The Journey so far.....


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September 23rd

G – Reporting

After the somewhat stressful events of the day before woke felling quite excited that they were all behind us, so after a tasty fried egg breakfast in our home stay, a quick check of email at the local intent café! (see pic) we hit the road for almost 2km before we came to a our first Tajik checkpoint which are notorious for trying to get a little money for their troubles, but not this time as usual all our details where painstakingly written in a ledger and then after a few handshakes we were on our way, nice!

To try and set the scene the Pamir Mountains which you may have not heard of are basically the very western end of the Himalayas so it’s safe to say they are big! With some very high passes, after yesterdays 4600m we crossed a couple of smaller ones and then on to the 2nd highest at 4200m celebrated with a cup of coffee (we know how to push the boat out!) the landscape is stunning if a little barren as not much grows at this height, we passed though one town mid way thought the day which I find surprising as I have no idea what they do up here?

Around 4ish the weather started to turn and it got very cloudy and very cold and as we headed down toward the Wakhan valley we came to our 2nd checkpoint of the day this time an army one, again all our details were entered in a ledger only this time it was done with an AK47 on the seat next to me then they asked for petrol and food kind of odd and not sure if this was bribe time but they both looked pretty cold and miserable so we gave a litre in an old coke bottle and some apples which they seemed very happy about and sent us on our way.

We carried on descending meeting an English and Swedish cyclists on the way so after chatting and wishing them luck and with the weather getting worse we made a B-Line for Langar, a small village at the start of the Wakhan valley and its homestay which when we arrived we found it had flushing loo and a hot shower - result.

Abandoned Truck outside home stay

Murgab Internet cafe

On the M41(Pamir Highway) Roof of the world!




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