Karon Castle, Tajikistan

Folded into the mountains of Tajikistan’s Amu Darya valley are the remains of an ancient city, unknown to even archaeologists until 2012.

When we first visited the site in 2015 we asked the Tajik friend we were travelling with to tell us about the ruins. “Maybe it is some old place” he replied (to be fair, history wasn’t his strong point). But in truth, nobody really knew much then. But now, more than a decade after its discovery, the site, known as Castle Karon, is not only drawing comparisons with Machu Picchu, but is considered one of the most important archaeological discoveries of the 21st century, not just in Tajikistan, but worldwide.

Here, on a lonely promontory above the Amu Darya River, in Tajikistan’s remote Gorno-Badakhshan province, the remains of an entire city are spread across a mountaintop.

The site, which could date as far back as the 2nd millennium BC, has been suggested as the birthplace of polo, with seating terraces surrounding a high-altitude playing field. The city was also the site of a major Zoroastrian fire temple, founded in perhaps the 6th Century BC as the Achaemenid civilization spread into what was then Bactria. Certainly this was a society of some importance, given both its size, and the quality of artifacts so far excavated.

Castle Karon is now listed by the Tajik Government and World Bank Tourism Development funding as critical to the future of both tourism and the forging of a new national identity for Tajikistan. This is great news for Tajikistan, a country that has so, so much to offer the curious, adventurous traveller.

You can read more about Castle Karon in this beautifully written National Geographic article by Henry Wismayer. If you’d like to visit the castle as part of a tailor-made trip to wonderful Tajikistan, please do get in touch to find out more.

Photo: Bakhriddin Isamutdinov