10 days ago we made the biggest change in our planned route. Every single other rally team we spoke to, talked about doing the Pamir Highway. Initially, we thought it would be too time consuming, and so we’d decided to skip it. But the more we thought about it, the more we believed we were missing out. So in a last minute decision, in a hotel room in Iran, we decided to change the route and applied for our Tajikistan visa. Just 5 days later we found ourselves entering Tajikistan after half a day in beautiful Samarkand.
We did most of the drive on the Tajikistan side of the border after nightfall. With an incredibly bright moon to guide us, we drove on windy roads through a series of beautiful canyons. After a couple of hours of driving we arrived in Dushanbe and found a hostel where we could rest up before hitting the Pamir Highway the following day.
We expected the Pamir to be difficult, so we teamed up with 5 other rally teams to convoy along the route. The first day that seemed like a great idea! We were able to do more or less the same speed as everyone else, but we would later realise that that would only be true while we had reasonably good tarmac. On the evening of Day 1 we put up camp next to the powerful Panj River, the border between Tajikistan and Afghanistan. We’d only just finished setting up our tents, when a couple of Tajik police officers turned up, and asked us to move camp to a “secure location” – not exactly something we’re used to worrying about.
On Day 2, we found out just how much we would stress “From the Heart”. Of course it’s not rocket science, that doing one of the most demanding highways in the world in a 13 year old car with a 1.2L engine and very limited ground clearance was going to be difficult. But nonetheless we were surprised by just how slowly we were moving forward. From Kalaikhum to Rushan the road was practically non-existing, and we had to avoid massive potholes, and slowly mounting big rocks with the front tyres to avoid them going wrecking our sump guard and the underside of the car. In the end our front left tyre lost a battle with one of the big stones, and we had to change it on the narrow road. We slowly moved ahead and by the end of the day, the casualties included not only the tire but also our sump guard, which had taken a massive beating and had come partially off. After 15 hours of driving we put up our tent on a farmers field, having done only 180 km.
Day 3: We got up after just a couple of hours of sleep to try and catch up with the rest of the convoy 200 km ahead of us. We got there just as they departed for the Wakhan Corridor, but we had to go to a mechanic to sort out our wrecked tyre and try and fix our sump guard. After spending a couple of hours with a German speaking mechanic, we’d managed to fix the sump guard ourselves, but the found that the tyre needed a bigger hammer than what we had in the car – luckily the help was nearby! We tried to catch up with the rest of the convoy, but ended up giving up on the Wakhan Corridor since it would put on an extra 200 km, and we were still moving extremely slowly at only 15 kph. Instead we started on the northern route (the actual Pamir Highway), and randomly bumped into Team Lazcar who had also encountered some mechanical difficulties. We stopped in a place they recommended where there was hot springs, and finished the day off with a nice 40C warm bath – not a bad finish after two tough days.
Team Lazcar had a bit more ground clearance than us, so they speeded ahead the following day, while we moved along in at a slower speed. We climbed the Koi-Tezek Pass at 4272m. The road was reasonably good road before and after the pass, whilst the quality of the road completely deteriorated in the pass itself. Nevertheless, we made much more headway on Day 4, and were able to push past Murgab. We got to the top of the Ak-Baital Pass, which is the highest of the Pamir Highway passes at incredible 4655m above sea level. Here we could really feel that we lacked power, and the final climbs were done in 1st gear. At the top we got out of the car, and climbed an additional 100m on foot to experience an incredible sunset (see our Instagram posts!). We made our way down from the pass and stopped at a very basic homestay around Karakul – mainly to get some shelter for the freezing night temperatures that accompanied the high altitude.
On Day 5 we did the final part of the Pamir on a much nicer road from Karakum to Osh. The better road quality was really appreciated, and “From the Heart” could finally get a bit of rest after having taken a beating for 4 days.
The Pamir Highway is by far the most impressing part of our rally so far – and we’re so happy we did it! The difficulties we faced along the way only made the feeling of completing the second highest highway in the world even better. It’s truly difficult to explain or describe just how phenomal an experience this was – and even though we took an exorbitant amount of pictures, they can only do it little justice. For 5 days straight, we were surrounded by incredible and dramatic views no matter where we looked. What an experience!
