Haft Kul

From Penjikent we took another taxi to Rashna, a village in the Fan mountains which surround the Zerafshan valley, and our driver made sure we found a nice family to spend the night with before leaving us. He even took the precaution of buying our hosts a watermelon as a gift, on the way.
We chose to head for Rashna because we had heard that the Haft Kul, or Seven Lakes, that begin just above the village, are very beautiful, and so they are.
We walked as far as the fourth kul on our first day of walking, which started at about 11 am, much to the surprise of our host family, who had been waiting about for us to emerge and eat breakfast since about 5 am.
Nonetheless, we strode off manfully with our picnic in our rucksack, and were duly delighted by each new kul that we came across. There must have been earthquakes and landslides going a long way back, because the series of seven lakes, each of which flows into the next further down the mountain, were created by huge rock falls that blocked off the mountain stream that feeds them at successive points.