Rarely in life am I truly awestruck, but last Saturday night was one of those moments. Living in a city of 3 million people, light pollution blocks out most of the night sky. We see the major planets and some stars, but nothing compared to camping in the mountains outside of the city. We spent an evening stargazing while camping in the mountains overlooking the town of Tavaksay. We were looking for meteors from the Perseid meteor shower was in full view that evening. Our group did see around 14 meteors, but we also saw Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite train going through the sky.
I didn’t know what I was looking at! I thought it was an alien ship in the shape of a snake. I was amazed at this. I learned later that Space X, Musk’s space company, has over 4,500 satellites orbiting the earth right now, which is over 65% of the total number of satelites in orbit. I encourage you to listen the the New York Times The Daily podcast which I linked to above. The satellites are close together so internet signals can be beamed down to stations on earth continuously. The Ukrainians are using them the communicate in the war against Russia. What a sight and it will be a moment I will never forget. These trains have been going for a while and I am surprised I never heard of them before. My daughter Ocean caught them on films, as did the a camera in Hawaii that the BBC featured in a recent video. The ancients only had the stars to look at in the evenings. Today with electricity and digital entertainment, humans rarely look in the sky. Our camping trip reminded me of the beauty of the night sky and astronomy. I should take some more time looking at the night sky.
Sitting on a blanket with between Ocean, Oliver, and Nadia was pure heaven for me. I am savoring the precious moments we have with our children as they soon will be away to university, careers, spouses, and their own families. It was a special night and we will definitely do more camping this year. You can free-range camp almost anywhere in the mountains or deserts of Uzbekistan. Sunset is magic time here and there are few spots in the world more beautiful. I highly recommend getting out into the countryside of this beautiful country.
A final highlight of the trip was photographing this Corsac Fox on my Sunday morning walk to the waterfall.
Tavaksay is a canyon in the Ugam mountain range. The Ugams about an 1-hour to 1 and 1/2 hour drive north east of Tashkent. The Ugam range is the far western part of the Tian Shan (Mountains of Heaven) Range. As you can see in the map below, the Tien Shan range is connected to the Pamirs of Tajikistan which eventually leads to the Himalayas of India and Tibet.
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