July 8, 2018 — Jay Austin
Lauren cannot breathe and there are fifteen people shouting at me in three or four different languages and it is still snowing.
We are at 4,100 meters, maybe, and this is too high for Lauren's lungs right now. They've had a hard day. They need to get down to lower altitude.
But we're now in Tajikistan, and there isn't really anything much lower for hundreds of kilometers. We are on the Pamir Plateau. Elevation: 3,600 meters and up.
The best we can do is Karakul. It's fifty-five kilometers from here, two hundred meters lower, probably not snowing. The organizer of the Czech cyclists' trip has a vehicle—this is the vehicle carrying all the cyclists' gear—and he's willing to rent it and its driver out to us for the ride to Karakul. Lauren is in no state to cycle, and thus it's the only way.
There's only room for one. One body, a few panniers squeezed into the back of the truck, Lauren's bike tied to the roof. I help the driver and the fixer load Lauren's things and tell Lauren I'll be right behind her. I'll see you tonight. The truck pulls away with Lauren in the passenger seat.
I look around as snow flurries to the ground. It's about 5PM, elevation 4,100 meters. I have no tent and no interest in bivoaucing out on the Pamir Plateau tonight. I have fifty-five kilometers, and one more pass, between me and Karakul. Me and Lauren.
I step on the pedals and crunch down onto the gravel. No sleep 'til Karakul.
***
I ride fast. I ride relentlessly. I bump down the washboard descent and make peace with braking a spoke or two. I soar past other cyclists and shout a frenzied sorry I can't stop to chat! behind me.
It's beautiful, the Pamir, but I don't stop to take any pictures. I don't stop for anything. I ride about forty kilometers straight, tearing up the second pass, and only slow when the vehicle that brought Lauren to Karakul approaches from the opposite direction.
"Homestay Aguiden!" the driver shouts out the window.
"Спасибо—thank you!" I call back, the truck already behind me. Homestay Aguiden, I repeat to myself, partly not to forget the name, partly a mantra to carry me across the final gusty fifteen kilometers. Homestay Augiden. Homestay Aguiden. Homestay Aguiden.
I needn't have worried about not finding Lauren. I collapse into Karakul a little after seven and Homestay Aguiden is about all there is in the dusty little village, the words inscribed in blue paint on the first building along the road. Romain, Sophie, and Nathan wave me down from outside. They'd arrived just minutes earlier. Parched, frazzled, I sputter out, "Where's Lauren?"
"She's okay," Sophie reassures me. "She's inside resting."
***
I find Lauren weak and fatigued, but with more measured breathing. By the next morning, she's doing much better.
There will be no cycling today. The body naturally acclimates to higher elevations, and time is the only way to acclimate. There are no tricks, no shortcuts, no medicines that do anything but mask symptoms of altitude sickness. We were planning on a rest in Karakul anyway, and this gives us a very good excuse to take a few days off.
Our bikepacker friends are ready to carry on. They're on a tighter timeframe—Romain has a flight back to France at the end of the month—and anyway they're taking a different route through the Pamir, peeling off from the main road just twenty kilometers south of Karakul. You form close friendships on the road like this, cycling and cooking and camping, sharing rooms and sometimes tents together, and though we've only known them for a week, we're really sad to say goodbye to the three of them. Big hugs, well wishes. See you in Dushanbe, maybe?
We wave them off. We lumber back inside and lie down and chat with the other cyclists who arrive—it's almost all cyclists here. We sit out at the long communal table and watch the road and wave at anything that passes. When the sound of crunching gravel drifts in from outside, us and the other guests all make for the curtains to see who's arriving.
Mid-afternoon, the gravel crunches. Three silhouettes on bikes roll by the window. "New cyclists," one of our fellow guests says.
Lauren and I peer out the doorway at Nathan, Sophie, and Romain. What are you guys doing back here?
***
They'd cycled twenty-five kilometers to the Bartang Valley and into ever-worsening conditions. Snow and cold and clouds so thick they block the views. They'd passed a cyclist coming the other way who'd mentioned a mean weather front moving in these next few days. They'd stopped for lunch and discussed whether to forge ahead, to trudge through what would otherwise be the best few days of their ride if not for the grim conditions. They'd decided, wisely, to take a few days off and tackle the Bartang under clear skies.
And so they're back, and we haven't much moved, and as the day crawls on about a dozen more cyclists and a few overlanders pour into the small homestay on the edge of the glistening Karakul Lake. It's a convivial atmosphere, everyone eating together and sharing sleeping space on the floor, and the next morning about half of us decide to take another day off.
Lauren's doing a bit better. She's anxious about the road ahead, and for good reason. Up ahead is Ak-Baital, the Pamir's highest and fiercest pass. It measures 4,650 meters—closer to the altitude of a cruising 747 than an umbrella on the beach—a full thousand feet higher than our last pass together.
Lauren's worried about the altitude and she's also worried about her stomach. Tajikistan is notorious for stomach troubles. Almost everyone is bound to catch Tajik tummy at some point. Sophie and Lauren got it early; Romain and Nathan are dealing with more intestinal rumbling than they're used to. (I'm somehow doing just fine—but I'm only on day two of our forty-five day visa.)
We plan to make for the pass tomorrow, but as our second rest day unfurls Lauren's anxiety and stomach worsen. She inquires about taking a ride to Murghab, the next town on the Pamir Highway, and our friendly homestay hosts arrange an early-morning ride for her and her bike in the back of an old Soviet ambulance now doing trips as an intra-Pamir passenger bus. While she's debating whether to skip cycling Ak-Baital, she vomits about a liter's worth of bits and bile into a Tupperware, and then it's pretty much decided. Lauren will be taking the ambulance to Murghab.
There is, theoretically, room for me. I consider going. But Lauren's okay, and Lauren will just be resting anyway, and this stretch, from Karakul to Murghab, is one of the Pamir's finest. At daybreak the next morning, I wave to Lauren as her ride pulls away into a gorgeous golden sunrise. See you in Murghab.
I am once again on my own. It's a strange feeling, having spent the virtual entirety of the past year with a person, to suddenly be alone. It is Day 366 on the road—Year 2, Day 1—and I'm not sure if it feels silly to have parted ways with Lauren just to cycle this stretch, or silly to feel guilty for parting ways for just a day or two. Lauren will be in Murghab. Lauren will be safe. I will be in Murghab soon.
Just 134 kilometers. Just one 4,650-meter pass. Just one long, barren wasteland, then Murghab.
A few hours later, I follow the ambulance's dusty tracks out of Karakul.
***
I don't start off alone. Nathan and Sophie and Romain are all headed for the Bartang, take two, and another pair of cyclists, Della and Tucker, and going my way. We all ride the first twenty-five kilometers together, during which time the bikepackers persuade Della and Tucker to consider the Bartang, which, though shorter, will certainly be more adventurous and remote. Della and Tucker chew on it for a little, take a good look at the map once we all reach the Bartang Valley turnoff, and in a lovely display of on-the-road spontaneity, agree to totally reroute their way through Tajikistan at quite literally the very last moment.
Cheers erupt from Nathan, Sophie, and Romain. I'm happy for them too; the Bartang spur seems like a really great alternative. "Jay, you want to come along too?" Nathan jokes.
It's tempting, a few more days in a lovely valley with these friends. It's tempting, but of course, Nathan's just kidding. It's tempting, but it's not going to happen. I give my five fellow cyclists big hugs—see you in Dushanbe, maybe?—wish them luck, and tear off for the horizon.
I have to go see about a girl.
***
Traveling alone, you take fewer breaks. You move at your own pace. I ride quickly. Not so much to get to Murghab tonight, because that is very far and more than likely not going to happen. I ride quickly because I want to be damn sure I'm not stuck at 4,650 meters when the sun sets.
The road turns bumpy. Gravel, washboard, sand. It peels upward and I click into my lowest gear. My surroundings are desolate, like Nevada on its darkest day. Black clouds threaten the road ahead. You, turn back now. I lean forward and begin to climb.
4,100 meters. No switchbacks, just a long, wicked uphill. I suck in and push hard, but my calves and my lungs and my heart can't handle these grades at this altitude. I get off my bike and begin to push over the stones.
4,300 meters. Snow. Whenever anything on the bike gets so challenging that you think to yourself, this can't possibly get any worse, you are destined for some precipitation any moment. I pull on my rain gear. The road levels out, some but not much, and I cycle on.
4,500 meters. I have passed five other cyclists, all headed the other direction. Not far to the pass? I ask optimistically. Oh, still a ways, and very steep, they reply, a little too honestly for my taste. You're definitely going in the more difficult direction.
4,600 meters. I am back to pushing. I can see the pass right in front of me but I cannot will my body to move toward it. My bike feels like a tank and my legs feel like they are ensconced in concrete. My lungs are like, wait, wait, what the hell is this? Put me back down this instant.
I have skydived from lower altitudes than this. It'd be a shorter walk to the peak of Everest than back to sea level. 4,600 meters is not even that high, as far as mountains and mega-mountains go, but for a place with a road it feels absurd. People should not be cycling this high.
An overlander truck beckons from the top of the pass. Well, serves you right, it seems to boast. I push forward toward the truck. It looks so very close. I grunt, take five steps, stop, and measure my progress. Almost there. Under normal circumstances, reaching this truck might take three minutes. These are not normal circumstances, and so it takes forty-five.
4,650 meters. Ak-Baital. It's an unceremonious pass. One sign on the way up, one sign on the way down, but nothing to mark the top except for the gentle cresting of a very ferocious hill. A shout comes from over by the truck. "Good job!" a man calls. "You want some tea? Coffee?"
"No thanks," I say. "I just need to get down."
"You want a peach?"
I think for a moment. "Yeah. I'll take a peach."
***
It's 4PM. I am eighty kilometers from Murghab. I am far enough that it is ridiculous to try to make it there by Murghab by nightfall—particularly after a day like today—but I am close enough that it is possible to make it there by nightfall. I can make camp and spend the next fifteen hours in a tent, or I can get to Murghab and see how Lauren's doing. Or I can just start on the long road down and see how far I get.
My head is pounding. Every time I hit a pothole, which is often, I feel a sharp pain in my cranium. I pop a few too-late-to-be-of-much-use ibuprofen and plunge downhill.
Down, into the valley, into the wind, into the dry Pamir Plateau. Down, legs turning, gears turning, wheels turning and vibrating against the rough asphalt. Down, and then not so down, and then mostly just wind from all directions. 5PM, 6PM, 7PM. Sixty kilometers to go. Forty. Just twenty left.
Were it a little further, a little longer, I'd just stop and make camp. But I have two hours of daylight left and one hour of cycling at most. 134 kilometers to Murghab, and I'm almost there.
I round a mountain and there it is, humble and diminutive in the distance. White, low-lying buildings, one road, a small airport off to the side. A village, growing slowly larger.
The winds pick up. It takes as long to cycle these last five kilometers as the past fifteen. Head down, I push on. Up ahead, at the Pamir Hotel, Lauren is waiting.
I told Lauren not to expect me today. I did not expect me today. I'll see you at the Pamir Hotel tomorrow, I said when Lauren rode away this morning. And so I duck low and cycle for the Pamir Hotel.
A Tajik child waves from up on the hillside. Many Tajik child wave, and so I do what I always do: I wave back and pedal on.
The child waves frantically. The child shouts something. The child runs inside a guesthouse and runs back out. The child waves some more.
I stop and stare for a moment. I pull out my camera and take a photograph of this strange, tall child desperately trying to get my attention. I look at the photo on my camera and zoom in until the pixels get all blurry. I can't make out the details, but I can make out the broad strokes. Green Patagonia jacket. Shock of curly brown hair. A face that is certainly not Tajik.
I look up, and Lauren is rushing down the hill to greet me.