July 8, 2018 — Jay Austin
It is dawn in eastern France. In a dark, climate-controlled basement not far from the Alps, a server clicks online. A fan whirs and a light blinks and an invisible signal is shot into the airwaves.
Somewhere nearby, a sleepy forklift operator feels a buzz at the hip.
***
Osh is not a very pretty. It's Soviet-style, all big brutalist buildings and straight roads and an overzealous sampling of the grey-to-beige color palette. It's a bit hazy and a bit dusty and doesn't exactly enchant the senses in the way you might think an ancient Silk Road city would.
It isn't pretty, but it'll do. There's a large bazaar with cheap nuts and decent hostel with a clean double room and a really excellent coffee shop with strawberry banana smoothies and homemade veggie burgers. We have spent weeks without a bed and months without smoothies and maybe a full year without a decent veggie burger. We know there will be few comforts on the road ahead, and we're game for a little rest. We unpack our things, settle in, and look forward to a long week off the bikes.
***
It's afternoon in the French countryside. A van ambles slowly down a quaint dirt road. Possibly, there's an old castle in the distance. Probably, the driver is nibbling his way through a pan de chocolate. He slows to a stop, hops out of the van, and tucks something the size and shape of a baguette under his arm.
He knocks on the door of Number 47.
***
There is a cat at our hostel. Her name is Sunny, like the hostel, and she is really not so much a cat as an adorable kitten. She is three weeks old, presumably orphaned or otherwise sold at far too young an age, and she is too cute for words.
We take a liking to Sunny and she takes a liking to us. We have the only room on the ground floor, and she is too small to climb stairs, so every morning we wake up and bring her inside and spend an hour or two cuddling with her tiny, furry body. She is occasionally calm and at times quite rambunctious, and we get scratched more than a few times as she begins to learn the difference between play-clawing and oh-that-really-hurts-clawing.
When we're not boarded up in our room with the cat, we're out in the kitchen socializing with the other travelers. There are a number of overlanders—Europeans in Land Rovers and camper vans and big renovated eastern German ambulances, all headed for Mongolia or elsewhere, all headed far east—but most of the guests here are cyclists. The Pamir Mountains are one of the world's great cycling destinations (next to Patagonia, New Zealand, and the American West Coast), and late June is prime time for navigating the breezy four-thousand-meter-plus passes of Gordo-Badakshan, Tajikistan. We spend long mornings talking to the fellow bike tourers, comparing paths with those headed toward the Pamir and gleaning tips from those just descended from the mountains. It's fairly obvious who's coming or going by the length of one's facial hair, the amount they're eating, and their appreciation of the sit-down toilets in the hostel bathroom.
***
There's a gentleman in Moscow. He's seated in a not-terribly-comfortable chair in a not-terribly-comfortable airport, the same place he's been seated for the better part of twelve hours. He is waiting patiently, possibly scanning the Departures board above his head for flight updates, maybe with a few croissants from back home wedged in the pocket of his carry-on bag. Or maybe he's drinking a tall Russian beer, just eager to pass the time.
In any case, he's been waiting for a long time.
***
So there's the room, with the heart-melting kitten, and there's the hostel kitchen, with the hordes of other cyclists coming and going, and then there's Brio Cafe, where we spend most of our days.
Brio is what you might call a "Western" cafe. It's rather unremarkable in most respects. It is, with its wooden tables and its stylish baristas and its a-little-too-predictable music playlist, just like every other Western cafe: frictionless. Familiar.
But after a long time on the road, familiar is nice. The menu is English and the word vegan is recognized. There are muffins and smoothies and good coffee and those freshly-pressed veggie burgers, all things one might take for granted living in urban America but which one comes to dream about during long nights in a tent eating seconds or thirds of spaghetti with garlic for the second or third night in a row.
We meet Nathan and Sophie at Brio one day. They're traveling cyclists, like us, headed for the Pamir, like us. They're fun and friendly and interesting and, after we've filled our table with empty mugs and glasses and plates, the four of us go out for a beer to chat more.
We stay up late—anytime past midnight is well past our camping bedtime—and the next afternoon and evening we do it again, burgers at Brio then beers across the road. We make it to bed a little earlier this time, though a little earlier is not exactly early. The next morning, we cuddle up with Sunny and sleep late.
***
A man steps off a plane. He is tired and jet-lagged and has not lay down in many, many hours. He is whisked across a strange, unfamiliar city to a dark room with a small, unfamiliar bed. Maybe it smells a little funny. Most likely, it is not as comfortable as his bed back home. He sleeps and he rises and he feels a little better, but he probably go for a coffee.
He stuffs a parcel into his rucksack and steps out onto the dusty street.
***
We are at Brio for the umpteenth time. We have depleted the cafe's supply of veggie patties so they have begun to mash up more just for us. Despite its bougeious asthetic, this place is actually pretty affordable, so Lauren and order smoothies and fries and americanos and plenty of those burgers without fearing what it'll do to our budget. We eat well, cook little, and spend our days tending to our blog and desperately racing to not, once again, fall very far behind on these posts. Between our dashes to the counter to place another order and our long, lovely chats with Nathan and Sophie, we of course get very little done. We fall behind once again.
This particular afternoon, Nathan and Sophie—also frequent visitors to Brio—are late to arrive. I catch Nathan as he walks in and I wave. He comes over to say hello. Another man walks over with him. "This is Romain" Nathan says.
Romain flashes a friendly smile. "How was your flight?" I ask. "Long," he replies. "Oh! I have something for you." He fishes into his bag and pulls out a crisp new Thermarest sleeping pad.
***
So, we met Nathan and Sophie and Brio but we actually met Nathan and Sophie a few weeks earlier via radio signals bouncing off the Tian Shan mountains.
Nathan, Sophie, Lauren, I, and about two hundred other cyclists are all part of a big WhatsApp group for people traveling the world—though mostly central Asia—by bicycle. It's a place to ask questions (does anyone know how long it takes to get an Uzbek visa?), share tips (the pass to Issyk-Kul is now cleared of snow), or just socialize (I'm in Tashkent for the next few days; anyone want to grab a beer?). A few weeks ago, Nathan sent a mass text letting folks know that he had a friend coming in from France at the end of June with his bike, so there'd be a spare bike box in Osh in case anyone needed it.
If you recall, Lauren's sleeping pad has died catastrophically. She has spent most of the week or two before Osh camped on the ground. She can manage it at these elevations and these temperatures, but before the Pamir she will definitely need a replacement. A replacement in Kyrgyzstan is almost impossible to get. We are desperate, and exhausting all options.
And so, desperately, we reply to Nathan. Hi! We don't need a bike box, but were wondering if it'd be at all possible or your friend to bring a small package out with him, blah, blah, blah?
He responds within the day. Of course! Not a problem at all.
Lauren and I find shade underneath a gas station awning by the Toktogul Reservoir, connect to a Kyrgyz cell tower, and place an expedited order for a new Thermarest with Amazon France. Somewhere in a basement underneath the Alps, a server clicks to life.
***
We spend a little time with Romain. He's every bit as warm and friendly as Nathan and Sophie. The five of us are headed for the Pamir (Romain's joining Nathan and Sophie for the ride to Dushanbe), and we're all planning on starting the long climb in a few days, so we decide, for as long as it makes sense, to cycle together. We part ways and Lauren and I head to the bazaar to load up on way too much food. We haul it all back to our hostel, lay it out on the bed, and try to figure out just how we're going to fit it all on our bikes.
We manage. We pack it all. We fill up our water jugs and put some air in our tires. We say goodbye to Sunny—miss you girl—and we cycle our first few kilometers on the Pamir Highway.
We don't actually start out with Nathan, Sophie, and Romain. They're determined to beat the heat (it's blazing down here in the Fergana Valley), so they set off around five this morning. Lauren and I like our sleep and our late mornings, so we don't get on the road until after eleven.
It's uphill, all day. Sophie and I text back and forth and by six or seven they've made camp. We climb up our first of many, many Pamir passes a little ways behind them, fly down the other side, and meet Sophie on the side of the road. She walks us up the hill to their camp, and Lauren and I set up our massive, obnoxious four-person tent next to their svelte, earth-toned little shelters.
***
It's fun traveling as a pack. Not since Botswana have we actually met someone headed our way for any length of time; not since Teresie (who's just arrived in Egypt) have we cycled with someone else. With Nathan, Sophie, and Romain, we take nice long lunch breaks and make delicious dinners cooked on not one, but three separate burners. That means rice and lentils and vegetables. A proper meal.
Our new friends are bikepacking—no panniers for better off-roading—which means they're traveling light. Whereas Lauren and I have packed a huge, family-sized tent, they're each carrying something much smaller. Whereas Lauren and I are carrying enough food to get us to Afghanistan, the bikepackers are just hauling the essentials and filling up at small shops along the way. While our bikes look bulky and encumbered, like we're just out to the grocery, they're bikes look sleek and nimble.
And so the bikepackers are faster than us. They ride ahead and we fall a bit behind and we usually catch up a few times each day: when they've stopped for tea, or lunch, or at the river to refill their bottles. And, of course, when we're all ready to get off the bikes and set up camp.
Our second day from Osh is even more uphill than the first. We're all exhausted and set up next to a small creek before dark. I ask a man near the bridge if it'd be okay to camp there, and he says sure, это хорошо.
A little while later an old Lada sedan bumps up along the creek and stops near our small tent city. A family gets out. Father. Mother. Daughters. For a moment we're worried about a hassle, about someone maybe wanting us to move our tent. The family, the father explains, lives in a house just above the ridge behind us. We're more or less planted in their front yard.
But this family is not here to tell us to move. Most people in the world don't have the same this-land-is-my-land territorialism as us in the West. You want to camp? Sure, you can camp. But please, here, let us give you some fresh bread and hot tea and, if you need it, water for your bottles. We enjoy a special evening sharing chai and conversation with the family (as the strongest Russian speaker of our featherweight crew, I do my best to translate). Before they go, their daughter grabs an instrument from the back of the Lada and strums a beautiful Kyrgyz song for us. Would you like some of the dinner we've been making? we ask, the least we can do in exchange for their generosity. Politely, they agree to try a little of our rice-and-vegetable medley. The father feeds a spoonful to their youngest child and the baby curls up his face in disgust.
***
Another day, another climb. Over five thousand feet in fifty miles. The road gets steeper and steeper. The pass looms before us, angled switchbacks carved high into the mountainsides. Somewhere up ahead, a cell phone tower marking the highest point. It takes all day.
We ride with the bikepackers most of the way, but they begin to peel ahead at the base of the pass. We're right behind Sophie when Lauren gets a flat. Sophie offers to wait, but Nathan and Romain are already well ahead. We've fixed many flats. No, no, go ahead. We'll catch up.
She pedals around the corner as Lauren and quickly invert her bike, remove the punctured tube, and drop in a new one. I reach for the pump, start screwing it to the valve, and the entire thing just falls apart in my hands.
We are stuck in a creek, and we are without a paddle.