Tajikistan Pt 7

Footbridge Khorag.

Khorag ... Definitely!

It made a change to have only a couple of hours riding before reaching our destination for the night. In rolling into Khorag, we knew we had to make the best of our time here, because afterwards the wilds of The Pamirs meant little in the way of creature comforts. And further, would be little enough in the way of provisions until Kyrgyzstan, which would be something like a weeks travelling once we left the town.

The River ran through it ... A view looking upstream

I didn't find out his name, nor could I swear his nationality was Swiss due to a perennially fallible memory, but my first impressions of Khorag was of Bjorn chatting away to some guy outside of the bank who had all the hall-marks of being 'shot-away'. He had wild hair and he was sun and wind-burnt on his face, neck and arms as if he'd been outside for weeks. There was also a detached look in his eyes that said his brain wasn't fully engaged and functioning 100%. Maybe I thought, that this is what the Pamirs does to people who don't take care? Whoever he was, we left him to his lunacy and went off to find some accommodation.

And looking downstream ...

The Pamir Lodge was adequate with a few rooms in a single guest-block, a solitary flush toilet and bucket-douche bathroom shared with the family who owned the place. With a good turnover of guests, the few rooms soon filled up. We were lucky and got a room first night, though was surprised to find the bed, was a slab of concrete with little more than a thin mattress to cushion the solid base. Brekkie was only a couple of bucks extra and proved to be a good feed of bread, jam, (1 x) fried (or omellete'd egg if you preferred) and sometimes given a pot of tasty locally produced honey too.

Here there was a chance to see the early stages of creating an extension to the lodge. Adjacent to the old guest-room block where we were housed was a big pile of rocks, that looked for all the world as though someone had recently dynamited away part of the mountain. There was a handful of guys stood on top of it who were slowly breaking up the bigger rocks into smaller and more manageable pieces, then carrying them a short distance to make a uniform pile a few metres in front. I watched them for a while, before curiosity got the better of me and went across to ask them what they were doing.

Evidently they were making building 'block' sized rocks that would be cemented into walls that were going to make the new guest-block. They showed me the chosen site some few metres above and behind the old block. Looking down at the old building and along with the toilet block the local building style was simple mortared together fragmented rock. A lot of mortar is required for this building method and the finished article would be 100% rustic. But it was perfect for the location and usage to which the building would be put. These few guys were breaking up rocks taken from the mountain, in readiness to glue them back together again onto a ledge carved into the mountain as as serviceable building. Simple and not a little ingenious, but bloody hard work. I was looking at graphic proof that labour was cheap in these parts ...

During our few days in Khorag we were to find the daytime's were mostly warm, with a couple of afternoons that could be interpreted as hot. But the nights were decidedly cool. I'd even go so far as to say it was actually cold during the latter part of the night, as the few people sleeping outside on the concrete porch would no doubt testify. I was usually up earlier than most and with the sun not yet above the mountains, the dew on the grass had a frost-like look to it. Temperatures had dropped during the night and the people dossing down on the porch could be seen buried under piles of whatever clothes they could mound on top of their sleeping bags for extra insulation. And something else, we'd not seen in a while. There was rain, but it fell mostly up in the mountains and not directly onto the town. This was a definite clue that in coming to this region, we'd ridden into something of a different climate. It was high summer and had been sweltering in 40° C plus heat not so long ago. Up here and further on into the Pamirs, even in summertime it's the cold that dominates.

It was pretty basic at the Pamir Lodge, but we had things to do. Stock up on food, water and fuel as well as checking over the bikes. I'd changed my worn rear brake-pads, but a more alarming discovery was that the rear-shock absorber on Bjorn's mount was leaking hydraulic fluid! With the rough conditions to come, we viewed this as something quite serious and would take up a good percentage of our conversation for weeks to come until it was fixed. Apart from 'sit-tight' for at least a couple of weeks and await the delivery of a new part, we had little choice but to press on and hope Bjorn's bike would stay ride-able. My guess was that it would become 'bouncier', but the spring should still maintain the ground-clearance enabling him to ride over rough ground okay. With care we should get through to Kyrgyzstan as it is.