One of the ‘big ticket’ items on the drive home to Frome was always going to be the ‘Pamir Highway’ – a semi-paved roadway that starts in Kyrgyzstan and climbs up on to the Pamir plateau in Tajikistan before slowly descending to Dushanbe, the capital of Tajikistan. I can now report that we have successfully completed this leg of the journey and all expectations were easily met. Big, big mountains, cliff clinging roads and, for the latter part of the route, lots and lots of waving children. The road has a reputation for being a bit scary but, to be honest, the scariest thing was having to get the car filled up by bucket from a big unmarked tank – poor Tots!
So we are now in Dushanbe, which has turned out to be a very green, clean and friendly capital city. Not quite so friendly was the first restaurant we visited who decided to poison me by means of pizza.
As we’ve now given up on any chance to travel home via Iran, the big job whilst we’re in town is to get a Russian transit visa. Once we have this, we’ll be able to re-enter Russia north of the Caspian Sea and make the dash to Georgia. Our first embassy visit last Thursday failed on a few technicalities so today was attempt number 2. They have now accepted our application and are graciously going to give us 3 days(!) to clear 2 international borders and cover 1000km and all for the very generous price of USD127 each.
Before Russia we still have a couple more coutries to tackle – Uzbekistan in 6 days time, followed by a second visit to Kazakhstan.