10-Jul-2005 --

It was my intention to visit the 41°N 48°E and was hoping that my third attempt would be successful. In my first attempt, I climbed up to the top of the mountain to find that the confluence is 2 km to the west, in a deep foggy valley with steep. I did not know what's waiting for me under that white cloud and the hill is so steep. In the second try, I found some KGB maps and tried to get to the point from the west, got so close, about 300 meters, and then got to a vertical cliff. I fall into a small stream and could not get up the hill again. Went down hill along the stream and got back to the car exhausted and disappointed.

This time, my friend cancelled the trip on Saturday and that did not leave me enough lot of time to plan for another one. Anyway, I got maps downloaded and calibrated, spent sometime on Saturday night to create routes and mark waypoints before uploading them onto my iFinder Pro.

It’s was a long and lonely drive. The M4 motorway is just a bumpy narrow road. On the map, it look no different from the M1. When passing a small town called Hacigabul, I saw a monument with a Mig on top. Everything has been removed from jet fighter, except for it frame but when I took out my camera, a man with big moustache waiving his hand to stop me.

The confluence is in between town Kudamir and town Imisly. It’s in the middle of nowhere. Luckily in the Soviet era, roads had been built to access to oilfields which scattered almost everywhere in this country. Almost every road leads to an oilfield. And the abandon roads help me greatly to get to the confluence.

Just about a kilometer away, there is an abandon wellhead where I left the car and started walking on a flat desert-like area. All the grasses are burn to death under the bright sun. The bushed are without leaves but full of sharp thorns that I had to change my direction few times to get round them.

I was worry that the confluence may be right in the middle of the bushes. There were so many round pits, about your thump size made me think there may be snakes around and they may be hiding in the bushes. Luckily the confluence is not in those dangerous bushes.

Altitude source: SRTM 90m digital elevation data