Artuch Alpine lodge - hiking in late April

[LorenaRR]

Planning to visit Artuch Lodge for some hiking in early May if anyone interested to team up. I can be flexible with dates!

[Laneo]

We plan to stay at the lodge on Apr 23-24-25, and will just be doing day trips. We are heading back to Panjakent and onto Samarkand on the 26th.

Damn, haha we'll just miss each other. Cool, maybe I might bump into you all if I manage to get a ride to the lodge early on the 25th (hopefully as planned).

Hello LaNeo

We are at the Alpine Lodge now. Quick summary:
From Kaftarxona bus station took 45 min, cost 15-20K each. Border crossing very smooth both sides. Shared taxi to Panjakent 15 somoni. Shared taxi to Artuch village (station near blue bus stop 100 M before 8 story unfinished brick building), near bazzar, cost 50 somoni ea. after passengers finished in Artuch, driver offered to take us to Artuch Lodge for extra 150 somoni (not negotiable). It was that or walk so we took it. There might be the occassional car going this way so you might be able to hitch hike to the lodge from Artuch village, not sure how long it might take to do this. Several people here now. Most walk down to Artuch vilkage (1.5 hrs) and then catch shared taxi to Panjakent.
Hope this helps.

Hi Darren, just want to say that your trip reports have been extremely valuable and I wished I had came across your post before I arrived in Panjakent today. Really appreciate all the work you have done for the community.

I will update in a separate post later on my experiences. Just a side note for everyone, if you plan to stay in Panjakent, food options have become even more limited, and Google Maps and Open street maps are quite outdated in 2023...

[Christian77]

Just a side note for everyone, if you plan to stay in Panjakent, food options have become even more limited, and Google Maps and Open street maps are quite outdated in 2023...

Limited? During Ramadan, sure (it just ended). But usually I have no problems finding cheap food quickly most everywhere in Panjakent. If you mean the food options are limited as listed on maps, this is true. Please use your map app to add a restaurant (or add anything, really). If you use Maps.me, Organic maps, OsmAnd, mapy.cz, etc.., you can add things to the maps and a note will be posted on the Open Street Map editors' views (you can also report that something no longer exists). I edit everywhere but Dushanbe, so I'll see it eventually.

[Laneo]

Just a side note for everyone, if you plan to stay in Panjakent, food options have become even more limited, and Google Maps and Open street maps are quite outdated in 2023...

Limited? During Ramadan, sure (it just ended). But usually I have no problems finding cheap food quickly most everywhere in Panjakent. If you mean the food options are limited as listed on maps, this is true. Please use your map app to add a restaurant (or add anything, really). If you use Maps.me, Organic maps, OsmAnd, mapy.cz, etc.., you can add things to the maps and a note will be posted on the Open Street Map editors' views (you can also report that something no longer exists). I edit everywhere but Dushanbe, so I'll see it eventually.

Sure, I'll do that for the rest of my travels in Tajikistan. To elaborate further, what I mean is that sure, you can find a few fast food type places (your shawarmas, hot dogs, burgers, etc) but beyond that is tough, especially come dinner time.

[Christian77]

The good lunchtime restaurants are usually not on a main street or in an obvious area. They hide, but the locals know where they are. Dinnertime is rough. Really only Dushanbe has good choices for dinnertime, and that's relatively recent. There is a tradition of lunchtime service, but not for breakfast and dinner. In some places dinner is available, but not very "family friendly."

[DSO_Canuck]

Just a final update on our trip to Artuch Lodge.
We only stayed in Tajik for 4 days and didnt want to drag all of our luggage around for these 4 days so the night before we left i bought a train ticket online (departing in 5 days) from Samarkand->Tashkent (cost around 80K). So on the morning of our departure we first visited the train station in Samarkand and left a large backpack in the left luggage section (5000 per day). You need a valid ticket to be able to enter the station as they scan it when you arrive at the entry security scan area. Then we grabbed a Yandex taxi to the Kaftarxona bus station. I explained getting to the lodge in a previous posting.
We stayed 3 nights at the main building, full electricity, but the rooms are not heated. Rooms are basic but suffuce. There is no wifi at the lodge. Our Tcell sim card gave us 3G while another guest had a Megafon sim card and got no reception at all. Steaming hot shower (shared) down the hall. Breakfast is included in the price of the room ($15 usd per person). Evening meals are $8 usd and the menu is fixed, to whatever is available at the time. Nothing exotic but typical central-asian meals to give you energy for hiking. The two main staff on site while we were there were Eraj and Jena, (they both speak good English, and Eray also is fluent in Mandarin) who were very helpful and made our stay very enjoyable.
We found 2.5 days enough time to explore the nearby trails without camping at higher altitudes. Strongly recommend doing the full circle trail which takes you to the ridge (3175M), a bit steep at times (took us 4 hrs to get to the top), but some amazing panoramic mountain views from there. Ask to borrow a walking stick from the lodge. Very helpful on the loose rock on the path/road down. There were only 4-5 people at the lodge while we were there this early in the season, but the weather was very nice in the daytime, prob close to 12-14C.
Getting back to Panjakent was the biggest challange. Some people walk from the lodge to Artun village (1.5 hrs down hill), and then catch a shared taxi (50 som) to Panjakent. I am not sure how often these vehicles leave to do the trip but from the traffic we seen on the Artun road i would guess there are maybe 4-5 per day (?). We ended up hiring the same driver who brought us up there the first day. It seems to roughly cost twice the price to get back to Panjakent as it cost to get to the lodge. This may change during the higher season when there are more cars coming and going to the lodge. We ended up sharing our hired van with 3 others so that helped reduce the cost, but this early in the season you might be the only one going back that day so your options might be bery limited, or expensive.
After we returned to Samarkand we went to the train station to retrieve our luggage and then i cancelled the train ticket i had bought, which cost me around 15K in cancel fees. So for roughly 20K somoni we were able to store our luggage in a secure place for 4 days. From there we grabbed a Yandex taxi to the airport, only a 10-15 drive north.

Let me know if you have any questions and i will try to answer them.