June 28, 2023 to July 7, 2023
The Pamir Highway Pt 3. The Bartang Valley
Deafening headwinds, bike problems and no-one to be seen
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The Ak-Baital pass
We left Murghab, rested and fuelled on some much needed samsas, Adam, Masha, Nathan, Seb and I grouped together to tackle the next difficult section of the route, the Ak-Baital pass, sitting high at 4655m.
Battling headwinds and freezing temperatures up towards the Ak-Baital Pass, Seb and I pushed on after sunset towards what looked like an abandoned building on the map, assuming nobody actually lived up here. To our surprise a man emerged from a building and invited us into his warm home, no questions asked. Daribek, origiannly from Kyrgystan lives up here, repairing the roads along the pass. His wife Varima and children Konis and Rasul also stay up in this isolated house at 4400m. It was beautiful to see the strong family bond which I'm sure is necessary when living far away from anybody but a few occasional cyclists.
Unfortunately Adam, Masha and Nathan never made it this far and had to spend the night in the freezing cold under a bridge at 4200m. Meanwhile, Seb and I were tucking into some freshly made noodles and could rest next to the stove. I felt so grateful to meet these kind hearted people who, without any hesitation invited us into their cosy home. Konis and Rasul had tones of energy and wanted to play and dance into the night. I struggled to sleep that night with the thin air, waking up many times taking a deep breath and trying to fill my body with the oxygen I needed to relax and recover from the tough day.
In the morning, Konis danced to traditional Kyrgyz music and Varima prepared us rice pudding to give us energy for the rest of the way up the pass.
The final push up to the top of the Ak-Baital pass (4655m) was surprisingly comfortable , I loved the serenity cycling though the Mars-like terrain with the perfect silence (except my desperate panting for oxygen). It was incredibly baron around with very little sign of life anywhere for miles, adding to the intense feelings of isolation.
On the way down, as far as the eye could see was a barbed wire fence, it took us a while to realise it was the border to China, we had actually (almost) cycled to China! If only it was easy enough to cross the border...
For the first sign of civilisation after Murghab, kids came chasing me, inviting us for tea and food at the yurt. We were happy to be breathing thick(er) air at 4000m and eating hot food whilst snotty kids stared with beautiful curiosity and the wind roared outside.
Hoping to stock up on food for the Bartang we took the 50km detour to Karakul, only to find out it was a ghost town. A man led us to a small shop where we couldn't get much more than a few biscuits, still the cold swim was nice and we were once again riding on asphalt. On the ride back we crossed paths with Nathan, Adam and Masha who told us about their freezing sleepless night. Adam and Masha would carry on north to try (successfully, surprisingly) the border crossing whilst Nathan would later catch us up along the Bartang valley to collect our bags in Dushanbe.
The Bartang Valley
As the border to Kyrgyzstan was closed (or so we thought) we took a route back though the Bartang valley, a place notorious for strong easterly winds and long stretches with no resupply. The first night we were grateful to re-join with Lim and to camp together in a crater for shelter, avoiding the stinking sheep carcass, rotting in the next crater. Seb and I set off before sunrise to make the most of the windless mornings, it did mean completing the first river crossing before the sun was out and freezing our feet doing so.
Relaxing one afternoon for lunch, a sudden dust tornado swept my tent I was drying 20m into the air and I feared my home for the next week just disappeared. Fortunately it fell down again and I collected it before being taken away in the river, no damage done.
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The wrist-shattering wash-board dirt track took it's tole on our bikes, especially Seb's when his spoke decided to break on the cassette side two days from the next village. The wheel was so out of alignment that it couldn't spin at all without it getting jammed on the frame. Infuriatingly, this is when I find out he doesn't carry any spares or tools for this occasion (he says he has never had this problem before). Removing the cassette we tried to fit my spare onto it but it was a teasing 1mm too short, no matter how much we tried to tension it. The only thing possible was to true it as much as possible by tensioning the nearby spokes to max and moving the weight to his front rack to take the pressure of the broken wheel. Days later his front rack broke too so Nath and I took the weight whilst his bike limped on.
The daily afternoon winds became a real struggle, particularly at higher altitudes, pushing twice as hard, killing morale and deafening you in the meantime. Some kind of shelter was essential to find in the evening, luckily on the worst day we found a shepherd living in a building we spotted on the map, he let us stay in the tent outside and cook and sleep there. People were generally incredibly friendly here though and invited us often out of the wind when we eventually reached the villages.
Returning back down to lower altitude, the air felt progressively thicker until it felt like breathing soup at 2500m. The wildlife returned, along with the heat and lush greenery in all directions. The road quality didn't improve unfortunately for a long time, having to push our bikes though rivers, landslides and sand until finally seeing tarmac again in the final villages before Rushon.
We heard that our Korean friend Kim, whom we had met in Murghob was planning to stay in a guesthouse in a nearby village, we took the small detour to go and see. Unfortunately no sign of him but the kind owners invited us for tea, unlimited apricot jam and bread. We waited around for him to show and Seb went off with a man who spoke great English to search for a spare bike spoke (unsuccessfully). A couple of hours later we were finally joined by a cyclist, to our surprise though it wasn't Kim but Nathan who had caught up to us thanks to some lucky timing with the winds. Further down the road we were passed by jeep, Lim the Singaporean cyclist was inside and informed us that he was heading back to Dushanbe after hearing some unfortunate news that his wife was sick and had to undergo surgery.
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It was a giant relief to reach Rushon and before we could finish our well-deserved 4 samsas each we jumped in a shared taxi with our bikes on the roof and started a painful 11 hour drive back to Dushanbe where we could finally relax for a few days and regroup with all the cyclists that we had met on the way.
Today's ride: 450 km (279 miles)
Total: 1,990 km (1,236 miles)
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