I felt a bit better after a good nights sleep. I was well enough to ride the 20 kilometres into Khorog anyway. And how wonderful that we were all going to make it to Khorog together, the five of us that had pretty much set out from Dushanbe at the same time. And of course it was the bloody violence, the shootings and the angry mob burning things down in Khorog that had delayed our journey in the first place. What horrors were we to find there now as we finally arrived? And to further add to the drama it was, against all odds, once again Friday the 13th! As regular readers may recall, I had already survived a first Friday the 13th encounter with an alien in Russia, and then a second with a serial killer in Slovakia, so what was there to fear from an angry mob in Tajikistan? I mean, really?

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On the face of it there didn't appear to be anything to fear. Khorog looked like a normal town, with a few extra posters of the President around (just to remind everyone who is in charge, not that it might antagonise anyone or anything) and a few burnt out shells of buildings. Even so I wasted no time in checking in to the Pamir Lodge, the cheap accommodation almost every cyclist heads for, and keeping my head well and truly down for the rest of the day. I sent Rob and Gabor off on errands to buy juice for me, because naturally I was still too sick to risk encountering any bloody violence.

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Remarkably Friday the 13th passed by without anything much worse than Rob's snoring bothering me. Despite John's antibiotics I was only a little better the next day, so I stayed another night even though I was rapidly running out of time on my visa. Technically I could have bought myself a few more days by registering in Khorog, but it was quite expensive and someone had burned down the registration office.

Rob was doing a tremendous job of looking after me. I think he still felt a little bad about having left me before, but he had done a great job of making amends. He was a great person, they all were. Even more cyclists arrived too. Tyson and Hanne that we knew from Dushanbe, and a Korean cyclist on a recumbent that looked like a regular bike that had been run over, and a few others. Eleven cyclists were there in all. But I had no choice except to go on alone, as I had to cover the 500 kilometres to the Kyrgyzstan border by the 21st. Gabor had to be there by the 25th and was worried. I told him to relax, I mean, I had to be there by the 21st after all. "Yeah," he said, "but I haven't got nuts of tungsten," implying that I did. Rob and I consulted. We decided that this must be a rarely used Hungarian variation of 'balls of steel', possibly never before used. I took it very much as a compliment.

The next morning, the 15th, I left. I was still sick, but I had to go. It was sad to be finally saying goodbye to everyone. Gayle seemed very concerned about me, telling me I looked thin and that I needed to eat, and generally seeming worried. Clearly she hadn't heard about my nuts.

13/06/14 - 20km

14/06/14 - 6km unloaded