Murgab - khorog - dushanbe
Why By Bike?
Why by bike?
That was the million-dollar question as I slumped over my handlebars, a slight snowstorm pecking at our backs and Ak-Baital pass still a long climb ahead.
We were about 4,400 m above sea level, surounded by the snow-clad peaks of the Pamir Range in the Gorno-Badakshan Autonomous Region (GBAO), Tajikistan. Known as The Roof of the World, or just the Pamirs, they’re a rugged collection of soaring mountains, high-altitude plateaus, vast lakes and meltwater streams. At the Kyrgyzstan end, they’re too high for vegetation, a sparsely settled world of hardscrabble mud-and-straw communities, occasional gers and shreiking marmots.
Below us was the Pamir Highway. The Soviet-built supply route that links this stratosphere-nudging world for the few months of the year when it’s accessible, it rises, twists and falls all the way to Dushanbe, Tajikistan’s capital. Oscillating between rutted gravel, sodden dirt, and asphalt that is smooth, cracked, heat-dimpled or depressed into highsided troughs by Chinese semitrailers, it looks exactly like what it is—a remote road subject to extreme weather in the poorest corner of the former Republics.
By our third day in the counry, as we stood against our bikes on a section of roughshod dirt switchbacks and breathed shallow breaths, I could sympathise. We probably looked worse.
The day before I thought I might be dying of altitude sickness. From Lake Karakul, 4,000 m up, there is no way to descend without first climbling. I couldn’t do that. I could barely do anything, so I was ready to take a four-wheel-drive to the lower altitude and hyperbaric chamber at Murghab. Then the would-be driver saw my condition, tripled the price, and I went livid enough to decide I’d wait it out.
It worked, enough.
After another night of restless sleep we set off for the highest point on the Pamir Highway. By the final few hundred metres of climbing we were both feeling the altitude. Earlier, Dheiu scratched his name on a sign announcing the pass, only getting as far as D-H-E-I-U before he stopped. He couldn’t remember his surname. For me, the electrical storm of the day before had subsided, but in addition to the caffiene withdrawal-like vice over my temples and bonedeep exhuastraion, I still felt foggy and confused, like I’d been interrupted from deep sleep. Too fatigued to ride, I tried to urge myself on 50 steps at a time. I couldn’t count it out.
Leaning over our bikes, the only sonds were the occasional marmots, a stream burbling to the side of the road, and our own laboured breaths. We’d long ago stopped encouraging each other—wasted effort—and when a mechanical whine grew from behind, we wordlessly raised our heads. From around a corner two Pajeros bounced past, a few acknowleding waves from within and oversized lenses jutting out the windows. I imagined those inside—comfortable, rested, with thoughts that connected.
The single biggest secret of bike touring is how easy it usually is. If you’ve got two legs, you can ride 10 km. If you can ride 10 km, you can ride 100 km. And if you ride 100 km you’ll probably discover that roads flatten over the long run and 30 kg on a bike feels like than half that on your shoulders. Most of the time, the hardest part is reconciling spandex with dignity.
Usually. Probably. Most of the time. But not always.
Breathless, thoughtless, fatigued beyond precedent and unable to count, I watched the 4WDs dissapear around the bend. Roof of the World indeed—it certainly felt like I was being smothered against a ceiling.
So, why by bike?
A challenge met is one reason, if one that’s sometimes hard to hold on to.
Overlanding between Asia and Europe, norms shift. Before Kashgar we’d encountered maybe 20 tourers in six months. In the two months after, nearly every second traveler had a bike.
While some had flown to Dushanbe for a monthlong summer blitz, most were on trips as long or longer than ours. Amsterdam to Shanghai. Bangkok to Gloucester. Around the world.
We mightn’t have ridden the unbroken line that was often a source of quiet satisfation—and I might have arrived in Tajikistan with rollerblades, not peak fitness—but we shared similar ideas of what cycling the Pamirs meant. A challenge. A conquest. A sort of yardstick.
Planning this trip, the Pamirs had put Tajikistan on the map because they suggested a remoteness worthy of respect and a challenge worthy of youth—the sort of thing I’d be able to look back on when it was less of an option.
Two years later and while I might be only 200 m from the highest point on the world’s second highest international road, I couldn’t hold on to numbers, much less the idea of some future triumph. Life was as grandoise as the three metres of broken road in front of me. Trudging slowly upwards, adventure just seemed like suffering that happens away from home—pointless and arbitrary.
I knew there were other reasons I had decided to travel by bike, but I had trouble remembering them, and when I could remember them they seemed like someone else’s prayer.
Then, eventually, we reached the pass, and what breath had escaped the altitude was punched out by the view.
All around was an otherwordly panorama of mountains.
In front, the road disappeared into a horizon of peaks. Snow-capped or with marbled earth sides, all were softened in the waning light.
Behind us, snow frosted the long ridges that loomed, like waves about to break, over the volcanic plateau we’d left below. Some mountains were blanketed and on others snow sat in soft fat clumps, branched lung-like and high-contrast across sharp dark faces.
Cycling puts you smackbang in your surroundings. The foreground. The scenery. Compared to cars, trucks, motorbikes, the slower pace is better suited to taking sights in, with the brighter touch of texture. It can be hard to appreciate your surroundings when this texture seems intent on rubbing you raw, but even the worst road ends.
Standing there, with temperatures plummeting and clouds so close they nearly touched the shadows they dropped, with the the snowstorm having cleared, the Pajeros long gone and my legs most of the way there, I felt like the the view was ours alone.
Cycling also forces more contact with the people around you.
A few days after Ak-Baital we climbed one last pass that rose between a sea of peaks like a causeway to the edge of the world, then dropped us nearly a kilometre over only a few kilometres of rock-pitted hairpins.
In the more desolate plateaus we’d been treated warmly, but the contact was limited by the small number of settlements. Here, at more inhabitable altitudes, where a river tumbled through a valley that opened into small villages with orchids, easy breathing and a definition of self-sufficiency that stretched beyond bread, we really started to appreciate Tajik hospitality. We were feted at a Pamiri celebration, invited into homes and fed until we ached.
Anything with a motor would have made lighter work of the fist-sized rocks, duststorms and headwinds that separated these encounters, but you can only travel faster at the expense of depth. Sometimes that’s a fair trade off, but in Tajikistan we wanted a chance to peek into others’ lives. And for that—plus movement—there no substitute for rolling up at a village looking hungry and foreign.
Then there’s the freedom.
Bike touring is a many-forked thing. Our route through Tajikistan was on one of two roads, but that’s a limit as rare as the terrain they threaded. Usually there are more options, and with them chances for spontaneity.
With a tent, sleeping gear and food, you can wake, pick a direction and be 100 km closer by early afternoon. No one is going to stop and ask you for a carnet, either. Realise that it doesn’t have to cost more than a few dollars a day, and that’s the kind of knowledge that opens up the world and ruins careers.
It’s also good to be able to pull the plug.
When it comes to quitting, cheating or stalling, no other vehicle is as versatile as a bike. It’s a reassuring option, whatever your plans—one that’s not so easy or cheap with larger, heavier, more paperwork-attracting vehicles.
The frist time we called on that versatility in Tajikistan was when a stubborn bit of glass convinced Dheiu he might be scratching his eye blind and the smalltown doctor a day’s ride from Khorog said he didn’t have the equipment to dislodge it. Easy. 90 minutes later a van deposited us, our bikes, gear and doctor off at the flaking cement hospital that began our three days of mid-Pamirs respite.
My turn came later, after five days along the southern road to Dushanbe.
From Khorog, the road follows the river separating Tajikistan from Afghanistan. It’s a choppy border the colour of washing machine wastewater, a fissure at the base of angry jagged thrusts of mountain that pinch the often precipitous road with landslides and rain rocks when winds sweep through.
With the same Tajik hospitality in the villages and Afghanistan a literal stones throw away, I knew why I was travelling by bike. For this: across the river, standing in front of stone, mudbrick or satellite-sprouting modern homes, in green clefts of isolated life linked by narrow defiles just wide enough for the donkeys and motorbikes that travelled them, robe-bedecked Afghanis looked over to wave.
Life had riverside camping, constant acts of genuine kindness and apocalyptic terrain. It was every reason why it makes sense to take longer to travel with more difficulty, until I got sick.
By that fifth day, three more days’ ride from Dushanbe, unable to keep anything down and deydrated under a 40* sun, it took hours to push my bike along a road that had turned to sand until we found a house to rest in.
When we chanced on a Dihatsu minivan passing through to Dushanbe, I didn’t hesitate. I had wanted to ride the rest of the way, but this felt like the edge of some important limit. The bike went on, the bags went in.
The minivan was filled with members of Tajikistan’s Olympic wrestling team on their way back from a meet. I sat up front, wedged between their coach and the driver.
The coach, Azam, had lived in the United States for a few years. He was softly spoken, knowledgeable about Tajikistan and curious about everything. Between dry ablutions he offered a raft of insights and asked about Australia. The driver, a veteran of the Soviet-Afghan War, had eight wives and 15 bullet wounds. He drove that Dihatsu like he was breaking it in.
Halfway to Dushanbe we stopped midway up a climb to freshen up. By that stage I felt well enough to scramble over rocks towards a trickling stream working down a mountain Dheiu would struggle up in two days’ time.
Bike touring is great not because bikes are the only way to get around, but because they make a lot of sense most of the time, and are easy enough to manage when they don’t. Without even considering the health side of things, they offer ease, challenge, openendedness, upclose scenery and interaction.
Even there, cupping icy meltwater alongside a Tajik escort on the side of another mountain, I was there because I’d ridden. Not to that point, but to a point. Across high mountains I’ll never forget and godawful roads I hope I never see the like of again. Then, sick, I’d been able to take stock of the situation and make a mid-journey call. It allowed me repsite, but didn’t have to change the overall trip. Once I’d recovered and was ready, I’d still have my bike and plenty more road.
Why by bike?
Because how else would I have gotten here.
.
Why by bike?
That was the million-dollar question as I slumped over my handlebars, a slight snowstorm pecking at our backs and Ak-Baital pass still a long climb ahead.
We were about 4,400 m above sea level, surounded by the snow-clad peaks of the Pamir Range in the Gorno-Badakshan Autonomous Region (GBAO), Tajikistan. Known as The Roof of the World, or just the Pamirs, they’re a rugged collection of soaring mountains, high-altitude plateaus, vast lakes and meltwater streams. At the Kyrgyzstan end, they’re too high for vegetation, a sparsely settled world of hardscrabble mud-and-straw communities, occasional gers and shreiking marmots.
Below us was the Pamir Highway. The Soviet-built supply route that links this stratosphere-nudging world for the few months of the year when it’s accessible, it rises, twists and falls all the way to Dushanbe, Tajikistan’s capital. Oscillating between rutted gravel, sodden dirt, and asphalt that is smooth, cracked, heat-dimpled or depressed into highsided troughs by Chinese semitrailers, it looks exactly like what it is—a remote road subject to extreme weather in the poorest corner of the former Republics.
By our third day in the counry, as we stood against our bikes on a section of roughshod dirt switchbacks and breathed shallow breaths, I could sympathise. We probably looked worse.
The day before I thought I might be dying of altitude sickness. From Lake Karakul, 4,000 m up, there is no way to descend without first climbling. I couldn’t do that. I could barely do anything, so I was ready to take a four-wheel-drive to the lower altitude and hyperbaric chamber at Murghab. Then the would-be driver saw my condition, tripled the price, and I went livid enough to decide I’d wait it out.
It worked, enough.
After another night of restless sleep we set off for the highest point on the Pamir Highway. By the final few hundred metres of climbing we were both feeling the altitude. Earlier, Dheiu scratched his name on a sign announcing the pass, only getting as far as D-H-E-I-U before he stopped. He couldn’t remember his surname. For me, the electrical storm of the day before had subsided, but in addition to the caffiene withdrawal-like vice over my temples and bonedeep exhuastraion, I still felt foggy and confused, like I’d been interrupted from deep sleep. Too fatigued to ride, I tried to urge myself on 50 steps at a time. I couldn’t count it out.
Leaning over our bikes, the only sonds were the occasional marmots, a stream burbling to the side of the road, and our own laboured breaths. We’d long ago stopped encouraging each other—wasted effort—and when a mechanical whine grew from behind, we wordlessly raised our heads. From around a corner two Pajeros bounced past, a few acknowleding waves from within and oversized lenses jutting out the windows. I imagined those inside—comfortable, rested, with thoughts that connected.
*
Usually. Probably. Most of the time. But not always.
Breathless, thoughtless, fatigued beyond precedent and unable to count, I watched the 4WDs dissapear around the bend. Roof of the World indeed—it certainly felt like I was being smothered against a ceiling.
So, why by bike?
*
Overlanding between Asia and Europe, norms shift. Before Kashgar we’d encountered maybe 20 tourers in six months. In the two months after, nearly every second traveler had a bike.
While some had flown to Dushanbe for a monthlong summer blitz, most were on trips as long or longer than ours. Amsterdam to Shanghai. Bangkok to Gloucester. Around the world.
We mightn’t have ridden the unbroken line that was often a source of quiet satisfation—and I might have arrived in Tajikistan with rollerblades, not peak fitness—but we shared similar ideas of what cycling the Pamirs meant. A challenge. A conquest. A sort of yardstick.
Planning this trip, the Pamirs had put Tajikistan on the map because they suggested a remoteness worthy of respect and a challenge worthy of youth—the sort of thing I’d be able to look back on when it was less of an option.
Two years later and while I might be only 200 m from the highest point on the world’s second highest international road, I couldn’t hold on to numbers, much less the idea of some future triumph. Life was as grandoise as the three metres of broken road in front of me. Trudging slowly upwards, adventure just seemed like suffering that happens away from home—pointless and arbitrary.
I knew there were other reasons I had decided to travel by bike, but I had trouble remembering them, and when I could remember them they seemed like someone else’s prayer.
Then, eventually, we reached the pass, and what breath had escaped the altitude was punched out by the view.
*
All around was an otherwordly panorama of mountains.
In front, the road disappeared into a horizon of peaks. Snow-capped or with marbled earth sides, all were softened in the waning light.
Behind us, snow frosted the long ridges that loomed, like waves about to break, over the volcanic plateau we’d left below. Some mountains were blanketed and on others snow sat in soft fat clumps, branched lung-like and high-contrast across sharp dark faces.
Cycling puts you smackbang in your surroundings. The foreground. The scenery. Compared to cars, trucks, motorbikes, the slower pace is better suited to taking sights in, with the brighter touch of texture. It can be hard to appreciate your surroundings when this texture seems intent on rubbing you raw, but even the worst road ends.
Standing there, with temperatures plummeting and clouds so close they nearly touched the shadows they dropped, with the the snowstorm having cleared, the Pajeros long gone and my legs most of the way there, I felt like the the view was ours alone.
*
Cycling also forces more contact with the people around you.
A few days after Ak-Baital we climbed one last pass that rose between a sea of peaks like a causeway to the edge of the world, then dropped us nearly a kilometre over only a few kilometres of rock-pitted hairpins.
In the more desolate plateaus we’d been treated warmly, but the contact was limited by the small number of settlements. Here, at more inhabitable altitudes, where a river tumbled through a valley that opened into small villages with orchids, easy breathing and a definition of self-sufficiency that stretched beyond bread, we really started to appreciate Tajik hospitality. We were feted at a Pamiri celebration, invited into homes and fed until we ached.
Anything with a motor would have made lighter work of the fist-sized rocks, duststorms and headwinds that separated these encounters, but you can only travel faster at the expense of depth. Sometimes that’s a fair trade off, but in Tajikistan we wanted a chance to peek into others’ lives. And for that—plus movement—there no substitute for rolling up at a village looking hungry and foreign.
*
Then there’s the freedom.
Bike touring is a many-forked thing. Our route through Tajikistan was on one of two roads, but that’s a limit as rare as the terrain they threaded. Usually there are more options, and with them chances for spontaneity.
With a tent, sleeping gear and food, you can wake, pick a direction and be 100 km closer by early afternoon. No one is going to stop and ask you for a carnet, either. Realise that it doesn’t have to cost more than a few dollars a day, and that’s the kind of knowledge that opens up the world and ruins careers.
*
It’s also good to be able to pull the plug.
When it comes to quitting, cheating or stalling, no other vehicle is as versatile as a bike. It’s a reassuring option, whatever your plans—one that’s not so easy or cheap with larger, heavier, more paperwork-attracting vehicles.
The frist time we called on that versatility in Tajikistan was when a stubborn bit of glass convinced Dheiu he might be scratching his eye blind and the smalltown doctor a day’s ride from Khorog said he didn’t have the equipment to dislodge it. Easy. 90 minutes later a van deposited us, our bikes, gear and doctor off at the flaking cement hospital that began our three days of mid-Pamirs respite.
My turn came later, after five days along the southern road to Dushanbe.
From Khorog, the road follows the river separating Tajikistan from Afghanistan. It’s a choppy border the colour of washing machine wastewater, a fissure at the base of angry jagged thrusts of mountain that pinch the often precipitous road with landslides and rain rocks when winds sweep through.
With the same Tajik hospitality in the villages and Afghanistan a literal stones throw away, I knew why I was travelling by bike. For this: across the river, standing in front of stone, mudbrick or satellite-sprouting modern homes, in green clefts of isolated life linked by narrow defiles just wide enough for the donkeys and motorbikes that travelled them, robe-bedecked Afghanis looked over to wave.
Life had riverside camping, constant acts of genuine kindness and apocalyptic terrain. It was every reason why it makes sense to take longer to travel with more difficulty, until I got sick.
By that fifth day, three more days’ ride from Dushanbe, unable to keep anything down and deydrated under a 40* sun, it took hours to push my bike along a road that had turned to sand until we found a house to rest in.
When we chanced on a Dihatsu minivan passing through to Dushanbe, I didn’t hesitate. I had wanted to ride the rest of the way, but this felt like the edge of some important limit. The bike went on, the bags went in.
*
The minivan was filled with members of Tajikistan’s Olympic wrestling team on their way back from a meet. I sat up front, wedged between their coach and the driver.
The coach, Azam, had lived in the United States for a few years. He was softly spoken, knowledgeable about Tajikistan and curious about everything. Between dry ablutions he offered a raft of insights and asked about Australia. The driver, a veteran of the Soviet-Afghan War, had eight wives and 15 bullet wounds. He drove that Dihatsu like he was breaking it in.
Halfway to Dushanbe we stopped midway up a climb to freshen up. By that stage I felt well enough to scramble over rocks towards a trickling stream working down a mountain Dheiu would struggle up in two days’ time.
Bike touring is great not because bikes are the only way to get around, but because they make a lot of sense most of the time, and are easy enough to manage when they don’t. Without even considering the health side of things, they offer ease, challenge, openendedness, upclose scenery and interaction.
Even there, cupping icy meltwater alongside a Tajik escort on the side of another mountain, I was there because I’d ridden. Not to that point, but to a point. Across high mountains I’ll never forget and godawful roads I hope I never see the like of again. Then, sick, I’d been able to take stock of the situation and make a mid-journey call. It allowed me repsite, but didn’t have to change the overall trip. Once I’d recovered and was ready, I’d still have my bike and plenty more road.
Why by bike?
Because how else would I have gotten here.
.
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