Snowin' and Blowin'

For much of our ride across the Pamirs, I was reminded of the Canadian Arctic and quite appropriately had lines from a Robert Service poem in my head:

"To speak of the cold through the parka's fold
It stabbed like a driven nail.
If our eyes we'd close, then the lashes froze
Till at times we could not see...
It wasn't much fun but the only one
To whimper was...Christine!"



We pushed our bikes up the steep, rough road to the top of the Kizil Art pass that marks the border between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Everyone we talked to assured us that there would be snow on the Kyrgyz side, but as soon as you cross into Tajikistan and descend onto the Pamir Plateau, there would be none. The plateau is nearly a desert and in the fall, it should be clear and cold.

We were coughing and sputtering as we reached the top of the 4250m pass (there's only 1/2 the available oxygen in the air at 4000m as at sea level), and stopped only long enough to take a few victory pictures with the "Tajikistan" sign and to bundle up against the cold wind. The clouds had been brewing all day, but we were relieved to see that, indeed, there was no snow on the south side of the pass! We were home free!

We pitched our tent next to the road that night, using the steep ditch as a wind break. Crawling into bed that night, we were cold but happy to be free of the snow and rain that we had run into in Kyrgyzstan. As we lay there writing in our journals, the wind even died down and we fell into a deep sleep, tuckered out from a long climb...

When we unzipped the tent fly the next morning, there were 2-3 inches of fresh snow on the ground, and more was falling so that the white of the sky and mountains merged and the entire landscape was nothing but snow. As much as we love snow, it was an ominous start to our trip across the Pamirs and we worried that we might not be able to cross some of the passes. As we had several weeks before in Kyrgyzstan, we rode slowly and carefully, following a set of truck tracks as best we could until they disappeared beneath more snow.

Riding to the top of the next pass kept us warm and the road was always discernable despite the storm. The ride down was more treacherous than the ride up and we sqeezed the brakes, afraid of our tires losing traction and making us crash. Eventually, the wind came up, the clouds started to break and the snow on the road became slush. Soon the descent was no longer slippery, but wet and the spray and dampness in the air had us shivering in the cold wind.

We cowered in the shelter of a culvert opening for lunch. When we stood up and turned around, we were shocked to see that the sky had opened up so that we had an incredible view of Karakol Lake. It was a surreal carribean blue, studded with freshly snow-covered islands and incredibly beautiful. The wind continued for the rest of the day, but at least it was blowing the storm away and so we were happy for it....

But wind wasn't always our friend. After spending 2 beautiful sunny, calm days off in Murgab to recover from a head cold, the wind started to blow again on the day we set out. At first, it was bearable and we were so excited about the beauty of the mountains and valleys that surrounded us that we were able to ignore it. Well, the wind of the Pamirs doesn't like to be ignored. So it blew harder. And harder. And harder. And always against us. The first night, we were lucky to find a home that would accept guests near the top of the pass that we were climbing and took refuge there for the night. The next day, the wind continued to blow in our faces so hard that despite being a 'net downhill' day, we crawled along at speeds half of what we would normally do on the same roads. This day, we actually crawled right inside on a culvert to eat lunch and escape the constant and mind-shattering noise of the wind in our ears. On the wide open plain, there was nowhere to take refuge and we didn't think that our tent would hold up in such a raging wind, so we pushed ourselves to keep going to the next town where we could find a sheltered place to sleep. It was the longest day that we spent in the saddle so far: 7 hours 11 minutes. Seven very difficult hours... But at last we were warm and fed in the comfort of a local family's home.

I like to think that life will only throw as much at you as you can handle and life must have realized how close to our limits we were with the winter weather in the Pamirs because our last two days up on the high plateau were clear, calm and beautiful - absolutely perfect riding conditions for the most spectacular part of the highway!

Christine