Monday 28 September 2015

Day 446-453: To Khorog

A night in my bivy under the stars... waking up to realise I slept next to beekeeping boxes

He was on his way up the mountain and helped with rolling the bike down the slope from my camp spot





Glad I don't have to cross this

Wreckage

Nice school uniform



Reaching Kalai-Khumb



Wheel barrow her play toy




+++



Peaceful Afghanistan village across the River Panj








  Eventually I ended up walking with the little girl on the right as every time I start pedalling she'll run along and sometimes pulling my rear bag to catch up... so I got off and rolled my bike with her for a few kilometre until she turned off into a road back home 


  Afghanistan village

 

Afghan house... carpet drying



The sand was so soft that I wanted to chill out like the cows by the river

 




As close as I can get - I could hear these children from the Afghan side

Afghanistan village

Afghanistan is just across the river on the right.

Afghanistan



Afghanistan: Villagers at work


 

Camped on a football field (see the goal post on the left?)

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 Nils from Switzerland caught up with me... met him briefly at Vero's place in Dushanbe where he was unwell












Nils had a candle in his bag and with a cut plastic bottle we had 'candle light' dinner under the stars

Packing up to start the day

+++




 
 We thought we heard explosion... so we stopped to look over the river at Afghanistan side

 Turns out there are people working on the edge of the rocks breaking out new path....
life on the edge, limited protection, they could fall into the river anytime

aww... so cute... Nils say they were running behind me for abit when I left...
papa/mama not in sight, hope they are not abandoned pups


Nils super lightweight set up. Tyres as thin as road bike. We bid farewell for now before catching up again at Khorog 




 Nicely stacked hays on Afghan houses



 Arrived at Rushon in the dark and while asking if I can pitched my tent somewhere, I was led to a home nearby.

 The roof of a traditional Pamirs house - the skylight in the middle represents Earth, Water, Air and Fire with the latter being the highest and touched first by the sun's rays.

 Typical good breakfast if you are lucky... Eggs, salted milk tea and home made bread

 Before I left, they stuffed me with more than 2kg of apples & pears from their trees, 1kg of tomatoes from their garden, huge piece of bread and a pair of knitted socks
[*tears*... thank you]



+++

Autumn is coming...





 Life above 2000m




 Peaceful




 Arrived at Khorog

 If you don't mind more climbing... Pamir Lodge is a nice place to rest in Khorog


You can pitch your tent or

 Sleep in your sleeping bag here or

 in a room

 Working on Riding Cyclette...

 Khorog. The bazaar here is the last place I saw fresh, lively veggies / fruits

 Met up with Tiphaine & Marco (cyclolenti.weebly.com) again since Bukhara and Nils was still in town for his last night.... so its time for some beer :)   Tiphaine even cooked us dinner that night

This is no ordinary yogurt bottle. Its a bottle filled with precious apricot jam. Nils and I were unable to find any jam in town and Marco+Tiphaine's homestay happened to make their own to last through their winter... If not for the 'face value' of Marco, yes the lady says 'Only for you Marco'.... we won't be able to have this little luxury (jam with bread) on the rest of the journey


21 Sept 15: 13.23km [Sunny]
22 Sept 15: 53.20km [Sunny]
23 Sept 15: 46.89km [Sunny]
24 Sept 15: 81.92km [Sunny]
25 Sept 15: 68.99km [Sunny]




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