Whole day lost at the tire repair shop...
But at least the new tube finally seemed to be able to keep the air inside, despite being slightly smaller than my tire. That was a couple of hours before sunset and the rest of the guys decided to drive on to Ishkashim in the Wakhan Valley. I thought it would be too risky for me and decided instead to stay overnight again in Khorog and see how my tire looked like the next morning. Jani had just arrived in town and also stayed for one night in the same hostel... basically the only one.After such a stressing day, I needed a couple of beers and went in the evening to the local bar with Uri, an Israeli guy who was also staying at the hostel. He was on his third visit to Tajikistan and was about to ask a local girl to marry him... their story was pretty interesting but too long to reproduce here. The Pamirs are one of the most educated areas in Central Asia and women are really beautiful so I could only wish him good luck. I talked to Jani before going to bed and we agreed on taking the easier M41 route, the Pamir Highway proper, instead of the longer and rougher detour to the Wakhan Valley.

Next morning, I checked my tire and it was still hard as a rock... it seemed that I would be able to continue my journey. However, I had not made it that far to just ignore the Wakhan Valley, which was supposed to be one of the highlights of my trip. I told Jani I wanted to go on my own towards Ishkashim and we wished each other all the best. The road was much better than the previous section from Kala-i-Khum but still with many potholes and areas without asphalt.

The views were simply amazing, with snowy Afghan peaks right across the river that were shining in the morning light. I had to pay a lot of attention to the road but the magic of the place was worth the risk I was taking.

Somewhere between Khorog and Ishkashim, I met Gabriella. This French kindergarten teacher had stayed at the same hostel in Dushanbe and was planning to walk to Mongolia... yes, solo female traveler going from Tajikistan to Mongolia on foot during the winter. As crazy as it sounds. That was her fourth day and she had already covered 50 kilometers from Khorog. After making sure she was OK, I continued driving and reached Ishkashim about two hours later.

I stopped for a quick lunch and went to the local tire repair shop, where I checked the pressure and slightly inflated my tires. Everything still looked all right... the crack was getting bigger but the metal wires inside the tire seemed capable of holding it together. I continued driving deep into the Wakhan Valley, on a road that was incredibly good for the first 20km but then turned into gravel again. The scenery was just superb... the cereal fields during harvest painted the valley yellow and everybody was busy like ants preparing for the winter.

From time to time, it was possible to look through the side valleys into the 7000m high Hindu Kush mountains. What you can see right across the river is the narrow Wakhan corridor that belongs to Afghanistan but the higher mountains in the background mark the border with Pakistan.

At about 6pm, it was already pretty dark and becoming cold and windy so I decided to stop in Vrang, one of the many farming villages along the valley. There was a sort of guesthouse where I could crash and have some instant noodles, cucumbers and bread for dinner. I went to bed early, had a good rest and next morning I used a couple of hours to explore the town surroundings. Some local kids showed me a natural spring water source and an old Buddhist temple, both right outside the village. The fields were alive with most of the inhabitants working on them from dawn till dusk.

While it was still early in the morning, I started driving on towards Langar. This village, about 40km away from the place I spent the night at, is the last permanently inhabited place in the Wakhan Valley. From that point, the road gets away from the river and starts going up very steeply. Unfortunately, traffic signs were almost nonexistent and I took a wrong path that also went up the valley wall a few kilometers further. That road was in very bad condition, with soft gravel and big rocks. After a few switchbacks, I dropped my bike on the steep slope and immediately knew, judging from the angle, that I would not be able to lift it on my own. There was no traffic so I had to walk back to town and asked a father and a son who were building a house for help. They returned with me, helped me lift my 300kg bike and explained that I had taken a road that leads to a dead end.

Following their directions, I drove back to town and found the good road, whose condition was anything but good. It was even worse than I expected, a rocky steep narrow path that went deep into the mountains for about 100km without any houses on the way and with extremely little traffic. I checked the tire pressure once more and took a look at the widening crack... everything looked more or less all right. The next image is worth a thousand words, the gamble had just started.

It took me a few hours to reach the military checkpoint just before the mountain pass that connects with the Pamir Highway. On the way, I came across just a couple of 4WD cars and one truck. The rest was just rocks, dust and sand... but at least water was available every now and then in the form of small streams. The most difficult sections had very deep sand and I almost got stuck in a couple of them. Thanks to my previous practice in Georgia and Iran, I managed to overcome all those obstacles and felt quite relieved when I talked to the soldier that controls passports at the checkpoint. He told me that some other bikers had crossed the day before and I assumed it must have been Stuart, Willi and Fabian. I still had a chance to catch up in Murghab but that did not seem very likely...

A dozen kilometers after the checkpoint, the road reaches a mountain pass with a couple of high altitude lakes. The place was rather surreal and, despite the biting cold, that was one of the few places where I stopped to take pictures.

Leaving the pass behind, the road went down towards the Pamir plateau and half an hour later I was driving on the famous Pamir Highway. I had almost forgotten how it feels to drive on asphalt and, although the surface was deformed and there were massive potholes here and there, it felt like a blessing after the last few days' drives.

With the evening sun on my back, a cruise speed of 70 km/h and an out-of-this-world landscape surrounding me, I made it to Alichur, an ethnically Kyrgyz little village where one house had a clearly visible sign reading ' Marco Polo Home Stay'.