Juice

Pavement never tasted so sweet, and I coasted back to Dushanbe the next day. Along the way I stopped at a pomegranate stand run by a friendly man who threw in an extra fruit and a cup of freshly squeezed juice. Two women, one rather stout and the other thin as a rail, came by asking coltishly to have their photo taken. This is the moment my attitude changed. I had energy for the trip again, and I wasn’t ready for it to end. That is not to say I was totally revitalized nor in particularly high spirits, but I was back in the game.

I guess my despondence was more a product of isolation than exhaustion, for I had been quite alone in the Pamirs. Even this small, sweet, authentic moment was enough to give me some juice, so to speak.

When I left the Greenhouse Hostel two weeks earlier it was mostly full of French bicyclists, but now it was overflowing with aimless young Russian men. In fact, every hostel and budget accommodation in Dushanbe was completely full of them. Putin had announced the draft, and hundreds of thousands of Russian men had fled practically overnight to Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Belarus, and Armenia, where Russians can travel without a passport. They hadn't come with any agenda other than to leave Russia, and other than a few remote workers, they seemed to spend all their time idly on their phones or wandering hollowly around Dushanbe in small packs.

Back at the garage, I told Aziz about Strom's various maladies. He revved the engine hard and listened intently, then smelled the exhaust. “It reeks of Pamir gas.” Either Strom was full of shit, or he was. He told me to fill it with 95 and it would be fine. He was right.

Strom was back in fighting shape and we headed out, venturing once more through the Anzob Tunnel of Death. Before entering I pulled over and rinsed the dust out of my goggles. This was a terrible idea. About 15 seconds into the tunnel they completely fogged up - but I could not remove them for the caustic smog. Everything was a soft haze, and I had only the blurry headlights of oncoming cars by which to navigate. I didn't die, but this time the tunnel nearly lived up to its moniker.