Days 54–58: Tajikistan

In which we finally (third time lucky) cross into Tajikistan, get scared (Juli), get sick (Nick) and try to drive the Pamir Highway to Kyrgyzstan.

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Days 54 & 55 (Tajik/Kyrgyz border to Dushanbe)

So – sorry for the long break between posts – the next morning, we drove to yet another border crossing point, this time a much larger one, and were finally allowed to leave Uzbekistan. (You may remember we had some difficulty finding a border post that would allow us out of the country.) I can’t really remember much about the crossing (and I see I’ve made no notes about it) so it can’t have been too difficult or lengthy. Mind you, that probably only means it was under three hours and we only had to carry all our bags across the frontier and not empty them for inspection: one tends to get a little blasé about all these international border check points in the middle of nowhere after a while, don’t you find?

Around this time, there was some talk from Karen and Will about attempting the Pamir Highway if at all possible after all. I think they’d heard from some other travellers that it was open again. This made us (and, I think, some other passengers) a little anxious, having been told that we wouldn’t be going that way due to fighting in the area, which is right next to Afghanistan, and a notoriously ‘porous’ border across which drugs are trafficked. Also, we’d just checked with base camp (Gill and Marion back in the UK – actually, in Gill’s case, Madeira) who’d told us that the FCO (Foreign and Commonwealth Office) had issued advice against ALL travel to the area. Anyway, that decision was for another day. First we had to get to Dushanbe: Capital of Tajikistan. Cue quotes from ‘Spies Like Us’ (1985) staring Dan Ackroyd and Chevy Chase:

Dan and Chevy’s controller gives them an order over a radio.
“Wait for your next contact on the road to Dushanbe.”

A second man, in on the ‘lambs to slaughter’ plan, interrupts in a whisper:
“The road to Dushanbe? You practically told them the strike zone.”

Control covers the microphone and says to second man:
“Listen, if they make it there at all, they’ll probably be plucked by Soviet motorized infantry. The road to Dushanbe is a heavily travelled military artery.”

The second man considers this then says:
“I guess that takes care of that.”

The road to Dushanbe (at least heading south from the Uzbek border) is actually pretty good, which, considering the very many toll booths along it extracting quite a lot of money from us ($25 at a time) it should be. That is, it’s good until the tarmac runs out and we begin to climb up to the 3,380 metre Shackristan Pass. Driving along a narrow and twisting switch-back dirt road with barely enough room to pass oncoming traffic, let alone overtake safely (and yet they do) was an ‘interesting’ experience. High above the ground on the passenger deck, it’s quite hard to judge distance to the edge of and space across the road. The effects of lumps, bumps and pot holes are also very much amplified. The combined effect had Juli gripping first my hand, then my leg, then all of me and hanging on for dear life. It might have been better had we been sat further back with other seats in front of us. As it was, we were sat right at the front with an excellent view of other vehicles coming round the bend on the wrong side of the road, etc. We also got quite a good view of some of the other vehicles who, not fortunate enough to have such an excellent driver as Will in control of them, got to the bottom of the valley rather quicker than was good for them. Anyway, we made it down the other side safely and without incident, but quite shaken by the experience.

That night we camped in another quarry: the perfect end to the perfect day.

The next morning, there was a short delay while a problem with a fuel line (something about diesel not transferring from one tank to another) was sorted out. During this time Juli elected to clean the cab windscreen and the passengers front windows. I should have thought, given yesterday’s experience, while the former was eminently sensible, she would have been better served to make the latter as dirty as possible, but there you go.

Problem resolved, we continued our journey to Dushanbe. This was to have involved another pass like the previous day’s, but we were happy to discover that there is a new road tunnel that bypasses the worst of it. So new, it turned out, that it wasn’t quite finished (or it was being up-graded in some way – it’s hard to know) such that there were several gangs of men working inside the barely lit or ventilated tunnel while we and everybody else drove through it. At points the tunnel was reduced to a single lane by the road works, and traffic simply had to negotiate round whatever obstructions they found. Including some enormous potholes and whole sections running with water like a mountain river, which it probably was. At one point along this very long tunnel, the whole road was blocked by a combination of road works, parked vehicles and plant plus a temporary scaffolding tower. We just had to wait while whatever job was finished and enough of the obstructions were cleared such that traffic could continue to flow. Not that that stopped cars behind us trying to overtake, even though there was nowhere for them to go. Not only was there no kind of traffic control, but not one of the construction workers wore a hi-viz jacket; none of them wore a hard hat and none of them that I could see wore any kind of face mask, though the fetid air in there was heavy with dust and goodness only knows what else.

At least the experience, though as long, wasn’t quite so scary as the pass, but goodness: those poor workers having to take what jobs they can get regardless of the conditions. (Later I thought, what if there had been an accident? how long would it have taken to get an ambulance or fire and rescue truck in there?)

Eventually we rolled in to Dushanbe, which is not a huge city, but quite smart and also has a large Ferris wheel. (Can’t remember if I’ve mentioned this before, but many of the larger central Asian cities we’ve visited seem to have a prominent Ferris wheel, sometimes two.) We stayed in what I took to be an ex official Soviet hotel that had seen better days. We were put into a small suite that reminded us of one we stayed in in Moscow, when we came back from Beijing on the Trans Mongolian ten years ago. Still, it had the all important wi-fi, and we spent the rest of the day uploading photos on quite a slow connection that really only worked properly (i.e. consistently) from the hotel’s reception area.

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Day 56 (Dushanbe)

The next morning, after breakfast (at Juli’s suggestion but to general agreement) we all met to talk about the idea of attempting to drive the Pamir Highway. Actually, what happened was, Will told us he wanted to go for it, though he expected to be turned back at the first checkpoint into the GBAO (Gornio-Badakhshan Autonomous Oblast) region, and that if anyone didn’t want to go, they could make there own way to Kyrgyzstan, either directly from Dushanbe, or somehow back from the checkpoint if the truck was allowed to continue. (If it wasn’t allowed through, the truck would take us all on another route avoiding the GBAO anyway, so, in that eventuality, the Pamir Highway would be a moot point.)

This left us in something of a quandary: go with the truck and hope the GBAO was closed to us, but accept that we might be going into an area where there had been recent trouble (and, due to the prevaling FCO advice, where no insurance would provide cover should it be necessary to evacuate one of us following a medical emergency) or get off now and, at our own expense, arrange a flight to Bishkek plus accommodation for however long it was going to take for the truck to catch us up – which would depend on whether the truck was allowed into the GBAO or not – plus miss most of Kyrgyzstan into the bargain. This on top of the fact that Juli hates to fly and we both really wanted to do the whole trip on the ground. In the end, after a lot of soul searching, we decided to stay with the group and hope for the best, i.e. that the region would be closed.

The Pamir Highway (officially the M41 Highway) is about the only viable road route through the Pamir Mountains, also known as the ‘Roof of the World’. It’s been used for millennia and formed part of the ancient ‘Silk Route’. It’s mostly unpaved, passes through some stunning scenery and is recognised because of this as one of the top driving routes in the world. (It’s also one of the highest.) Many of our truckmates were keen to drive it if at all possible, regardless of the risk. Especially since this section was added to the route largely because Tibet and its stunning scenery had had to be taken out. Some others, however, were not so keen, and two – Adam and Corinne – opted instead to make there own way to Bishkek by air, though their decision was partly influenced by their wish to take a break from the truck anyway.

During the day, I developed a virus-y, flu-y type muscle-ache, which left me feeling very tired, so for the rest of the day, I styed in our room and blogged while Juli went shopping with Karen for groceries for the truck and some things for our own lunches on the assumption that, if we did drive the Pamir Highway, there wouldn’t be many shops or restaurants come lunchtimes. By the evening I was super tired and couldn’t finish my dinner, which just shows you how proper poorly I was. (Can I get an ‘Ah’ please? No? Oh well: please yourselves, as Frankie Howard would have said.)

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Day 57 (Drive to first checkpoint, towards Khorog)

The next morning, my ache was gone and, apart from a slightly dodgy tummy – maybe that was why I couldn’t finish my dinner – I felt much better. After a dash down the road to draw more cash ‘just in case’, we all said our good-byes to Adam and Corinne – us still wondering if we should have followed suit – and drove off to see whether we would be allowed to drive across the roof of the world or not.

A few hours later we got our answer: it was not to be.

According to a woman at the checkpoint, a Pamir resident on route with her French partner to their wedding, the region had been open to outsiders two days previously, but was now closed again due to the visit of a high ranking VIP. This meant that although she could go in, her foreign groom could not and neither could we. We could, however, if we wished, check back again in the morning to see if the situation had changed overnight.

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Day 58 (drive to Kyrgyzstan)

The next morning, after camping overnight just down the road from the checkpoint and almost being moved on twice by the police and the military, we went back to the checkpoint, but the story was the same. So, as predicted by Will, we took a much more northerly route towards a border crossing into Kyrgyzstan that is normally closed to foreigners, but had been opened specially because of the Pamir Highway being closed. The route follows the Surkhob river valley and is very beautiful in it’s own right. Juli commented (accurately) that, if we’d been told this was the fabled Pamir Highway and not done any research of our own, we would have been more than happy to believe it. And, as it was, we were seeing a part of Tajikistan not normally seen by foreigners.

However, it all turned sour again when, at the last checkpoint before the border, we were very nearly turned away. Evidently news of the temporary lifting of the ‘no foreigners’ rule hadn’t reached this far flung outpost, and it was only after several slightly heated phone calls between one man with a gun there and (presumably) another somewhere else, that we were allowed to pass. Our man was not at all happy with being kept out of the loop and it took quite a little time and lots of smiles before he thawed out and everything was alright again.

[We have a standing operating procedure on the truck for checkpoints and border crossings. It involves a lot of cheery smiling and waving, and is codenamed: ‘Tits and Teeth’. It’s worked so far.]

Nick at the checkpoint 'talking' with a soldier/policeman/official/man-with-a-gun

Not long after clearing the checkpoint, we reached the first border post. (You’ll remember that this is where you leave one country, in this case Tajikistan, and enter a variable stretch of no-man’s land before the next country, in this case Kyrgyzstan.) This particular stretch of no-man’s land took the best part of half an hour to cross and included another of these narrow mountain passes, though, this time, with a (mostly) proper road surface, which made the transit slightly less scary.

When we finally made it through into Kyrgyzstan – country number 16 and another hour ahead of GMT – we were relieved (me especially, feeling a bit worse now) when Will decided to make camp just down the road from the second border post, albeit, owing to its proximity to a small town, with quite a bit of (good natured) attention from the locals.

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That's it for today; more soon.

TTFN - N