Finishing the PAMIR HIGHWAY! - TAJIKISTAN - The Way Overland - Episode 73

Our lush green sun-kissed hilltop camp spot we left the last episode on decided to surprise us with a turn for the worse the following morning so we decided to push on and get off the mountain as soon as possible to avoid potentially getting stuck.
The track was saturated from the heavy rain and the low cloud only enhanced the dramatic scenery. The climb to the 3258m pass took us up though the farming fields, sharp rocks, raging rapids, and snow all the while passing landmine warning signs. We were intrigued to see a heard of sheep and their shepherd roaming the hill behind the signage. The mountains here are covered in landmines planted during the civil war from 1992 - 1997. Mines still cover approx. 2500 square kilometres of Tajikistan with international efforts now assisting to de-mine. Something to keep in mind when going off road!!
Once crossing the pass the weather begun to ease and sunshine was on the mountainous horizon. The opposing side of the range was different than the Wakhan Valley we had just left, the topography appearing to cause more rainfall and less sunshine. The tracks resultantly were very muddy and there were countless landslides, one which stopped us in our tracks. From the adjacent side of the valley we could see the roughly 100m wide slide had taken out a significant amount of the road ahead of us. After speaking to some local shepherds and putting the binoculars to use we could see that 1, there was another, almost larger slide further down the valley, and 2. that thankfully there had been a makeshift road cut in on our side of the valley to bypass the obstruction. We slowly took the very narrow and muddy track down to the small village at the bottom, crossed a creek, a bridge, and tackled the bottom of the bigger landslide thankfully following some ruts to stop us sliding off the track. The damp weather continued as the valley narrowed and after several hours we followed the angry brown river out the bottom of the valley and into the wide open farming fields. This marked the end of the potholes, corrugations, and our time in the mountains for now.
We cruised into the capital Dushanbe and found ourselves another great camp spot in the orchards to the East of the City. Although this spot was beautiful and had an amazing view, we needed to head down in to the city to stock up on supplies, do some servicing on the Troopy, catching up on these episodes, and check in with family.
Finding cost effective places to stay in cities that have parking is never easy so after trawling the internet and driving to several, we found a great family run hostel called City Hostel. It has a big secure parking area, great breakfast and WIFI, and they were happy for us to stay in the Troopy! Win! We stayed for a few nights making the most of the power to trying to catch up on the videos and run errands.
We had noticed a slight noise coming from the front of the Troopy when 4wding so we wanted to get on top of that. To attempt to isolate the noise Mark greased all the front components with the next step to drop and replace the diff oil. We visited around 7 different ‘oil shops’ none which had what we were looking for. After several hours we were lucky to come across a workshop, which specialised in Mercedes, who had an oil which would suffice for now. Buying oils in this part of the world has to be done with a degree of caution as black market products run rife. An extreme amount of effort is put into the fake packaging so distinguishing between real and counterfeit is not easy, and to be honest, although we searched hard we can not be guaranteed ours was legitimate. Moments like this really make you appreciate the little conveniences of home and the ability to duck down to the local car store and buy exactly what you want and know you’re buying the real deal.
In the end the oil was changed by a group of friendly mechanics and the noise resided. We did a spot of shopping, left the hostel, and hit the road again and stocked up and ready for another adventure into Allaudin Lake.
Thanks for watching!
Jolie and Mark
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