Pamir highway -start

Ed, Becky and James and I met up with Lisa who I had made contact with via the Pamir WhatsApp group at 6 am at the Pamir highway taxi rank. Despite being on bikes they are doing this stage by taxis due to the roadworks road closure after (town whose name I can’t remember). Writing this at lunchtime. Amazing scenery and we’ve been skirting the Afghan border which is defined by the river.

This was a loooong day. Got up at 5.30 and left by taxi to the shared taxi stand for traffic to Kourog at 6am. After I arrived Ed and Becky then James by bike and finally Lisa who I had met through the WhatsApp group.

Immediately as I stepped out of the taxi I was accosted (if that’s the right word) by a taxi driver looking to take us to Kourog. He had a large 4 wheel drive Toyota. We agreed on a price of 3200 somoni between us and then we were off. At least once the bikes and lughage had been put on the top of the car. I’m not sure the three cyclists were too happy about the bikes being stacked horizontally on top of the car but there was no alternative. At least they had something to separate them so that they didn’t scratch each other too much. But they would have inevitably been bounced around a fair bit.

Nevertheless we set offf. The road between Dushanbe and Kourog was closed at certain times during the day for large roadwroks as the chinese resurface the Pamir. It was hit or miss whether we would get through without being stopped by the roadworks which close sections of the road between 9-1 and 2-6.30. In the event we were stopped for about 3 hours.

We stopped for lunch at a small village and tea after the roadworks. Tea was cold chips for all of us! Not the best. The road was hard and bouncy pretty much all the way. The driver did a great job. He was hard, old and grizzled and wouldn’t have looked out of place playing a hard man in a gangster movie.

The views along the route were amazing. How many times have I said that? Most of the time we had on our right hand side the river separating Tajikistan from Afghanistan - and across the river were mountains all the way.

We arrived thankfully into the Pamir Mountain Lodge guest house in Kourog at about 11pm and fell thankfully into bed soon after.Read more