Today was another day where we had to go waaaay out of the way to get to our next checkpoint. We’ve been debating on whether or not we would have time to do the Pamir highway aka the M41, which is a thousand kilometer road through the Pamir mountains in Tajikistan. By all accounts it is supposed to be a gorgeous drive, rallyers past have said it was one of their favorite things about the Mongol Rally. The problem is the road is utter hell and would take 4-5 days to drive and that’s assuming there are no major problems. Projecting forward we’ve been a little concerned with our timeline. Due to a mistake on the Russian side our Russian visas are set to expire September 3, a Sunday. At the end of the rally our car has to get on a train in Ulan Ude, Russia and will be sent to Estonia to be scrapped. The train yard only accepts cars on weekdays, which means Friday the 1st is the last day we could drop it off. The rally organizers informed us that the yard only processes about 20 cars a day and it requires an appointment (and can’t be same day) so building in a little extra buffer time we would have to be at the finish line by Aug 30 at the latest. That gave us 16 days maximum to drive through 5 countries, crossing 5 borders. Mongolia is said to take 5 days to cross, we would lose one day crossing into Russia and then into Mongolia, Kazahkstan would be 3 days, and 2 to cross through Kyrgyzstan. Add that to the 4 days it would take to drive through Tajikistan and we have an extremely tight window, and it would require no seriously problems. Believe me when I say that this part of the trip has gotten a little stressful. Oh yeah, and Mitch was trying to be back stateside for a wedding on the 1st, and Hendrick wanted to be back in the UK for his daughters birthday on the 1st as well.
So, to Pamir or not to Pamir was the question. We were leaning towards no, but decided to get to Kevron and then make that decision. Kevron is about 300 km to the east on the M41, but we’d gotten reports that the road is absolutely terrible and would take 10 hours to drive if we were lucky. This brings us back to our alternate longer route to the south. Google maps said it was 380 km and would take 7 hours. That still meant 10 hours most likely, but it was also in theory considerably less wear and tear on the car, so that’s what we decided to do. First we had to get groceries and a few other things before heading out. While walking around look what I found. I have a feeling Keanu Reeves does not know he’s in this ad.
We all needed to top off our tanks and fill up our spares, so we stopped at a gas station right outside of town that had a sign that said they took credit cards. Sweet! Wrong. Half the time those stickers don’t mean anything once you leave Europe. Even more frustrating is that the service guy started pumping the gas before telling us he wouldn’t take cards, but he hadn’t put in much by the time we stopped him. After some arguing back and forth because we didn’t have any local currency, we threw $2 at him and went across the street. Again, we asked before they started pumping if they took CC. This time the girl attendant verified twice that she did. Awesome. Our tank was about dry, so between that and our cans we got about 70 liters of gas. So we go to the window to pay aaaaaand the girl behind the counter said no, no credit cards. Thing is I was staring right at the little hand held machine, which was plugged in mind you. Alex pulled out his handy Russian book and came to find out that they did take cards, but she had no idea how to use the machine. What in the hell…she works there. It took a solid 10 minutes to get this squared away, and in the mean time we were trying to figure out what the USD equivalent would be – which she didn’t want to take either. Eventually she decided to call someone else who explained how the machine works. Ta-da! Throughout all that she neglected to ring up the little mountain few that Ryan wanted. By that I mean I just took it off the shelf in front of her and walked to the car. I regret nothing, judge me if you want.
Have I mentioned that Google maps is borderline useless here? The time projections are way way way off, and it also recommends going ways that you probably shouldn’t. For instance, it wanted us to climb this mountain pass, winding back and forth up and down these narrow crappy roads. At one point we drove through a little village and a couple of the people waved and then put their arms up and made an X, indicating don’t go that way. A little ominous, but we decided to press forward a little bit. 15 or so later we passed another group of people doing who knows what on the side of this mountain road. We were the front of the convoy so we kept going, while the Aussies and Brits stopped to talk to them to figure out what was going on. After a few minutes of not seeing them behind us we pulled over and waited for them to join us.
They didn’t. I walked back up that way, and eventually the other 2 brought the car up the road. Those people also said not to go down the road, rockslide or something was blocking it, or who knows what. They told us to double back and at a certain point take a right and cut through to join the tunnel. What the fuck google, the map shows the tunnel as not finished and not connected to the main highway, that’s why we were taking this stupid mountain road.
It was totally connected, and the highway was really nice. We continued on with the Aussies leading the way. We had wasted so much time on this road that it became clear we weren’t going to make our destination, we would only be getting about half way. That mistake cost us half a day, thanks google.
We were trying to get as close to Kulob as we could, which was the halfway point. Down that way was a river that we thought it would be nice to camp next to. We did manage to get there with the sun still up, so we detoured from the main road and drove down this little farm road that sort of hugged the river. Turns out that little farm road was going straight through this village and we couldn’t really find anywhere to pull off. Again, thanks google. We had to creep through this place which I’m sure made quite a few people’s day if not year and we had kids chasing after us and what not. Bad place to stop because you’re basically going to get mobbed by children, and none of us were in the mood for that. At a certain point there was a road that went left towards the river, so we decided to take our chances know that it was really unlikely that it would be uninhabited. For a moment it was, but then amazingly the shanty houses disappeared from the gravel road and the next thing you know we’re driving between farmland.
At the end of the gravel road we found a place we could pull off into a little field. We didn’t see anyone around so excitedly we set up camp for the night. The only downside was the pasture was obviously a huge cattle crossing, and the way it was obvious was that the entire field was a minefield of poop. Finding a 4×8 piece of flat ground with no poop took a little bit. Someone made us a tasty little dinner and we drank some not too terrible wine under the stars. The sky was incredibly bright. Being able to see the band of the Milky Way is something that’s hard to see back home.
