Just the insurance thanks
6 AugGoodbye to Dushanbe today, and a special thanks to John for helping us out so much.
John and Stephen study the map prior to our departure.
First though, there is one more problem to sort out. We have almost run out of car insurance. We bought some at the border between Uzbekistan and Russia, but it only lasted 14days. We haven’t seen anywhere to buy more since. Stephen has found somewhere on the internet that says they can help. He does the shopping while I go to sort it out. What a nightmare. It turns out our old 3rd party insurance would pay maximum damages of only $1000US (we always suspected this). The new value had to be negotiated, as did the value of our car (even thought it’s not insured), all of my documents had to be checked, handed back, checked a second time, photocopied... Finally the decided to quote. The man on the left says ‘Two...’ and the man on the right butts in and says ‘Three hundred and fifty dollars’. I finally bargain a price of US$160. Then there is problems finding an atm to get the money, the car has to be inspected, and it takes a further 90 minutes to write the paperwork. During that time the salesman twice trys to sell me some sort of a Russian bride (which I refuse!).
After that experience I’m glad to roll out of Dushanbe, even though the Police do stop us 7 times on the way out to check our paperwork.
We are headed to the Pamir Mountains. Pamir means ‘roof of the world’. The town of Khorog is the centre of the Pamir region. We hope to reach there in two days. There are two roads to get there. The north road is not passable in winter, but is the shortest. The south road runs along the Afghan border, and according to the Lonely Planet, is being upgraded by Turkish road crews. There is a surreal stretch of highway around the town of Zigar. This road will be easier. Also it passes through a town called Kulob, where we can get some good fuel. It’s touch and go whether we’ll have enough fuel to get through this area, but as long as we can fill in Khorog we’ll be okay.
We only travel about 30miles before we reach the start of the first big pass. We climb it slowly, and then proceed about a quarter of the way down the other side, when the brake pedal starts going long. By halfway down it’s on the floor, and I’m a little worried. The handbrake has gone too. I managed to stop and check the brake fluid, and it’s okay. The back brakes have come out of adjustment. With no split brake system, if the rear brakes go, so do the fronts. With the handbrake fully applied, there is a tiny bit of pedal still working. We can’t jack the car on a hill (and surely the Police would fine us for this!), so we crawl down in 1st gear. We proceed for a while until it abrubtly becomes apparent that the road is not finished, as a bridge is missing. We have missed a detour (it’s not posted!). At least this piece of road is quiet, and I jack the car and fix the brakes (again!). This time it is my fault, having deliberately removed the mechanism for automatically adjusting the handbrake, as it didn’t work. I didn’t realize it also stopped the adjustment nut from turning, and it had unwound itself every time the brake was applied.
Despite there being no signs, we put two and two together and decided maybe this road wasn’t open yet:
We reach Kulob at 5pm, and from there we climb steeply to 2200m on a dirt road, through Shurabad Pass. At the top we pass through a border control, and this marks the start of the GBAO area. This is a semi-autonomous part of Tajikistan, and encompasses the entire Pamir region. There is a town just past the border post, and it is immediately obvious that things are different. We travel slowly through crowds of people and cattle, who all appear to be traveling home after being out grazing their cattle and tending their crops (although we can’t see anywhere to do either!).
The top of Shurabad pass:
The road past the top of the pass. This picture is hard to work out, but the road has disappeared into a ravine, and then re-appeared on the other side. We knew not to take this road as it had 3 piles of 3 small rocks one on top of each other across it.
We stop for the night just past the township, and camp at the entrance to a quarry.
Frozen fish in a Dushanbe supermarket.
