Miles driven: 130 miles
Time in Car:10 hours
Borders crossed: 0
Convoy travel + terrible road conditions = slow going
With the protection of the Pamirs, the morning sun didn’t make sleeping past 6 am an impossibility. Our convoy broke down our camps, made coffee, and paid the hotel owner for our plov, beer, and bedspace. We were trying to make it to Khorog, the official start of the Pamir Highway and the last town with an ATM before reaching Osh, Kyrgyzstan. We got off by 8:45 am, and we were very quick to realize that we had left too late to make it to Khorog in one day. Khorog was only 70 or so miles away, as the crow flies. However, following the Panj River and border with Afghanistan, the driving distance was roughly 180 miles. At 11 am, we rolled through Khalai-Khum, the town we were supposed to be at yesterday. By 1:45 pm, we still had 117 miles to Khorog. The combination of convoy travel, terrible roads, and averaging roughly 15 mph, conservatively, was slowing us down by quite a bit.
As for the drive itself, incredible - even more so than yesterday’s. The road hugged the Panj River tightly as we weaved through the mountains. Each corner we rounded brought a new and amazing view. The landscape was brown, rocky mountains and seemingly endless dust. However every 5 miles or so, small Afghan and Tajik villages popped up as lush, green settlements in between the mountain walls and river banks. It’s crazy to think that each one of these small settlements survives in such a remote region as a self-sustainable community. And every time our convoy rolled through, a gaggle of kids chased down our cars demanding, and giving, aggressive high-fives.
By 2:00 pm, we stopped for a lunch at a spot right off the road near a waterfall. 300 som got us 15 bowls of lagman to feed our convoy. Apparently we had 35 km left of terrible, rocky, bumpy, 13 mph max speed roads before we reached manageable pavement. We were already accepting the fact that we weren’t going to make it to Khorog tonight, but if the road allowed us to go 30 mph, who knows, we could make it.
Dusty and bumpy
Well, those 35 km were absolute hell. Stunning views, but terrible driving. Lots of wincing, lots of clinching. The road was gravel and rock. The rocks were so large and jagged - luckily no tires were popped. We passed another military checkpoint and the roads improved marginally - 30 mph for some stretches! At 80 miles out, we stopped as a convoy to plan our next hour. It was 6 pm and we were chasing daylight. We knew Khorog was not attainable but we needed to push as far as we could to make our drive tomorrow to Murghab feasible. Murghab is in a valley after driving up to 4000 m altitude mountain pass. If we don’t make it to Murghab before sundown, we’d be camping at too high of altitude which wouldn’t be a good idea. So with an hour of driving left, we decided to push it and decided that we needto get an early start tomorrow to make a head start on our marathon day. Some of the convoy teams agreed wholeheartedly, others passively appearing wiped out from a day of dusty, slow, and bumpy driving. As darkness fell, we all agreed to figure out accommodation at a village called Shidz, which was about 58 miles away from Khorog. A village, very competitive volleyball game was going on near the school but we were told we could camp in an open area near the court after the game. We quickly set up camp, cooked our instant ramen noodles, and planned our day tomorrow. We went to bed still covered in dust from the day’s driving with a 5:15 am wake-up call.
Chasing daylight through the Pamirs
So in recap, we spent 10 hours today driving to transverse 130 miles. Tomorrow, we have 253 miles to Murghab - big yikes. We are gonna take the road early and drive hard. *hopefully* the roads are better. -FWY
We camped left of the volleyball court