Tajikistan• Travel

TAJIKISTAN • TRAVEL

Stats:

Total km biked: 1019 km
Days biked: 13 days

Road conditions:

The road just over the Kyrgyz border is actually really good and remains that way pretty much until Khorog. Most of the roads are dirt, though a large section was being paved as we got closer to Dushanbe.

Weather:

It never rained the entire time we were in Tajikistan.

Food and water:

There are some issues with water in the Pamir plateau area. We had heard from other cyclists that they had difficulty finding water, so we carried quite a bit with us and pumped whenever we saw a water source. If you see yurts, then water must be around somewhere though it may take some time to find it. Food was easier to find but we basically ate bread and oil for breakfast and lunch and pasta with tomatoes for dinner everyday. At a few roadside restaurants we ate soup with bread, which was really all we could find. Murghab and Khorog had restaurants where you could find lagman and a bigger variety of food and some markets.

Sleeping:

We camped (both in the wild and more often in family's gardens) in Tajikistan every night except in Murghab and Khorog. In Murghab we stayed at the Murghab Hotel (on the right side of the road as you enter town from the west) and in Khorog we stayed at a homestay with Iko, a Japanese cyclist we met in Murghab. He showed us the homestay, so we aren't really sure how you find one.

Alternate Transportation:

In Murghab we found out via internet that Keith had to return to the states by September 12th for a medical school interview. We were able to cycle from the Kyrgyz border until Dushanbe, but then needed to take a car to Penjikant on the Uzbekistan border in order to have a week in Uzbekistan (we had already paid for the visa and Tashkent has a much larger and more frequently serviced airport than Dushanbe) before we needed to fly home. We cycled into Dushanbe by about 10 am (we slept with a family in a small village just outside the city the night before) and road to the far (west) side of town where we found the taxi stand. It was a full out battle, but we did manage to get a taxi for an extremely reasonable rate (we needed to pull out all the stops for this one). In the end, we had other Tajik taxi drivers arguing to lower the price in our favor which was amazing. We got the usual line that we would leave in an hour or two. This was at about 6 or 7 pm. We left at about 6:00 am the next morning after sleeping in the back of the taxi all night. Perfect...that was what we expected anyway. In Penjikant, we met an incredible family that welcomed us into their home where we slept for the night and crossed the border into Uzbekistan the next morning.

Maps used:

We used the Gizy map for Central Asia.

Highlights:

Tajikistan has both amazing landscapes and incredible people. It was really one of the most hospitable places we have ever been.

Misc:

The internet in Murghab (at the Murghab House), Khorog and Dushanbe. The connection in Khorog was sporadic when we were there, but maybe it has improved.

Images