is located away from the main routes. So, lovers of comfortable tourism do not go here. There go people like who find that nature and picturesque views are more important than a comfortable trestle bed.

By the way, about picturesqueness - when we arrived at the starting point of our trip, I was slightly disappointed because I would not say that the views are really spectacular ...

Well, there are a river, juniper,stones ... But on the announcement on the web-site of "Mysterious Uzbekistan" there were completely different photos - a 25-meters high mighty waterfall, rocks, a rough river. Where is all this ?! The guide reassured us - he said: "Don't worry, you'll see everything. You just need to go there". So, we went.

As I said, the places here are poorly groomed and there are no normal paths. So, almost all the way ran along the Kashkasu river along rocky places. Oh yes, we also had to wade through the thick juniper and cross the river through many fords. The river's flow is strong, especially in spring and the stream blows down a lot of stones and breaks the trees. It’s quite difficult to get through these windbreaks - the branches strive to cling to our legs or backpack.

All this is slowed us down but there was an opportunity to look around and notice things that people usually miss.

For example, here is a group of "ladybugs" who decided to bask on stones ...

... or such a trinity that hid under the bark of a broken branch ...

Due to the bends of the riverbed, Kashkasu often had to cross its ford. After the tenth ford, I lost count.

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A significant part of the path had to be overcome over stones, which greatly slowed down my pace. I had to jump from stone to stone, constantly stop and check whether they are holding tight.

When wading, I must be doubly careful, because the current is raugher and the stones are slippery so I can easily fall into the water.

But there are positive moments (how to live without positive moments?!). The weather was very hot and the constant crossing of the fords was refreshingly cool.

Due to the rocky terrain very small quantity of people visit the upper gorge and due to absense of good path, tourists have to climb a pile of reddish stones.

But it’s worth to go up there, because waterfall is very beautiful and mighty.

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We reached the waterfall and somehow settled on the rocks. We laid out wet closes so that they would dry out at least a little. After resting about an one hour, we packed up and went back again over the stones, fording across the river. We came dirty and tired, but happy!

!steemitworldmap 41.318766 lat 69.866111 long Journey to Kashkasu waterfall. Uzbekistan d3scr