On top of the world (stage 60)

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Today we hit the literal high point of the trip as we crossed the 4,664m Ak-Baital Pass!

Stage 60 rider notes

The day started off very cold, -3ºC in my tent when I was getting ready to ride. We could see that the sun was coming but not quite quickly enough, so in the end I set a personal record for breakfast eating and was on the road by 0612 – that’s 12 minutes after breakfast was ready – in an attempt to warm up again.

For the first few kilometres the road surface was pretty rough with lots of corrugations, but once we started climbing things improved with a mix of hard-packed dirt, gravel and the occasional swatch of pavement still intact – clearly the Soviets paved this road too, but it’s been too expensive for the Tajiks to maintain.

In the end the top of the pass was something of an anticlimax – just a dirt road in the bottom of a cutting and we began to descend again – no sign, no statute, nothing at all other than a change in gradient.

We’d expected that at least the first 5km of the descent were going to be gravel, but after a very short distance we came onto pavement which was in pretty good condition which greatly improved speed. I had warmed up on the climb, but needed to do all the zips back up for the descent as though it was sunny the air temperature was still below 10C so at 30 – 40 km/h that feels pretty chilly.

Ironically at the bottom of the main descent there was a sign for the pass

The Ak-Baital Pass sign and I (at the bottom of the pass not the top)

From there to lunch went by pretty smoothly and quickly and I was soon ‘enjoying’ dry bread and egg mayo for lunch. It’s one of the great mysteries of this trip – why we always have dry/stale bread at lunch. It would seem logical that someties there would actually be fresh bread but it never seems to work out that way (sadly).

I’d considered hanging out at the lunch stop for a while to wait for others and help fill in some of the afternoon, however as I was siting there the wind began to increase in strength as a head wind and it was also starting to get pretty hot (even though it was only around 0900) so rather than linger I decided to continue.

The wind wasn’t too bad, but given that we should have been enjoying the descent the whole way to Murghab it was pretty annoying.

At one point I crossed a dry riverbed, however given how comprehensively the road had been washed away there must be times when the river really roars down the valley.

Where’d the road go?

Continuing on I got to the town gate for Murghab and was in the process of trying to take a photo of myself under the gate when the dinner truck caught up with me (just in time for me to have at least my daily bag when I got to town).

Framed by the ‘city’ gate

Once again cyclists out numbered private vehicles on the road – there are on average around six a day which we see. As I think I mentioned previously, they all seem to be headed the other way. I guess we’re more likely to see ‘on coming’ traffic, but those of us at the front of the TDA riders would reasonably expect to catch self supported riders going our way given that we’re travelling very lightly, and longer distances each day.

Into Murghab and it seems that we’re not split between two guest houses on either side of the road, but all together in the Pamir Hotel – the only hotel in town. That doesn’t mean very much – power comes from a generator which is on sometimes, there’re two loos for the entire floor (which includes all of the TDA riders and crew), and two showers which sometimes have water, which is sometimes hot, and we have four of us in two sets of bunks in rooms you couldn’t swing a cat in (dead or alive).

I took care of the usual ‘chores’ – getting my tent dry, sorting out laundry etc while waiting for the lunch truck with my permanent bag (and clean clothes) but when it hadn’t arrived after a bit of sitting round I figured I’d go and see what the town had to offer (not much) and if I could get a local SIM card (I couldn’t everywhere was closed for lunch).

Back at the hotel and the lunch truck was in so I managed to have a reasonably decent shower and shave and into clean clothes. Grant had found out where the T-Cell office was (the recommended SIM card supplier) so a few of us set off there, only to discover that in order to buy a card we had to have a passport – no problem, here’s my New Zealand passport. Oh, not just any passport, a Tajik passport – well that’s not going to work (and would also explain why Jovid, our Tajik ‘fixer’ had said to go to the bazaar to get a SIM card).

This time the bazaar was open and I found someone who could provide the required card and a couple of GB of data. By local standards it’s pretty darn expensive, though by western standards it’s still cheap, and a tiny fraction of the outrageous amounts EE (my UK mobile provider) want to charge for roaming data.

I tried to create the first blog post for the week, but it rapidly became apparent that the 2G connectivity I had simply wasn’t going to work as far as getting proper posts with photos and riding data uploaded so I settled for a holding message which will have to suffice until our next rest day in Khorog (a much bigger town, much closer to the world).

It’s reported that there are other places in town where one can eat, however the reports of people who had ‘second lunch’ at the hotel are very good so I’m going to go with dinner here (right now :-).