Tajikistan is a very, very beautiful country. The mountains here are beautiful - high, steep, with the history of their birth unveiled time after time in magma flows and violent upthrustings. I am more taken with them than any mountains I have ever seen on any continent I have visited (or lived upon). And that is without ever getting into the Pamirs. Yet.
Tajikistan is also home to the most beautiful highways in Central Asia, and the worst. I left Dushanbe later than I wanted to, because things in Central Asia just take time, such as banking and buying SIM cards, and even refueling, and because the traffic in Dushanbe is typical of Central Asia. But I finally got out of town at about 11:00, and enjoyed the first 72 kilometers of good road. The mountains come up right away, and I was soon in the hills, leading to the mountains visible in the near distance. The road is lined with small villages and farms, interspersed with fields. I think it is beautiful.
After km 72, the road deteriorates. Coming to the end of a little village, and out from the shade of its tree lined streets, I saw a vast bowl of dried grasses, with the hills to the left and a river in a gorge to the right. Straight across the bowl, and leading to the edge of a hill near the river where the road disappeared behind the ridge, was a dusty, dirty road - the road that leads to the Pamir Highway, another 40 or more kilometers away. I knew it had been too good to last. Off I went.
The road follows the north bank go the Obikhignou River. Near Rogun, it looks like they are getting ready to build a dam, as there are huge stockpiles of gravel, the size of small mountains, and what appears to be a construction camp built on a bluff high above the river. This river is a very powerful, full throated beast of a river, carrying a tremendous silt load. Everywhere there is evidence of the torrents that empty into it when it rains in the mountains that stand near the river. It's not a wide, sluggish river, but a storming upheaval of water pounding downstream between its limiting banks. I had the impression that the river would destroy any and every thing that came into its path. I did not see a single pylon in the river (except one of its tributaries) that survived to support a bridge.
The road carves, as I said, its way along the northern bank, generally up on the hillside. The hill above and the river below are a constant challenge for those who have designed, built, and maintain this "highway." The hillsides are constantly eroding onto the roadway, and the hillside below the roadway is constantly eroding into the river, or being eroded by the river.
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| A view across the river |
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| This bridge with pylons in the river is over a small tributary entering the Obikgingou from the north |
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| This was taken along a stretch of paved roadway. Occasionally, after km 72, there is a stretch or two of paved road that lulls one into believing it is all going to be good from there on. That hope is quickly destroyed in less than five minutes. |
The unpaved portions of the road are potholed, washboarded, and rutted gravel. Cars and trucks can blast along at 80 kmh or better, but I am slowed to generally under 30 kmh. Time passed slowly in the baking heat and stifling dust. After at total of 135 kilometers or so after leaving Dushanbe, I came to the first of three control points for access to the Pamir Highway, where police checked my passport for the required permit. In an interesting manner, the last maybe 10-15 kilometers are also paved! At this point, the highway branches, with the northern branch, A372, proceeding on to Osh, while the southern branch, M41, leads to Kalaikhum (another 104 kilometers or so), and then to Khorog (another 192 kilometers) which is the gateway to the Pamir Highway. Actually, M41 in its entirety is considered the Pamir Highway, but you don't get into the Pamir Mountains until after Khorog. Leaving the police point, I took this picture with my iPhone, ready to tackle this next adventure:
It was getting late, but I figured I still had a chance to get to Kalaikhum that night if I kept going steadily. Events were to prove me wrong.
The first maybe 17 kilometers are up into the hills on a gravel and broken tarmac surface, with many recent repairs of crushed (and not so crushed) rock bladed over the surface. It appears that whenever there is a heavy enough rainfall in the adjacent mountains, the mountains empty the water right onto the road, washing it out or badly damaging it. On these surfaces, I was managing around 15 to 25 kmh. It was clear that I was only going to get to Kalaikhum that night if the road got better.
Nonetheless, the surrounding scenery was stupendous. The road broke out of the little front range and into the river valley. Sometimes, the river had left room for pasture lands along its banks, and sometimes not, but regardless, the views were beautiful.
Occasionally, I would find a few hundred meters of surviving tarmac, and really rock on! But still progress was slow. I stopped and talked with some bicyclists, a lone German fellow and then a Swiss couple, and they were all so very nice that I wanted to just talk and talk. But I had a time crunch on my mind, and kept grinding it out. The heat was still oppressive, with that kind of heat you only get in the mountains where the rock and the valleys trap the heat and slowly bake you. Water started to be a problem, and I kept stopping and buying water, and chugging a half liter of bottled sweet tea whenever I could find it. I also stopped and did a complete refuel to take the fear of running low off my mind. Moreover, as I was hungry for lunch, I stopped at a place that advertised soup and fish on its sign. It was located on a rock bluff maybe 60 feet high jutting into a tributary to the "O" river. I was thinking maybe a bowl of soup and some bread would do nicely. Alas, no soup! Instead, I was served 5 smoked and dried fish, about 6 inches long each, bread, and tea. The bread was very good. While eating, the teenage boy living there took up his fishing pole and went down to the river below to catch more inventory. The pole was a branch, maybe 3 meters long. The float was another branch, covered with moss, about one meter long. From his float dangled a length of monofilament with a hook. I did not see what he was using for bait, but there were plenty of grasshoppers around. He just hurled his float upstream, and let it drift downstream. Apparently he was successful to some degree, as I had just eaten the products of his earlier labors.
Along about 4:30, with about three hours of daylight left, I ran into a stretch of deep dust drifted across the road way. I had encountered this deep dust before, and had not experienced any problems. This time, the dust was much deeper, and I was going too fast, and down I went. The dust was very fine, the consistency of talcum powder, and red in color. I landed on my right side, banging up my right arm and shoulder, and straining that arm from elbow to wrist. I also picked up a raspberry on my right elbow from the Kevlar lining of my riding jacket, which stung a lot, particularly as the dust got into it. Down in the dust, I unpacked the bike, and after several efforts, was able to get it upright. Dust was everywhere! And it was thick dust, packed tight into every little crevice. After getting the bike upright, I tried to start it. It would not start. The battery was good, as all the lights and the horn worked, but not even a click of the starter motor. I had to get the bike off the road, onto the grass (hopefully upwind of this dust patch) so I could start troubleshooting.
The problem was the tires would push the dust into a compacted mound in front of themselves when I tried to push it forward. I had to dig a trench with my foot from the front tire to the side of the road to provide a route of less resistance. Time was passing me by, and it took a few dozen minutes to get the thing up and off the road. I took apart the switch box that holds the starter button and the kill switch and blew them free of dust, but that did not work. So I took off the right side cowling to check the fuse box. Then I heard the sound of a motorcycle approaching, and a solo rider rode up, stopped, parked, and came over. Sasha The Vulcan is a Russian from Vladivostok, and together we checked all the fuses, blew at dust, checked battery terminals, etc. I took apart the switch cover again, blew out some more dust, put it back tougher, and finally the engine started. I have no idea what caused it to get well, but I suspect it was shorting across the kill switch, or jamming the kill switch somehow. Regardless, it was a great sound to hear! Sasha lugged my bags over to the bike for me, and we agreed I would meet him in Kalaikhum later that night where there is a guest house. He rode on, and after I got packed up, I followed. I had lost over an hour of daylight from this fall, and collected some bangs that were very sore.
About half an hour before nightfall, I came across the second of the police checkpoints, and they took about 15 minutes to enter my name in their logbook, and check my permit again. This checkpoint was right on the riverbank, and at a point where the river was crossed by a suspension bridge to what looked like a large village on the other side. Since it was dusk, I didn't have time to check further, but kept riding. Here, I made a big mistake. I should have found a nice level place to camp before nightfall, but I ignored all of my professed promises that I would not ride at night, would always lager up before nightfall in a safe place, and etc. I paid for this mistake.
After nightfall, I knew I had to find a place to camp. Riding after dark through these villages reminded me, for some reason, of a troop movement I made one night in Viet Nam when the commanders decided we would travel by jeep and truck from Chu Lai to a ridge south of a village named Duc Pho to set up a detachment. For whatever reason, the movement was scheduled for after nightfall, and so we drove along these pockmarked, potholed, badly damaged "roads" through darkened villages all night long. I was uncomfortable then, although armed, and I was uncomfortable in the now of Tajikistan.
In the full dark, and before moonrise, the inevitable happened. One of those rain fed torrents had washed out the road, leaving a field of rock debris across the roadway. Marginal work had been done to scratch out a line where vehicles could traverse this area, and the boulders had been removed, although some large rocks remained. To make it worse, the stream had rerouted itself so that a portion of it was flowing in the newly scratched roadway. Not deep, mind you, never even a foot deep, but enough at night to hide whatever was there. Foolishly, with a village only a few hundred meters behind me, I rode into it. Almost making it all the way through, the bike finally hit a large stone in the bottom, bounced to the right, and slowly, against my straining body, tipped over and fell on its right side. Brave bike that it is, it kept running, too! After turning it off, I unpacked it it, and slowly got it upright. Thankfully, it started right up. I remounted, and started riding it out of the water. A few meters later, it hit another rock, bounced to the right, and we had a deja vu all over again. "Damn," I said. By now feeling the effects of the earlier fall in the dust, it was more of a struggle to get it up, but I did. After all, there was no reasonable alternative. I got it started and out of the water.
I repacked, and started up the road. My feet had gotten wet in the stream, but not really any wetter than they had been from the earlier sweating that had taken place. Each night when I remove the riding suit and boots, I am soaked. Now, I knew I needed to find a place and get off the bike to rest.
A few kilometers later, I spied what I thought would do. There were no villages nearby, although I could see the lights of a few scattered houses. I wanted to get the bike off the road and hidden from view, as this road is a major smuggler's route bringing the opium and its derivatives from Afghanistan to market. (There was traffic including trucks, cars and motorcycles all night long). I didn't want any of these nocturnal "travelers" to see anything that might make them curious enough to stop and investigate. I rode the bike off the road between a large bush and a small tree, put my gloves on the mirrors to hide any reflection, and covered the bike with my camouflage poncho. Checking it with my flashlight, there was no shape, no reflection, and it looked like part of the shrubbery around it.
I moved off downhill about a dozen meters, and found a pocket of rocks that looked comfy, and settled in. I didn't make a formal camp, or undress, figuring the riding suit and boots would keep the insects and vermin off me, and they did. I was actually comfortable. Well, as comfortable as you can be on a rock bed, but just relaxing from the constant jarring of the bike felt good. The stars were beautiful, the Milky Way a brilliant band of diamonds, with a shooting star or two to enliven the scene. I kept looking for the movements of satellites, but I didn't spot any. Perhaps they were further south . . . Much later, it really cooled off, and I had to take out my shemagh and wrap it around my head to keep warm.
I woke up shortly after five, and started preparing to get on to Kaliakhum. The day did not start too well.
