Welcome to the Silk Road diaries... the place where I am finally recording my stories and reflections from an overland trip from the UK to Mongolia back in 2011. It's taken me a long time to process how truly life-changing this journey was, but finally my adventures feel ripe and ready to share. Follow this link for an intro to this series, including more about my vehicle and the charity project I was a part of - the Mongol Rally. Or, carry on reading for the first installment!
The Pamir Highway: Part I
Image source
We left Dushanbe early, driving out of town with the windows rolled down smelling the quiet chill air. I love those moments before the world wakes up, when you can hear the earth breathing. The van's radiator was stuck 'on', a feature that had almost fried our brains (literally) back in the 50 degree heat of the Turkmenistan desert*, but in moments like this I was glad of it.
*Actually, I lie. In Turkmenistan it was so hot the air churning out of the van's radiator was relatively cool. In heat like that you don't sweat because it evaporates so quickly; instead you get salt circles on your clothes - the ghosts of sweat that never reached its full potential.
We'd finally entered Tajikistan at Panjkent, having faffed around for a day trying different border crossings that turned out to be shut, accidentally straying into the contested Fergana Region of Uzbekistan (where we were promptly turned around by a man with a machine gun), getting a flat tyre in a military zone with yet more guns pointed at us, and finally having to stay overnight in no-mans-land at the Panjkent crossing because we arrived just before 5pm and the guard couldn't be bothered to do the paperwork before he went home. [and inhale].
Smooth it had not been. But we were in Tajikistan and we were heading for the M41, the infamous Pamir Highway. This is the only continuous road that traverses the inhospitable Pamir Mountains that jut through Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Krygyzstan in Central Asia. Part of the Silk Route, this road has been used for millennia; however despite being a main artery through the region, the road is largely unpaved. It meanders stubbornly across rivers, through deserts, and up, down and through steep mountains used by shepherds and trucks alike.
Before leaving the UK we had thought long and hard about whether or not to risk this route. At the time, if you Googled 'driving Pamir Highway' it would bring up a selection of videos of brave (or simply stuck) travellers halted by waterfalls or rivers that had suddenly washed the road out of existence; or rock-falls that made continuing impossible. We weren't in a position to get stuck - the nature of the rally meant we had a small emergency buffer in our visa dates, but we couldn't afford any major setbacks that would invalidate all our ongoing visas. And perhaps more importantly, we didn't want to get squished in a rock-fall or washed away in a raging torrent, in a region where it would take anyone a long time to find us.
In the end though, our sense of adventure won out. If we were going to do this epic overland trip, we were going to fully commit to the experience. So here we were, at dawn with the windows rolled down, heading to Kulyab - the place where we knew the road worsened, the point when - from then on - we were on our own.
Kulyab to Khorog
If I close my eyes and take myself back to that road between Kulyab and Khorog, the first image I see is the river, below me to the right. Sometimes still, reflecting the clear blue sky; sometimes churning and brown. The dusty road snakes along the edge of this river, following perfectly the footprint of the mountains where they meet the earth. On the other side of the river lies Afghanistan, a country I have always wanted to visit. The landscape here is harsh and sun-bleached - the road and river sandwiched between mountains, the sun casting a bright white light and dark shadows, dust everywhere.
And yet on the Afghan side of the river were gardens. They looked lush and green, neat and lovingly tended. There were trees. There were complex networks of pathways cut into the mountainside, and the occasional donkey or human treading carefully along them. Ever pulled to the exotic, I daydreamed about the lives of those people on the other side of the river. When I waved they often waved back; what a sight we must have been, a beat-up high-vis British ambulance, waving at them from across the water.
My next memory is the driving itself. As the main road through this region, the vehicles we met were mostly large trucks carrying supplies. This didn't happen too often - it was, after all, a single-track dirt road threading through harsh terrain. But when it did happen it was tricky. Sometimes when we met a vehicle on this road, there was just nowhere to go: steep mountain wall to the left, steep bank down to churning river on the right, increasingly annoyed truck driver in front. Now I should probably explain that, prior to this trip, I had only ever driven small - like, the smallest - hatchback cars. And that even for an experienced driver, reversing a long-wheelbase van with no back windows along a twisting dirt road with mountain walls on one side and watery peril on the other is not an easy thing. So for me this was definitely one of the more challenging parts of the experience. Suffice to say, my driving skills improved a lot on this particular road.
In general, we'd been using our Mercedes Sprinter 312D ambulance as both a vehicle and a home. We had strapped the two stretchers in the back together to make a double bed, and we were fairly self-sufficient with large water containers, food supplies, and a basic cooker. What we hadn't really anticipated on this stretch of road was the total lack of stopping places; the road literally clung to the bottom of the mountain, and there was simply no other space available to stop.
The first day of driving this route, we remained resolute that a perfect little stopping place would appear in the distance. A place we'd be able to rest and recharge before starting again tomorrow. In late afternoon however, we started to come across some pretty disturbing signage:
… we were in land mine country.
The Pamir Highway traverses the Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Region. This region was 'created' in 1925, and has remained a highly contested zone ever since. It's seen the forcible relocation of native Pamiris to other parts of the country; it's seen a civil war during which it was declared as independent, and most recently in 2012 (just months after we passed through) it witnessed a series of clashes between the Tajik military and the militants of a former warlord. If we'd had any of this information prior to our trip (that's correct, we had done very little research) then perhaps we wouldn't have been surprised by the land mines.
As it was though we were pretty freaked out.
Our plan to stay in the van overnight went out the window, for fear that we'd park on top of a mine or blow ourselves up when we went to pee in the night. So we pressed on until darkness was creeping in, and finally found the Tajik equivalent of a truck stop hidden away.
The air seemed suddenly fresh and clean when I got out of the van, after days of dust and sweat mingling on my skin. I'd been so focused on the road - literally, trying to stay on it and trying not to crash into anything else on it - I hadn't noticed the altitude climb. We'd gone from 800m to 1500m, and up here it was easier to breathe.
The stopping place felt extremely calm and restful after the road. There were trees, and a natural stream had been redirected into a stone channel that ran through the space. A handful of older men hunched over a table playing a game - perhaps something akin to chess. The occasional shack huddled around the edges. I felt suddenly aware of my lack of understanding of the local ways and Tajik etiquette. I desperately wanted to learn some of the local languages, but we were passing through countries so quickly it was impossible.
That night I slept deeply and woke feeling somehow cleaner. For me there is something deeply comforting about being 'on the road'. People look out for each other there. The road is its own little world, with comings and goings, moments of stress and moments of beauty. I tried to take a mental snapshot of each weathered face I saw on this road - they were faces of hard working people, people who lived under the sun, people who - like it or not - were always on the move. People for whom land mines were a fact of life.
All photos in this post were taken with a Canon EOS 350D
Thanks for reading!
I'm Alice: lover of nature, photography, art, singing and spirituality. In 2011 I drove from the UK to Mongolia, and I've chosen Steemit as the platform to share my stories.
Follow me for more Silk Road diaries!
