Dusty Rubber » Archive » Dushanbe

Homeward Bound (Robb Maciag)

The ‘Roof of the World’ makes the Pamir Mountains sound like heaven. Mountains have such an allure which I, and much of the world so it seems, can’t shake off. Whether the Hindu Kush, the Karakorum or simply Snowdonia, mountains emit a luster of wildness most of our world lacks today. The raw natural living which high altitude brings makes those there respect and learn to love the nature which supports and tests them. So as I road through the Wakhan valley between the Pamirs and the Hindu Kush up onto the high plateau at dawn John Muir’s quotation rang more true than I could have imagined; How glorious a greeting the sun gives the mountains’.

I’d imagined lush green pastures whilst in reality dust and sand were a constant battle everyday. I’d heard how bad the roads were and the rumours lived upto their hype. The road regularly gets washed away in the spring snowmelt and as result bulldozers have to repair huge lengths of it annually making the road extremely patchy and bumpy throughout. But what the Pamirs lacked in road quality they made up for in vistas. Cycling along the Afghan border gave my portal view into a country locked in the past by years of political and military battles. Burnt out tanks dotted the Tajik side of the Wakhan valley and I could see women in the typical blue burkhas we have all come accustomed to seeing on the news. But it all made my wish to visit this country one day even stronger, as usual my human longing to try what I couldn’t have was strong. Leaving the border and Hindu Kush behind I climbed high to the Pamir plateaus which turned out to be pretty chilly but just as stunning. The green pastures had arrived as had the nomadic Kyrgyz farmers. Cycling with Jorg, a sixty something, I cycled over 3000m for about a week to Murghab with night time temperatures going below zero in my element loving every minute of the road I had longed to ride for quite a few years. It lived to up to everything I dreamt it could be.