Day 181 (Tajikistan): somewhere - Dersu (Pamiri hospitality reigns supreme)

daily distance: 96km
total distance: 10,935km
riding time: 7h

I woke up in my tent with a cloggy nose, a big fat headache and a lump in my throat. Not a good way to start the day. Really, it isn’t. Add to that a kid that just wouldn’t go away after I had crawled out of my tent and you can see that I wasn’t a super happy camper at that point. After packing up I figured that I would flag down a car and get myself to Khorog by car. For some reason the first car I let pass (which would have been the perfect car with plenty of space) and the same again with the second. And then there weren’t many more. OK, about 20 in all, but most of them were full or not suitable. And I felt better after a couple of hours.

Annoying checkpoints and bored soldiers again … one patrol telling me that the road would be closed ahead when it wasn’t. I told them that a car had just passed and that I couldn’t see it any longer. And that I was going anyway. It was clear what they wanted and I was in no mood to give them any money.

The road continued its up and down fashion for quite a while, mostly on bad surface, bumpy for the most part. But again the scenery was breathtaking and made up for all the difficulties. I started to feel better too. Had loads of pseudo-chocolate to boost things and after a while things were back to normal. Keep your fingers crossed that this isn’t coming to haunt me once up in the Pamir. Here is some confidence-instilling piece of construction.

And this girl is becoming quite popular judging by the number of plastic bags that are adorned with her face.

And don’t ask what the girls had to drink …

In the afternoon the scenery opened up dramatically. The riverbed became much wider after a good number of fast-moving sections - the river that is. Markus was kept low by a blustery wind that was coming down the valley pretty hard. But once in the more wide open area the wind was switched off it seemed. And I didn’t have the underappreciative biker mentality when the wind comes from behind and we complain about it not being there. It simply stopped.

The area is amazing and the last bit was pure pleasure riding. I stopped to get a bite to eat for dinner and was overwhelmed when the lady started going to her own home to grab some tomatoes, but came back with bread, apples and peaches on top of things. And she wouldn’t take any money for it. No argument would convince her.

My quest for a tent site met with a similar fate. No, you have to come to our house. The daughter spoke really good English and so we had a great time discussing all sorts of things with the entire family. Things up here are a bit different. People are wonderful and extremely caring in a way that has been described to me many times, but that is hard to put down in words. Maybe I’ll be able to in a few days. And boy … the stars are out in force up here at 2200m. This promises to be a great ride up in the Pamirs.