A ride along Tajikistan’s Pamir Highway features a dramatic landscape of deep valleys, snow-capped peaks and blustery mountain passes
“The Pamir Highway destroys everything,” said Farik with a laugh, as he gaffer-taped my number plate back on. The pannier rack had cracked a few hours earlier, my electrics had failed and Marley had already had two blowouts. At this rate, we’d have no bikes left by the end of the trip.
Shaky Start
That night, when a blowout and a violent thunderstorm left us stranded in a small village, we were taken in by a local family, three generations who live under one tiny roof. Pamiris are among the poorest people in the world, neglected by their government and largely dependent on aid, but here, the guest is king. Nina, the wizened matriarch, fussed around us, laying on an impromptu feast of non (bread, potatoes, eggs and salad), intermittently holding my hand and calling me her daughter, while around us green-eyed children and gold-toothed adults excitedly watched our every move.
When it came to bedtime, the three boys slept outside on a raised platform, while I was bustled into the master bedroom to sleep with a young couple, their baby and a dummy-sucking toddler. What an unexpected end to our first day on the road.
Visceral Beauty
After the town of Qal’ai Khumb, the road met the Afghan border and we followed it, separated only by the rushing turquoise waters of the Panj River, for the ensuing four days. On occasion, the Panj meanders widely and slowly, but at others times, the gulley is so narrow, I could literally throw a stone into Afghanistan. There was a certain frisson to riding so close to this other world, and as I waved at Afghan farmers, with their simple adobe houses, hand-scythed wheat fields and neat terraces of mulberry and pomegranate trees, I wondered what their futures held. At the regular police checkpoints, Tajik policemen, tummies straining at buckled belts, laughingly pointed across the river and said “Taliban, Taliban!” But not for a second did we ever feel in danger.
The Great Game
Nowhere did we feel the ghosts of history more keenly than the Wakhan Corridor, a narrow strip of land created during the Great Game as a buffer between the British and Russian empires. Ibex horns were stacked at roadside shrines, Silk Road fortresses stood like sentinels on mountaintops and the windswept hillsides were strewn with ancient Kyrgyz graves. After one lung-bursting walk up to the ruins of a Buddhist stupa, a Wakhi boy furtively offered us a handful of local rubies.
Not for nothing are the Pamirs known as the Bam-i-Dunya, the roof of the world. From the Wakhan Corridor we climbed and twisted north over the 4,655-metre-high Khargush Pass, engines straining from the altitude. Fat golden marmots bounded away from our wheels, the only sign of colour in the bleached landscape, and our tires crunched over sand and gravel.
At Murghab, a tatty settlement near the Chinese border, we slept at 3,650 metres, our highest night of the journey. The environment may have been harsh, but the kindness of the Tajik people was the defining feature of our ride. Smiles as warm as a summer’s day beamed at us from every weatherworn face, and I rode, grinning, through villages of shrieking, waving, excitable children. But it wasn’t just the children; everyone, from bent old women leading their donkeys in at dusk to young men selling apricots in the shade, greeted us with a cheery wave and a heart-lifting smile.
In one of the homestays we stayed at, the grandfather insisted on sleeping in an old bus beside our bikes, out of respect for us, the guests. Not that anyone would have considered stealing them, let alone been able to ride them. Farik and Anton were no different, endlessly enthusiastic and ebullient, and full of quips and smiles.
Lands Untarnished
Make no mistake, riding in Tajikistan isn’t easy. There’s little infrastructure, a distinct lack of luxury, memorable toilets, rough roads and significant altitudes. But it’s a corner of the world that remains refreshingly untarnished by the tentacles of mass tourism, and travelling here has an exciting, exploratory edge. The scenery is sublime, the people wonderful and the riding thrilling – tonic for the soul.
