Day 172 (Tajikistan): Ayni - Dushanbe (up the hill and through a tunnel)

daily distance: 135km
total distance: 10,334km
riding time: 9-10h

I left Ayni early in the morning, though not quite as early as I had hoped. I made it across the bridge that was to be closed soon after though and started hacking away at the distance. I wasn’t quite sure whether I would be able to reach Dushanbe in one day or not - and took let’s just see what happens approach.

The first 17km were awful - the road being torn up / destroyed again. Not much fun and on top of that too many trucks moving at my pace blasting fumes and smoke my way. Some Chinese construction workers were in the mix again, this time clearly cordoning off the road. One of them took a lot of interest in my book Moby Dick and started reading out the words.

The area was breathtaking and after the 17km the road became good again for a while. You continue to follow a gorge - and sadly I went into a pretty harsh headwind. Are those ever going to stop?

Just after passing Anzob (the village that is), the road starts to become mighty steep. And rough again. Chinese trucks seemed to be racing up and down the mountain, except for one who saw me being covered in dust when the guy in front of hm passed me - and stopped. A slight bow on both sides (as much as possible on a bike while trying to balance on a steep gravel road) and I thought I would never see him again. I would meet up with him twice. He soon overtook me again and stopped. We chatted (well, sign language that is) and it turns out he is from Urumqi, is a biker and pedaled 4000km through China at one point. So he was quite stoked to see me.

Further lots of steep uphill until the road leveled a bit before becoming steep again towards the tunnel of Anzob. I had heard many stories about this one, water waisthigh and the like and I figured I would see what happens once I got there. Well, it was the Chinese truck driver again - with a bunch of his colleagues. Mr. Nice Guy is the one on the right.

More chatting before I finally saw the tunnel. And water there was.

Plenty of it - so much so that the tunnel will be closed tomorrow for a month or so. I was told that I couldn’t go and so forth, but figured that I would try … and it wasn’t as bad as people made it sound. You stick to the side of the road and the water - though cold - is not as deep. The worst I had was kneedeep. In those parts, I pushed the bike rather than pedal through. You couldn’t see much really even with my headlamp, which I eventually turned off. The light in the tunnel was in the end sufficient and my initial concern that there were too many fumes in the tunnel were allayed when I saw construction workers hacking away on something on their machines.

After 5km I emerged on the other side … only to find gloomy skies and colder weather. The road was rough again, only some patches had been sealed and more Chinese construction crews were working on tunnels. But it entirely escapes me what the purpose of building them all at once is. It means that you have to go around all of them, which in turn means rough roads and complete loss of momentum.

Roughness can also be described by this … one of the screws holding my rear rack rattled loose and was bent 90 degrees, something I could fix without a big problem by putting in new one, but it shows how rough things were on the upper part of the downhill. Once you hit the blacktop things are smooth and I decided after a while to push all the way into Dushanbe where I arrived just after nightfall.

Sonja, friend of a friend of a friend (thanks Bettina, thanks Bianca - the latter I don’t know myself, for the contact) let me crash at her place and so all was well. Thanks a bunch.