Day 7. With a drawn-out yawn and an extensive stretch, my eyelids slowly peeled apart to reveal the bowed wooden skeleton and intricately embroidered canvas surface of a yurt. Plopped in the front yard of Pamir Hotel, the five cots lining the yurt’s circular floor provided a comfortable nighttime refuge to our spontaneous little family of 5 cyclists. We were in Murghab, the capital village of Tajikistan’s high Pamirs and one of the lowest points in the region at a mere 3,618 m (11,870 ft). If “the middle of nowhere” had a pin on the map, this was it. Functioning power lines, phone signals, running water, and trees were all becoming distant memories of past lives.
Our original plan was to take a couple of days off from the bicycles and head down to the Afghan border to see Lake Zorkul, a brilliant blue oasis in the otherwise monotone desert landscape. The local cab drivers hung out at the end of the bazaar—a collection of shipping containers-turned-shops—hawkishly eyeing every foreigner that strolled by. Upon hearing our request to go to Zorkul, all signs of enthusiasm immediately vanished. “Zorkul…very far,” noted one driver as the rest shrugged their shoulders and pretended we did not exist. I pressed on, but even for a very reasonable sum of money, nobody was willing to consider the possibility. The capitalist mindset that I’ve always taken for granted had clearly not yet infiltrated this remote stretch of the globe. Too much work was, simply, too much work.
After a yak milk ice cream for breakfast and another yak milk ice cream for lunch, we had exhausted the list of activities Murghab has to offer. Unable to relax knowing that the Pamir Highway’s highest point, 4,655 meter Ak Baital pass, loomed ahead, we settled back onto the saddles and clocked 26 km before the headwind picked up so much that pedaling was simply not worth the effort. While pitching our tents on the leeward side of a dirt mound, evidence of a new sign of life appeared in the extraterrestrial landscape. The fleeting excitement of being an astrobiologist discovering life on an alien planet quickly dissolved as the first mosquito plunged its proboscis into my tender skin, only to be followed by dozens more.
As the women secured our shelters for the night (and spent the next half hour slapping mosquitoes that snuck in through the gaps), the men huddled around the camping stoves, covered head to toe like ninjas, fixing up a nutritious dinner of pasta and tomatoes protein-fortified with the carcasses of suicidal mosquitoes too tempted by the salty boiling water. As soon as the pasta was al dente, everyone retreated to their respective tents for a socially-distanced dinner. That night, for the very first time in the 3 months since we set off from Tbilisi, rain fell from the sky.
Day 8. Jayne, Sam, and Radir packed up their tents under the whirling gray clouds, motivated to cover the 3-day ride to the next internet connection in time for fantasy football, as Detti and I hung around waiting for the morning sun to dry our gear. An hour later, we caught up to them fixing a punctured tire; we were destined to stick together. Ten minutes of hail broke the monotony of pedaling uphill in first gear, which was followed by…drumroll…a tailwind! With newfound energy, we pushed onward, greeting groups of cyclists in the opposite direction and adopting a dog Béla who would follow us for the next 2 days. At last, a much anticipated sign emerged in the distance: “Ak Baital Pass, 4655 m elevation”.
As it turns out, the sign is actually located at 4400 m elevation, 3 km from the top of the pass. One lone house stood next to the sign and the family ushered us in for a much needed meal. The menu was standard fare: tea, milk, kefir, hard bread, and butter. Rejuvenated, we left a few bills on the table and hit the road, only to find that pedaling was no longer within our capacity.
One step…two steps…three steps…four steps… I challenged myself to reach 50 before allowing for a rest but always stopped short. Pulling my phone out and clicking the photo button required a minute of catching my breath. The road got steeper but I hardly noticed. Deep in a zen state of exhaustion, I did not remember what came before and I did not consider what came next. In this dilated sense of time, my entire existence consisted of step, push, step, push, step, push, step… until, after one step, the bike rolled on its own. And that was it! I made it!
Here, at 4655 m (15,272 ft), on the roof of the Pamirs, the wind blew strong and cold. We donned all of our warm layers, snapped a few hasty selfies, and fled. The euphoria of accomplishment only began to catch up with me on the downhill. Despite the disastrous road surface and staggering exhaustion, I was on top of the world (no pun intended). The weather had oh-so-perfectly timed itself to shift from a pleasant tailwind to a terribly strong headwind just as we began the descent. Never-ending expanses of rocky outcrops probed the horizon in every direction. The sensory extravaganza in front of my eyes illustrated the vastness of nature in the most unabashed sense as if God were screaming in my face, “This is what infinity looks like!”. We humans live our lives in perpetual pursuit of satisfaction, and here it was, right smack-dab in the middle of the barren plateaus of Tajikistan.
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