Trouble in Tajikistan

Tajikistan is a small, land locked central asian country, and the poorest of the old soviet republics. It’s famous in the cycle touring community for being home to the ‘Pamir Highway’ - an old highway built by the Russians in the early 1900s to allow them to reach the furthest corners of their empire, winding through the same region crossed by Marco Polo on his way to China.

Poorly maintained and remote, the Pamir Highway is also at high altitude. Most of it is above 10,000 feet, with the highest pass along the route reaching 15,200 feet.

After pedaling south from Kyrgyzstan, we spent our first night sleeping in the ‘no mans land’ between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. That was the last time I would sleep a full night for the next week.

The next morning we peddled on to a tiny hut where we presented our visas to the border officers and officially entered Tajikistan. From there it was a steep climb on an awful dirt road to our first pass at 13,800. At one point a motorcycle ran into Marcy and didn’t even bother to stop as she shouted after them.

After the pass, we came upon the stunning view of turquoise lake Karakul to our right, mountains on our left. As we rode down towards the lake it was getting late, so we turned off the road to find a place to pitch our tent. I thought we could ride close to the lake and camp next to it, but the dirt quickly turned to sand and we struggled to push our 150 pound bikes through it. Eventually we gave up and just pitched our tent in the middle of nothing, about a mile from the lake. Sleeping that night, I was short of breath and couldn’t sleep more than a few minutes at a time before waking up suddenly, gasping for breath. I’d had a couple night where I couldn’t sleep that well on the trip and didn’t think too much of it.

The next morning we decided we would have an easy day of riding around the lake, stopping in the tiny town of Karakul for supplies and camping just past it.

The weather was beautiful and we set up camp right next to the lake - and even jumped in for a bit to get clean before doing some laundry in it too.

However, about an hour later the wind started to blow fiercely, and we had to retreat to our tent. Cooking dinner that night was a challenge with intense winds keeping our sad ramen with spam from cooking properly. Eventually we gave up and ate luke-warm ramen before going to sleep. That night I could barely manage a few seconds of sleep before waking up, again gasping for air. The next morning, I knew I was starting to feel the effects of altitude sickness and as I opened the tent I could see some serious weather coming our way. As it approached, I was outside the tent, vomiting and doing some other things you probably wouldn’t like to read about.

I had tried to do everything I could to educate myself about altitude sickness and prevent it along this stage of the ride - drinking plenty of water, only sleeping 500 meters higher than the previous night, taking pills to help my body absorb more oxygen. But it wasn’t working.

At that point I turned to Marcy and told her that we needed to find a way to get help - with altitude sickness the only real cure is to head to a lower altitude, but we were now in a valley with two days of uphill riding in either direction. I tried to stop a couple of trucks that I saw on the road but none of them could offer any help. So, we decided to head back about 10 miles to the tiny town of Karakul to see if we could find help there. That’s when the snowstorm started. We packed up as quickly as possible and started riding back towards the town, with the weather getting worse every minute. Eventually after about an hour of riding we made it to the town and found a tiny guest house - an oasis to us given the weather and my state. There, the we found a way to tell the owners that I wasn’t feeling well and needed to find a truck to take us to the next town - a 6 hour drive away and 300 meters lower in elevation. After a few hours of searching - there’s no electricity and no cell phone service in this corner of Tajikistan - a truck arrived and we lashed our bikes to the top of it.

After a long drive, we arrived in the town of Murghab, and the driver took us to the one hotel in the town - it even had a shower and electricity that ran for a few hours a day. We stayed there for 5 days, every night trying to rest up so that we could get back on the road the next day. And every night, I couldn’t sleep and the next morning arrived with my state worsening. So after 5 nights, we finally gave up and asked our hotel to find another truck to take us to the next town - another 8 hour drive away - but a full 1000 meters lower in elevation. Arriving in Khorog late that night, we found a home stay and I got my first real nights sleep in a week. The next day I woke up and promptly got food poisoning…