Tochikiston and Kyrgizia

July and August

The ever present snow-capped mountain backdrop whilst riding the Pamhir Highway.

Crossing through Kazakhstan to Almaty had led me to form an opinion that travelling alone in remote and empty places with no chance to converse with any locals, was not actually working out to be that much fun. Changing my plans to head south to ride in the Pamhir mountains would give me the chance ride through some scenery of renowned beauty, and also put me back in touch with humanity. So I spent at least a couple of weeks in a groggy spell of beer consuming inactivity whilst I waited on visas to proceed with this new plan, first in Almaty, and then in Bishkek.

With my passport full of the neccessary stamps, I was able to head off south through Kyrgizia, direction Tochikiston. The way was littered with dramatic mountains, stunning views, and high altitude passes. With visa deadlines restricting time, I hammered down to the Tajik border only to then waste a whole afternoon trying to get into the country at a closed border crossing. This unfortunately killed my plans to make it to Dushanbe so I had to settle for riding to Horog via the Pamhir highway, and back through the Wakkan valley road.

First stop off was a small town resembling something out of a wild west film. Set in dry and arid mountainous scenery Murgab was bleak but pleasant, and as luck would have it I'd pulled into town the evening before a big horse festival. This was the first such event in Murgab but the organisers hoped to make it an annual affair. Set in a big flat space just outside the town the setting could not have been more barren and dramatic. There were a variety of games that took place, though the standard of horse riding and competition was generally pretty low, and level of disorder and confusion fairly high. This can be attributed to the event being attempts of reviving games of old from before the Soviet era. Though if anything this added to the entertainment value.

Murgab, the second biggest town on the Pamhir highway, and one of the highest as well at approx 3500m alt.

Fantastic dayout at the Murgab horse festival, though the background scenery was probably the best part.

The next day was a ride to Horag, the capital of the GBAO region which contains much of the Pamhir mountain range. It was pretty cold up in the mountains, so this was a slow gentle ride spent enjoying the views.

Lunch stop in the middle of nowhere...

Attempting to find a more obscure route through the mountains

Once in Horag it was time to ditch the luggage and take the bike out on some jeep tracks. I'd attempted to get to the town via a remote jeep track, however I'd struggled to work out whether I was taking the right route, and the weight of the luggage made lose some of my confidence so I eventually turned back. Now having took the main road to the town I was hoping tackle this track from the other direction with the unloaded bike, though ultimately I again suffered total navigational failure and had to admit defeat a second time. A second day out trail riding took in some really stunning scenery through a tight river valley.

What a beautiful place for an afternoon out on the bike - With roads like this, it was no wonder I chose to spend my rest days doing some more riding!

Not unlike a dirtbike riding Indiana Jones...

One result of riding the rough tracks was a dose of luggage failure. Where the water's coming down a steep mountain-side, it can create quite gully in the road which is invisable due to all the white water splashing around - Only one way to tackle it if you don't want to get washed away and that's with a heavy throttle hand. The rear rack which the topbox attaches to snapped again (previously in Kazakhstan), and further riding with the box now banging around saw the other mounting points break. Interestingly every break was next to a weld, rather than the weld itself failing. Before this incident I'd been starting to question what role the box was actually playing that a lightweight waterproof bag couldn't fulfill just as well - So I wasted no time in throwing the thing away, putting it down to the guiding hand of fate.

This ammo-can topbox, made from welding two smaller boxes together, was a nice idea - Strong, secure, and fully waterproof - But in the end unneccessary.

Next up was a stop at a village where on Saturdays you could cross the river which separates Tajikistan from Afghanistan to visit an Afghan market. The jury was out on whether this constituted having visited Afghanistan, for the bragging rights this entailed, but if nothing else it was an interesting experience. The dress of the Afghan people was noticabely different and more traditional than the people in central Asia where big western brands are worn in even the most remote villages due to cheap mass produced chinese clothing imports.

Afghan market at Ishkashim

There was also time to do half a days hiking in the mountains above the village, and a few hours walking rewarded with a great view of the river, Afghanistan beyond, and perhaps even in the distance Pakistan (something like 50km away). A family of livestock herders were surprised to see foreigners up near their little mountain summer home, but quick to offer bread and yogurt and milk to drink.

Maybe those far off mountains are part of Pakistan?

Chinese truck fallen in the river! The second time in a few days I saw a vehicle in a river, and a poignant reminder of the results of getting it wrong on the roads. This was on the main Pamhir highway, but on some of the side tracks an icy and wet death could be only one mistake away.

The Wakan valley road closely follows the Panj river along the border with Afghanistan, before heading North and rejoining the main Pamhir highway where I would now be backtracking towards Murgab, and then back into Kyrgizistan.

With some other European overlanders. Make no mistake, a lot of westerners visit this region every year.

Arriving back in Murgab, and the string of events that followed, changed the whole nature of my motorcycle trip - Though it would yet be another month before I realised to what extent, and almost three months till I realised how this might change my enitre world. At the police checkpoint outside the town, one of the officers described (as best he could, with the language barrier) someone who was looking for me who passed through just that morning - Eva, the Russian photographer travelling with the French Citroens.

I found them in the town, and made plans to camp the night together further along the road. However the 650cc Citroen van had been struggling in the passes and sometimes needed to be towed by trucks. An hour or so after the town we got to a pass and the van indeed got stuck half way up. The black Citroen with its much larger engine got up okay, but Dominique didn't think it was capable of towing the van so he elected to leave them to wait for a truck and camp somewhere after the pass. This was later to help ignite a long running dispute between the three French guys.

We stopped the night in a Yurt, the large round wooden structured tents used by the traditionally nomadic Kyrgiz and Kazakh people, and in the morning the van appeared having been helped by a passing truck. The citroens set off, but I elected to go ahead at my own pace (the corrogated roads were reducing them to speeds as low as 10mph), with the likelyhood of seeing them later in the day at the border crossing back into Kyrgizia. Half way to the border, I found one of the most dramatically bleak places you can think of to get a puncture, and with some bad weather looming in the distance took my time fixing it to let the storm pass. Whilst finishing up the 2CV van arrived and it was clear that relations in the French party had finally failed terminally, so it was no surprised that things turned a little nasty when the black Citroen pulled up a few minutes later.

Since I'd been in Central Asia for over a month, it was about time to spend a night in a Yurt...

Photo doesn't quite represent the bleakness of this spot.

The end result of all this was that the cars would continue travelling seperately, and Eva planned to make her own way home to Russia on the train rather than drive the long, slow route with Dominique.

The border spelled problems for me. I was trying to use a single entry visa for Kyrgizstan a second time, and the border guards were having none of it. Their view was I should turn around and go in the other direction, and they considered the minor obstacle of me not even being able to reenter Tajikistan my problem, and not theirs. Eva was becoming quite proficient at arguing with officials all across the former Soviet union, quashing their attempts to impose idiotic beaurocracy, but this time there was no dissuading them from their position that I was to bugger off into no-man's land and leave them alone. The three French guys had also got invalid visas so we were all stranded at the border, and spent the night there. Things weren't looking great but once we got on the phone to the British embassy in Almaty everything was quickly sorted.

The end result was me leaving all my luggage at the border, and riding two-up with Eva to the city of Osh, some 200 or more km away. We needed to get a new visa made up for one of the French trio, and deliver his passport back to the border post so he could cross. The bike had an uncomfortable one-person enduro seat, no pillion footrests (the luggage racks would have to do), the road ahead was full of gravel and potholed sections, and Eva had never ridden or been on the back of a motorcycle before...

Near the start of the ride to Osh.

The pass leaving Sary Tash. Recent rain had left this a muddy quagmire, and the bike was sliding around all over the place - Fun experience for first-time biker Eva, I'm sure.

Osh was a very pleasant place, and after the weeks spent away from civilisation as we knew it was a welcome return to restaurants, shops, and showers, amongst other things. But our stop was brief as we needed to head back to the border to deliver Bernard's passport to him, and now also we'd found out there was another horse festival on the Kyrgiz side of the border.

Time for a stupid bleached-blonde hairdo...

...And for the wearing of some dodgy, albeit culturally appropriate, clothing.

I rode this 200 something kilometers between Osh and the Tajik border four times in all - Good job there was some stunning scenery on route.

At the bottom of the pass near the end of the ride back to Sary Tash (the border village), we got a puncture. Before leaving on this little two-up mission I'd quickly grabbed some things I'd thought I'd need - I'd got all my tools and a pump, but forgot spare tubes and patches. There weren't a lot of options, so I decided to try riding up the pass with the flat rear tyre. I figured the mud surface was unlikely to damage the rim, and I correctly figured that the rimlock would prevent the tyre coming off the wheel. We made it half way up before I threw in the towel as the inner-tube was starting to get dragged around the wheel, and I didn't want to risk destroying the tube as I wasn't confident I'd be able to ride the potholed asphalt section of road after the pass on a flat. We stopped next to a building where some chinese roadworkers were based, they didn't speak any English or Russian but they could of course see our problem and eventually produced some patching material and rubber glue.  

Working under close scrutiny.

Blonde moment - Chinese roadworker helping to prepair the tube for patch .

I left Eva in the village of Sary Tash and set off the border post flat out. It was great to be riding the bike unladen and I probably was going a bit too fast over the badly potholed road, but for whatever reason the tube punctured again just before I reached the border. Again I rode on the flat the last kilometer or two. A patch and some rubber glue was produced by the border guards, and soon we were ready to go. This time 'we' was myself and French guy Bernard - The Citroens were now in the village and it wasn't clear if they were actually going to return for him so I had no choice but to ride the 40km or so back there with all my luggage, all Bernard's luggage, plus Bernard balanced precariously ontop.

Sary Tash. A small and drab Kyrgiz village, notable only for being next to the border, and for having a petrol station.

All that messing around had wasted valuable time, and it was getting late. We'd hoped to ride to the horse festival that evening but there was a risk of not making it before darkfall, and I was also paranoid about the puncture-repair failing. But Eva and I decided to take a chance and we set off on the bike together once again. The first part of the way was on a gravel road and fairly easy going, however when we turned off the main road just as it was getting dusky we managed to take the wrong track. By the time we'd realised the error and ridden back to the start of the correct track it was pitch black. My alternator had only two phases working which resulted in very dim lights, but we decided to push on to the festival regardless. Riding the dirt track at night was a bit dodgy, and we did very well to make it to the festival over an hour later without any accidents.

The festival was the base camp if Peak-Lenin, a 7000m+ mountain.

After her first time on a motorcycle, it was time for Eva to try out another new means of transport.

This was a well established festival, and the competitors were tough and competant.

After the horse festival it was a ride back to Sary Tash with Eva - The last time we'd ride together on the bike? The dirt road was not a problem in daylight, though we did get totally baffled as to which way we should be going at a couple points where tracks merged, we put it down to luck that we'd managed to navigate our way in dark without any problems.

Main road between Osh and Bishkek

First motorcycle riding lesson.

I spent a short while with Eva in Osh, and then in Bishkek. I needed to revise the trip plan as my Russian visa was now close to expiring. I'd got this before leaving home as Brits can only get Russian visas in London, but this set a time frame for the trip as the start date of the visa couldn't be more than 45days after the application date. I love doing things on the spur of the moment, and hate making rigid plans, so it was no surprise that my three month visa was nearly at an end before I'd even set foot in Russia. And of course I'd have to part company with Eva for the second time of the trip? A lot had happened in the space of a couple of weeks, and just as I was starting to get a grasp on it all I had to start thinking about what to do next.