Wednesday September 17, 2014

Jocelyn wrote this post.

Today I am thankful for being alive.

Yesterday us and the Canadian couple, Nick and Virginia, embarked on a 15-20 hour jeep ride through two mountain passes on a messed up, sometimes paved, sometimes rocks and mostly potholed road. It is very common for cyclists to be driven this portion to the start of the Pamir Highway due to visa constraints. Just 5 hours in we came to a sudden stop, thinking it was just a flat tire we all jumped out and quickly found out that the entire left front wheel and brake drum had broken off. My dad was sure that it would take a few days to repair but I assured him that one of the skills in these parts is being innovative and always having lots of hands to help out. So we all hoped for the best and hung around with the locals for 3 hours. Eventually it seemed to be all fixed so we headed off again. The mountains started to get larger and larger. We finally reached the Pamir River with the Afghanistan border.

Time goes patiently.The Pamirs are earth defying.Afghans wave eagerly.

Once the sun set our driver quickly became evidently sleepy. This worried us all for our safety. The road had no such barrier to block us from slipping over the cliff side into the river. It became very frightening as he insisted he was good. I personally took on the job of watching his eyes blink rapidly and then close for sometimes too many seconds. I then decided if I noticed him fall asleep I would be in reachable distance of the emergency break. We eventually got him to sleep for 15 minutes as we walked around outside in the rather chilly temperatures. But I am afraid that’s when things got worse. He kept getting less than a few inches from the cliff side, freaking us all out to the point of yelling, and a revolt against moving on. Once more he took our advice to take another nap this time longer and everyone but myself napped in the car. I stared up at the stars in awe of the amount I could see so clearly and saw one shooting star! I rested my back on a nice tree to close my eyes but I continuously shook from the colder weather. I could have stayed in the car but my father would have been very uncomfortable. He didn’t think to carry his sweater with him, even though he knew we’d be heading into the mountains. I try my best to make my dad comfortable and happy. Simply because I know I get on his nerves for always trying to preach my positivity to him in those times he is acting negative. I try to keep my mouth shut but being positive is such an important factor in my life and it’s very hard for me to be around negativity. In a way, our bickering gets us talking to each other.

At midnight, with our driver was once again falling asleep and erratically driving all over the one lane road. That was enough; we yelled once more, I pulled the emergency break, Nick took the keys out of the ignition and we all got out of the car. He then pulled a knife out and changed the entire situation; he now had all of our lives, even more so, in his hands. The four of us discussed our options which eventually led to saying our prayers and hoping we’d survive the night…

We arrived in Khorugh at 4am, 22 hours after leaving Dushanbe. All exhausted, we quickly hauled all our gear in a local homestay and fell asleep.

Mike: That about sums up our “ride from hell”. Today we cleaned and checked the bikes, did laundry and rested for our start of cycling the Pamir Highway.