Sorry to keep you waiting for so long but I hope this post meets your expectations...
Not all the pictures I used were taken by me, since most of the time I could not enjoy the luxury of stopping to use my camera. So thank you Stuart, Fabian and Jirka for your contributions and I hope that everybody enjoys the Pamir Highway Director's Cut. Uncensored.Finally, the elusive GBAO permit was in my hand and I was ready to start driving towards the Pamirs. After so many days wasted due to bureaucracy, I was really excited to head towards this Mecca for Western bikers. I had met Fabian and Jani the day before at the very same office and we agreed to depart together the next day, once our permits were ready. However, we had not exchanged phone numbers or email addresses and they did not show up in the morning. I waited for one hour but then decided to leave...

The first couple of hundred kilometers from Dushanbe were very good and the weather was awesome, I stopped en route for some plov, a traditional Central Asian dish which consists of fried rice with vegetables and meat, and continued my way to the mountains. The asphalt turned into dirt and the road became steeper and more winding. I had chosen to drive the shortest way to Khorog, which is over the Tavildara pass and is supposed to be rougher but more scenic. This is how the landscape looked like a few kilometers before the road started cutting deep into the mountains and gaining altitude. It looked like a paradise for climbers but at that time I had other goals in mind.

I had accumulated some delay in Dushanbe and it was getting a bit late. At the last military checkpoint before the pass, I almost decided to camp but I went on and tried to reach the village at the junction with the other 'better' road, Kala-i-Khum. The sunset light made that climb one of the nicest in my trip but I had to start driving faster because I did not have more than about an hour before darkness. It was also getting colder since the pass is over 3000m, nothing compared to the ones that awaited later in the Pamirs but, at the same time, far from negligible.

I felt confident on the bike because I had done much worse roads in Georgia and knew that my suspension could take the hammering. However, five minutes after I drove over the pass and started heading down, the emergency warning light started blinking furiously... front tire pressure critically low. My first thought was that the valve had been fucked up in Dushanbe when I went to a garage to have the tire slightly inflated, since they used truck compressors and performed a really careless job. But during the previous hours, I had been monitoring the pressure and it seemed to be OK... anyway, my tire was getting flat, I was totally alone on the road and it was becoming really dark and cold.

I thought about calling it a day, camping and waiting for somebody who could help me somehow next morning. But it was cold and I still had some air in my tire so I decided to continue slowly down the valley, towards warmer altitudes. About one hour later my front tire pressure had already gone down to 1.3 bar, when the recommended pressure is 2.2 bar. The dirt road turned into asphalt and it became very difficult to steer since the flat tire was gripping the ground too firmly. I had to drive even more slowly and, when I thought I would really have to stop for safety reasons, I reached another military checkpoint. Those soldiers were not very helpful but the simple idea of camping next to a manned area gave me some comfort. However, when they were checking my passport, a group of 4WD cars came down the road I had just driven... and they had a portable compressor. We inflated the tire and verified that the problem was not the valve but a puncture that was becoming a crack. The tire was losing air but it could hold enough time to reach Kala-i-Khum so I followed that group of 4WD cars to their guesthouse. For you to have an idea, just take a look at one of the bridges to understand what kind of road we are talking about.

After a nice dinner and having reached a small village, I felt relieved but still knew that fixing the problem without a spare tire would be difficult. I met two other bikers in that guesthouse and one of them, a transportation instructor for the Swiss Army, told me that I would never make it across the Pamirs with that tire. They were driving the opposite way and knew the road ahead of me... but on the other hand, going back to Dushanbe would not be easy either, Stuart and Willi were waiting for me in Khorog and the capital of the Pamirs (still a big village) could offer more options to replace or fix the tire. Anyway, my first priority was doing a temporary fix to be able to leave Kala-i-Khum but I could not use the tire repair cartridges I had bought in Europe because the crack was too big. I went to one tire repair shop in town and they said they could not help me... then I went to the other tire repair shop and was given the same answer again. However, the owner of the guesthouse in front of the shop saw me and got involved, he had an idea I did not really understand at first and started calling many people on his cellphone. He told me to get on a taxi, we were going to find 'Ural'.

To be honest, apart from the mountain range that divides Europe and Asia, at that time the name did not ring any other bell. I thought it was the name of a shop or a motorcycle dealer somewhere in the area... after spending a good half an hour in town asking for this 'Ural', we talked to a guy who apparently could help us. I was told to pay him some money for the gasoline to drive to a place 20km away and for something else I did not understand. I had no choice so we went to that village and, instead of a shop or dealer, we ended up in his house. He took me to a cottage within his property, opened the gate and I understood what they had in mind... there was an old Ural motorbike with sidecar from Soviet times and the wheels seemed to have the same size as mine. In fact, Ural and BMW were engineered in a very similar way and he wanted to take the inner tube from the front tire to place it inside my tubeless tire. Just brilliant.

With the Ural tube in our hands, we returned to Kala-i-Khum. I was concerned about the condition of that old tube but the guy told me not to worry, that it was 'stari no soyuzski', meaning old but from the Soviet Union times. I interpreted that as 'forget about modern shit, this has worked for 40 years and will last for other 40 years'. Back at the tire repair shop, we proceeded to glue a piece of rubber on the inner side of the crack, to keep it as closed as possible, and fit the tube. After an hour's work on it, the tire was again inflated and the tube seemed capable of holding the air inside for at least a day. The question was now whether I should return to Dushanbe and try to find a new tire or continue to Khorog and expect that either I have no further problems or I can fix them on the road... you probably guessed right and I went on to Khorog.

The road was terrible, even worse than I expected and full of heavy trucks. Some parts were very rocky, some other parts were covered in deep sand and I had to drive extremely slowly and carefully not to damage my tire further. From Kala-i-Khum to Khorog, the road winds its way on the Tajik side of the Panj river, which marks the border with Afghanistan. On the other side, only footpaths and traditional villages could be seen. After driving for the whole day, it got dark 80km away from Khorog but I knew the worst part of the road was behind and I decided to drive on. At about 21:30 I reached the guesthouse were Stuart and Willi were waiting and told them what had happened in the last couple of days... two packets of instant noodles and a beer later, I started relaxing after an exhausting drive.

The next day we just stayed resting in Khorog, which turned out to be a very nice town with surprisingly educated people and some of the prettiest women I have ever seen. But the Pamirs were calling and it was getting late in the season... we decided to leave the next morning. In the afternoon, we met Fabian by chance when he was riding across town and invited him to stay for the night and leave together the following day. He explained to me that he had had problems to start his engine two days before in Dushanbe and therefore missed our appointment but he agreed to continue together from that point. Unfortunately, when we were about to leave in the morning, I noticed that my tire was getting flat again... by the time we reached the gas station in town, it was totally down on the ground. Something was wrong with the tube.

We spent the day looking for some tools I was missing, trying to get help from the local tire repair shop, fitting a new tube, fixing it again because of a puncture... almost the whole day was lost. Jani reached Khorog and joined us, also helped with translations into Russian.
Would I be able to continue my trip with that tire?