This article is the fifth and final installation in the Pamir Highway series. If you haven’t read the others, follow this link.
Despite the howling wind and frigid temperatures, Detti and I slept like logs, having just reached the highest elevation that either of us had ever been to—with fully loaded bikes. Enjoying a leisurely 11am start, the road, or rather, the series of bumps laid out in a straightish line across the valley awaited us. The fresh raw yak milk in our stomachs sloshed around as our tires rattled along the washboard road surface, churning itself into butter. Lake Karakul slowly unveiled on the horizon, its deep turquoise contrasted against the snowy backdrop of 7,134 meter Pik Lenin. Thanks to a growing headwind and perpetual diarrhea (I don’t know why I’m even writing about this any more; at this point not having diarrhea would be much bigger news), it was time for a break.
Three bikes were standing outside of one house, and since every cyclist in the Pamirs crosses paths at some point, we knew the riders. Sure enough, Elad, Pau, and Ferres were lying on the living room floor, debilitated with the usual Pamir bug, aka the Badakhshan Kiss (Badakhshan is the Tajik Pamir region), aka Diarrheastan. Then another couple rolled in, also sick. And another. Most of the day was spent commiserating in our guesthouse-turned-infirmary with 9 suffering cyclists. That evening, an astonishing opportunity manifested: a shower!! The village had a banya—a small bath house consisting of a samovar to heat water by burning yak poop (no trees at that elevation), a barrel of cold water, and a large ladle. This unexpected luxury came as a silver lining to an otherwise very uncomfortable day.
We set off the next morning into wind as tumultuous as our stomachs. 4,232 meter Uy Buloq pass came and went; by this point, 4,000 meter passes were a casual activity. The day’s main excitement emerged in the evening. From Karakul to the Kyrgyz border, the Pamir highway sees its harshest conditions. Nothing grows here, not even tumbleweed. That means, when the wind picks up, sand comes along with it. We had to find a place to pitch our tent where it wouldn’t be crushed by the wind or the sandstorm but all of the suitable hills for shelter were across the fence in China. On top of that, we ran out of water and the only stream was too muddy to drink from. Finally, we stopped the one car that passed to ask for water and cooked a nutritious dinner of sandy pasta with sandy onions in a sandy hole.
Our final day in Tajikistan began by waiting for the ice to melt off of our tent followed by the slow trudge up to 4,336 meter Kyzyl Art Pass, which defines the border with Kyrgyzstan. The pass itself is positioned in a 15 km strip of no-man’s-land between the two checkpoints. At this stage, we had met up with Elad, Pau, and Ferres again, so the five of us foreigners showed up to the Tajik exit checkpoint where our passport data was entered manually into a notebook from the Soviet Union—at a pace of about 15 seconds per letter. Latin alphabet is not so easy when you grew up with only Cyrillic and don’t have access to the internet.
Just past the formidably rough Kyzyl Art Pass, one small cottage awaited us in neither Tajikistan nor Kyrgyzstan. As is customary in this part of the world, we walked in and made ourselves at home. And what happened? Hold on! We were served not only the standard bread, butter, and kefir, but also apricot jam! We hadn’t even officially entered Kyrgyzstan yet, and we already had such a bourgeoisie life. Leaving a few bills on the table for our hosts, we mounted our saddles and savored the steep downhill in this fairy tale land with full stomachs. The mountains had transformed from dull gray to a vibrant mix of colors. A cyan stream flowed into a larger red river, green plants grew against a backdrop of rust-colored rocks.
At the Kyrgyz border checkpoint, we ran into trouble. Elad’s visa wasn’t valid until three days later and the police wouldn’t even accept a bribe, so after 1.5 hours of trying to find a loophole, he turned back to spend the following 3 days in the stateless house with the apricot jam. Meanwhile, our crew had grown as 3 other cyclists showed up at the border, so the 7 of us battled the ever-increasing headwind along the final 26km descent into Sary Tash, Kyrgyzstan’s frontier settlement.
Sary Tash is not much of a town but it does have a guesthouse with a sauna, which we immediately pulled up to. As per usual, we were greeted by familiar faces. Jayne and Sam, with whom we had cycled (rather, pushed our bikes) up the Pamir’s highest Ak Baital pass a few days before, had arrived just before us.
Seeing carrots on the supermarket shelf after 11 days in the Pamirs was certainly exciting, but the real excitement came the next day when we headed down to Osh. I put my bags in a taxi with Detti and Sam—whose desire for a proper sit-down toilet and a shower outweighed the desire to cycle—and rode “naked” for the 140 km descent to the bustling 250,000 person metropolis. Quite possibly the best pizza of my entire life was waiting when I arrived.
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