Detour

I woke up around 8:00am and would have stayed in bed a little longer, but I heard voices coming from the main room. They belonged to two doctors, sent from Khorog to standby in case any wounded came this way. They were only in their mid-twenties, a surgeon and an anesthesiologist. They didn’t know commander Eraj - they were practically as foreign here as I was. They suggested that I wait one or two days for the situation to cool down, like it always does. It was Sunday, and I would need to wait another day to go searching for the mysterious commander anyway, so I stayed and we all loafed around. Throughout the day we saw a handful of military vehicles heading towards the border.

I messaged my Kyrgyz contact one more time. “Dont write me military checking my whatsapp” was all he replied. As tempted as I was to do something bold and noteworthy on a trip that by my estimation had not actually been that daring, I decided not to seek out commander Eraj or try crossing the border. The chances of success were too low, and I could not afford to sacrifice two days having to return to Murghab for gas if it didn’t work. I was tired. Instead, I would return to Dushanbe via the daunting Bartang Valley.

I got another bucket o' gas then rode north, where for a moment the road runs parallel to the border with China, as demarcated by a sturdy fence. But I spied a break in the barbed wire and couldn’t resist the urge to take a quick spin on the other side so that I can say that, technically, I rode all the way to China.

I reached the zenith of my journey 15,270 feet up at the Ak-Baital pass (so named because presumably its parents didn’t consider the grief that a hyphenated name would cause their offspring). 

The day was getting late so I headed to Karakol, a primarily Kyrgyz settlement on the shore of the eponymous lake. I was welcomed to the guest house by an old Kyrgyz man with a metallic smile. In the morning I watched him view the news, paying tribute to the Kyrgyz who had died over the last few days.