Finally we leave Tajikistan
10 AugWe’re really conscious that we need to make up some time to get back on schedule. The delays in Dushanbe mean we are 2 days behind. We get up at dawn, and it is freezing cold. My fingers won’t work as I try and pack up my tent. Stephen has had to get up in the middle of the night to put more clothes on. Strangely the creek has started flowing overnight. Stephen collects some water from it but it’s decidedly green.
The day starts ominously when the car won’t start. The cold temperatures means the thick oil we are using is too thick, and the starter turns it slowly. The battery is also suffering from the cold, and after a few attempts it’s already starting to slow. We are a long push from the road, so can’t afford a flat battery. I take the spark plugs out and fit our spares clean. The old plugs are black as night. The thin air at high altitude means the engine runs rich, depositing carbon on the plugs. I’m hoping that’s why we’ve lost power. The engine starts on about 2 cylinders, and I have to hold my foot flat on the throttle to maintain idle. After 5 minutes of this, it warms up, and we’re on the way again.
Progress is slow however. It feels like we’re 50% down on power, so we’re flat out doing 60km/h. We arrive in Murgab at 7:30am. This is where the road forks. One branch, the Pamir Highway continues to Kyrgyzstan. That’s for us. The other branch heads west to China. Yesterday we passed about 20 trucks, all heading from China south on the highway. The Chinese border here hasn’t been open for long, and is opening up new trade opportunities.
There is a checkpoint before Murgab, and we are instructed there to register in Murgab before continuing. This is outrageous, as we already registered in Khorog. It’s Sunday, and it turns out the registration office doesn’t open until 10am Monday. That’s 27 hours away. We can’t believe it! How are we supposed to maintain a schedule. There is a local tourist office called META (Murgab Eco Tourism Association), and it’s open on Sunday. We head over there and find a car from the London to Dushanbe, ‘Roof of the World’ rally. There are only 3 cars on the rally, we saw one in Khorog, and the this one. It is an English team, and they’ve been asleep in their car outside the tourist office overnight. They are traveling in the opposite direction to us, and tell us that the road to come is horrible. We have a good chat. It’s always good to see some other ralliers, and here of their own struggles. It makes me feel better. They warn me of a man pretending to be an army official on the road ahead. He has a machine gun but likes cigarettes. A Tajik man with good English turns up at the tourist office and tells us to continue without registering. This is the news we need. We ask fo a petrol station (we have been told there is fuel here somewhere), and are directed to a local house. They decant some 80 fuel from jerry cans into our car, and we continue. It’s around 450km to Osh in Kyrgyzstan. There is a town 180km before that called Sary-Tash.
We’re glad to leave Murgab without staying the night, as it is a bit of a dump. It’s full of Krgyz people, who wear crazy hats. We go to the bazaar to buy some more water, and some bread. I keep trying to buy water with no gas from the stalls. Three times the vendor tells me it has no gas, and then I open the bottle and it fizzes. They look surprised and then charge me a ridiculous price for the bottle. I have better luck with the bread. We’ve learnt ‘naan’ means bread, and this helps.
Outside of Murgab a serious barbed wire fence runs along the edge of the road. In the end this continues all of the way t the Kyrgyz border. It marks the Chinese border (or Chinese no mans land). They’ve gone to a big effort to build it (it must be around 300km long), but amazingly it has some gates which have been left open!
The scenery past Murgab, a whole lot of nothing:
...and the fence to China:
The road climbs after Murgab to the highest pass. It’s 4688m, or just over 14000ft. We struggle in 1st gear for most of the way. The road is dirt and rough. Eventually it gets too steep for 1st gear, and we have to use low range 4wd. We climb like this for around 10minutes. It’s too much for the car and we stop in sight of what could be the top with an engine on the verge of boiling. The radiator is hissing as we stop, and we get out and let it cool. We’re not sure whether it is about to blow up, whether the 80 fuel has wrecked it, or whether it’s just running too rich. I’m wondering whether we should wait for a tow to the top. However all of the traffic we saw yesterday as from China, and we haven’t seen a single vehicle since Murgab. Some German cyclists come over the brow of the hill. We see loads of cyclists on this road before the day is out. It must be the thing to do. They confirm that the crest we can see is the top of the pass. We’re only 100 short. We decide to give it another go. We go about 20m and the engine coughs and stops. We realize we’d parked on the uphill, and the fuel has run out of the pump again.
We roll the car so it’s sideways on the slope and unload the tools. At this altitude everything is such hard work...including sucking the fuel through the fuel line! However it’s successful, and once reloaded we drive the last 80m. We’re very happy to have made the top. This breakdown had given us a big reality check. By the end of the day we realize we have not seen one vehicle traveling our direction, and have seen only one car coming the other way.
A little further down the road we are flagged to stop by a man in army greens holding a gun. He is in the middle of nowhere. I’m glad I’ve been tipped off by the other ralliers. We stop, and I ask him if he wants some cigarettes. He happily accepts, and I start moving before he has a chance to point his gun in our direction.
We continue to Lake Kara-Kul. I think this translates to smelly lake. It’s ridiculously salty, but is big and impressive. We make out the land on the other side, but it’s actually just an island in the middle. The town on Karal-Kul is rundown like Murgab. We stop at a disused service station and empty the 80 fuel from our tank, and add our 15L of 93. We’re hoping this will clean the engine out. While we’re doing this a Kyrgyz man approaches us. He watches as I eat a packet of dry 2 minute noodles, but doesn’t take up my offer of a sample. We have our stuff unloaded, and he picks his way through our boxes, asking what different pieces of equipment are. We are low on water, and he picks one of our empty 10L bottles up and disappears with it. Five minutes later he returns with it. He has filled it from the town pump. The water looks good, and we add some purification tablets. I’m a lot happier about the prospect of being stuck somewhere now. This is an interesting conversation between us and the man, almost free from any words. I wish I could ask him for his crazy hat, but I’m sure this would be disrespectful.
The 93 fuel makes no difference. We cross a couple of small rivers, and continue towards the Tajik border. It is on top of the final Pamir pass, and is only 4200m. We struggle our way up this final pass. At the very top is Tajik border control, which is manned by army officers. We have to get our passport and vehicle details listed at 4 different offices before we can leave. We give away a few cigarettes. The offices are all basically tin shacks. We are taken inside so they can note our details. Inside are beds, and there are a couple of people asleep while we are inside. They have stocks of vegetables on the floor, and although there is one feeble electric light, they have kerosene lanterns on standby. Outside the shacks they are skinning one of our Golden Desert Beavers. I suppose they need meat in their diet as well. They are quite isolated here, and supplies must be hard to come by.
We’re glad to leave Tajikistan. The scenery has been fantastic, and we’ve had some fantastic experiences. However, we’ve had to work hard for every mile of progress. We are one and a half days late. We were tight on the visa for this country anyway, so we only had 3 days to spare, enough to make us nervous.
The Kyrgyz border is more sensibly placed at the bottom of the pass. This is great, but it leaves a 20km stretch of no-mans land. There are people living inside it! We pass a Kyrgyz border guard in his Lada Niva. He is stopping regularly and trying to shoot the Beavers with his rifle. The problem with having 20km of no-mans land, is that no one wants to maintain the road...and it’s a shocker. There is even a small river to cross. It’s really steep, made of red clay, and rutted to oblivion.
A good part of the road through no-mans land:
The change in scenery on the other side of the pass is instant. There are green mountains rather than rock, and for the first time since the Czech Republic, it starts to rain on our car. There is a valley running on the left hand side of the road, and we follow it down. Two rivers run down the valley. One is distinctly red, from the clay, and the other is a bright green, from some green coloured rocks (high in copper perhaps?). These two brilliant colours wind their way down the valley, and at some points they intersect, forming a third colour. It was like nothing I’ve seen before.
Hard to catch on camera, the two coloured river:
The Kygryz officials are easygoing. The first office stamps our passport, and we are pointed to customs. They are sitting in a warm room sharing a watermelon, and aren’t interested in paperwork, so we continue to inspection. They are playing cards and doing a puzzle in the newspaper. We continue to Sary-Tash, which is at the base of one of three passes we need to climb to cross Kyrgyzstan. There is a guest house there, run by an Kyrgyz/English interpreter. Her family sleep in a Yurt, and they rent their home to tourists. She cooks us the most awesome meal of potatoes and lamb, and we share half a watermelon. There is an Italian guest there, and we share some travel stories. He has a visa for China, and has twice been to the border to use it, only to be told it’s closed to tourists due to some bomb attacks on the other side of the border Now his Kyrgyz visa has expired, and he is in all sorts of trouble. He sells us some Kygryz money in exchange for $US. This is good for us, as we have no local money, and probably can’t get any until Osh. There is a strange old man at the guest house, we presume the father of the girl. He keeps motioning to us to take our pants off??? We are filthy dirty, but there is no shower, and no alternative suggested. We wonder what they do to clean themselves. This is a quaint small town though. Obviously close knit, and full of traditional Kyrgyz life. We’d love to have a walk around, but we’re completely spent.
Our room in the Kyrgyz guest house:
