Crossing Fingers in Khorog

Khorog (Tajikistan), 07.06.2013

Today we tried to decide what to do over the next week, since we have several days to spend in the Pamir Mountains before heading back to Kirgistan and then to the Chinese border. First thing in the morning we went to see the Afghan consulate to get a visa. They explained us the procedure and costs (USD 100 per person and 150 for the car). But before getting the visa we needed to fix another issue, our single entry tourist visa to Tajikistan.

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Through the Pamirs down to Khorog

Khorog (Tajikistan), 06.06.2013
Never before did we have altitude sickness, and these days we’re suffering quite a bit from it. Slight headaches, pain in the arms, heavy breathing, extreme fatigue. Also the Range Rover didn’t recover today. What a pity this beautiful landscape has these side effects. We left Murghab at 09:30 after a stroll through the local market. Initially we made slow progress, the car and the roads don’t allow for much speed and we were in “panorama mood”, “look here!” and “did you see this and that?” At lunchtime we tried to stop several times to cook a hot soup, but the wind up here didn’t allow any gas stove fire. So we prepared a quick canned delicacies salad with fresh cucumbers.

Hello Tajikistan

Murghab (Tajikistan), 05.06.2013

It was a rough start this morning. Drugged by the beauty of the Alau yesterday we forgot to mention that it was 5 degrees Celsius when we went to sleep and that I had started to breathe heavier once we had reached 3500m, feeling very exhausted in the evening after a rather normal driving day. Well, during the night the temperature further dropped. The last time we had camped in the mountains was in freezing cold Armenia, but this time it was worse. And I couldn’t sleep because of the lack of air, the heavy breathing.

Cruising through the Alau

Alau Valley (Kyrgyzstan), 04.06.2013

The day in Osh got us back our adventure spirit. It had been good to rest, forget the stress of the past days, get up to speed on things back in Europe, sleep, buy food and fuel. In the morning we went to stroll through the local market to get some fresh bread, fruit and vegetables. We even found an old man selling sweet popcorn out of an enormous sack he drove around. We spent another half hour for the few km to get out of this market and through the next one, traffic was crazy in Osh. At noon we finally hit the road and drove southeast into the mountains of the Alau Range.