Into the mountains
9 AugI wake early and walk to the exchange office to change some US to Tenge for fuel. It says it is open at 7:30am, and it’s 8am, but it’s still shut. I walk back to the hotel to discover we’ve still got the time wrong, and it’s only 7am...grumble, grumble.
Breakfast, back to the exchange office, off to the petrol station, and you guessed it, still no fuel. Wait 1hr for the boss to turn up they say. We wait, the boss never comes, but another man shows up. They are waiting for a pump specialist to come and finish the system. He will be here at 2pm they say, but he has promised that for the last few days. One of the other guys says he thinks it’ll be a week. I check the tank in the ground, and there is no where easy to hand pump some fuel.
The frustrating tank is full of 92 fuel.
Our car is empty of fuel, so we head to another garage, and buy 10 litres of 80 grade and go for a drive. It seems okay, so we buy another 70L and hit the road.
There is a short stop at a checkpoint, where we are fined for having a dirty car with the steering wheel on the wrong side. The fine is $1US, and is obviously them pulling our leg.
There are 4 main passes on this road. We start ascending the first one, which is around 4200m. On the way up we stop to have a bit of a wash in a mountain stream, and check out a bridge made of sticks. Here Stephen tests it’s construction:
The scenery was great from here as well.
Unfortunately when we try and leave the bridge we have the same fuel problem as on the way to Khorog, and I have to suck the fuel through to get it running again. Hopefully that’s the last time I taste petrol. We now have a new rule, we can only stop facing downhill, as that seems to be when our fuel problem arises.
All to common a site these days:
The car climbs the first pass well, albeit in 1st gear. The scenery is beautiful. On the way down the other side we start to lose power. Still we manage to climb the 2nd pass before nightfall, which is nowhere near as extreme as the first. The engine has gone really flat and quiet, and it sounds like the exhaust is blocked.
The scenery on the way up the first pass was of massive bare stone mountains. Once we crest the pass, we enter a massive high altitude desert. There is the occasional creature, Stephen calls it the golden desert beaver, that scampers around. They are too fast for us to capture one on camera. It’s I the desert that we camp for the night. Stephen’s sharp eyes pick out an abandoned house 100m from the road. The roof is gone, but the walls and dirt floor remain. We park the car inside and pitch our tents sheltered from the wind. The temperature is around 10 degrees, and we can finally enjoy a cool beer! There is a creek bed next to the house, but it’s dry. We notice the altitude while setting up the camp. Stephen has taken some altitude tablets, but I decided not too. This is so when the car breaks down, I have a good excuse for making Stephen push it.
Snow capped peaks not so far away:
We’d bought fresh vegetables at the market in Khorog, so tonight we eat well, egg plant (aubergine) and capsicum (green pepper) with pasta.
Overnight the temperature drops to around zero (we are still at around 3800m)! It is a complete contrast to the 45 degrees we experienced near the Aral Sea. I knew I brought thermals for a reason.
Camping in the abandoned house, note Stephen is fully rugged up:
