Looking up from the homestay in Langar the mountainside towers above. if you crane your neck you can just see the road skirting the ridge way, way up in the sky.
The road out of town is a series of viscous, gravelly, steep hairpins and spotters were placed in the hardest curves to help the least skilled riders (ie Deefor) to get up.
It didn't get any easier. Three hours of hard technical riding up and down hill on sand, grit, packed mud, gravel and stone brought us out of the Wakhan. By the end confidence and skill levels were high and the sense of achievement immense. Just a shame about falling off on the third bend.....
The top of the Khargush Pass was 4325m. Here we were above the snow line where Yak graze the thin grass and a few light snow flurries mix with the dust to shot blast your skin. The thin air is cold but it is surprising how the adrenaline and effort of hard riding keeps you warm.
We rejoin the main Pamir Highway for the run into Murghab. Back on tarmac with its attendant trucks and potholes it was bizarre to see a line of four combine harvesters driving along the road. it his hard to imagine these being of any use in the Pamir so they must be bound for the fields of the Oxus. How they will make it along the cliff walls and river crossings to Dushanbe is anyones guess.
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