Pamir local tour guide: how did I become a tour guide?

Today is an International Tour Guide Day, and on this occasion I decided to write about my career as a local Pamir tour guide.

About me

I was born and grew up in the remote area of the upper Bartang Valley, where at that time there were no electricity, mobile or telephone connections, that is absolutely isolated from the world area.

In school we studied English as a foreign language. I paid a lot of attention to the subject, because my father told me that “English is the key to success nowadays, and using English you can learn in any country you want, and get a quality education.” During the school years, slowly I could speak a little English. Speaking English was very rare at that time.

How and why I became a tour guide?

In 2006 I moved to Khorog to do a bachelor degree. It was too hard for my family to support me financially. Therefore, I started working as a freelancer tour guide with different travel agencies on 2010. This was the only thing I could do with my skills at the student time J

At the beginning, I didn't see the beauty of the Pamir nature, because I was living among the mountains, and working as a guide was just for the purpose of earning money. But after working as a tour guide for some years and talking to different people of the world who visited the Pamirs, I started feeling how beautiful Pamir is.

Why tour guide is a part time job in Pamir?

Although I fell in love with travelling, working as a guide could not be the job that pays off all your bills. In Pamir the tourism season is only for around three months, and then you need to wait for the next season. Therefore, in parallel, I started working in a university as an instructor. So I had been working as a tour guide in summer worked and as an instructor for the rest of the time.

How and when Discover The Pamirs was established?

In 2015 I moved to India to do my master degree in computer applications. In the final year, as a project work I took the topic "Developing a marketplace for selling tours, and other travel services". This was where "Discover The Pamirs" was born.

The idea was, to gather all the service providers and help the remote people of the Pamir in selling their services - guiding service, accommodation (homestay, guesthouse), transportation and etc. Tourism is the only industry in remote Pamir from which the local people can benefit. But the problem is how to connect with tourists?! This is where "Discover The Pamirs" comes to rescue.

So I created the application and launched it in 2018. What I want is:

1. to help the people, living in the remote area of Pamir, benefit from the tourism by connecting the local tourist guides, accommodation owners and car owners with tourists.
2. to show the incredible nature of Pamir to the world, so that the local people should benefit from it, and should not have to migrate to Russia or other countries because of hard life.
3. to operate tours and activities in Pamir with the help of local community.

We are slowly working on the platform and hope that day by day we can help, gather and connect more and more service providers with tourists.

Saidmamad Gulomshoev

 

Posted on: July 6, 2022, 7:12 a.m. by Admin

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