This update needs to be brief. I had to buy petrol to power up a generator in order to set up a satellite link with the internet.
We’re pretty much in the middle of nowhere, in Murgab, Tajikistan. It’s pretty much a ghost town.
The facts:
Leaving Dushanbe we could take two roads. The longer and easier route, or the shorter, more impressive, but way harder one. Seeing that we would only get one shot at the Pamir Highway, we opted for the harder one. Boy should we have listened to the locals.
In a few kilometers our exhaust had fallen off. We struggled with it, but managed to re-atach it. Then, a few kilometers after that, our sumpguard fell off. A few kilometers after that and it was dark. After about 10 hours of driving, we had only advanced 200 km. The route was amazing, and you won’t believe the footage we have of it, which will come (hopefully) soon.
We camped two nights in the Pamir Highway, one of the nights right across from Northern Afghanistan. It wasn’t really a surprise when we were visited twice by border patrol agents who were trying to figure out what on earth we were doing there. But it wasn’t a problem.
Then we made it to Khorog, picked up some more supplies and headed to Murgab. 100km short of Murgab our car finally died.
Luckily, a group of Italians we had met a couple of nights ago agreed to tow us to Murgab where we’ve spent the last 3 nights and it looks like we’ll be here tonight as well.
4 thrustwashers on 2 of our 4 cylinders are completely destroyed due to lack of oil since we managed to break a piece in the sump, causing poor distrubution in the engine. Our Puntito is undergoing full open heart surgery, but we’re staying positive and hoping we can be on our way tomorrow.
There are so many things I would like to write about, but my time has run out. We’re healthy and with more stories from the last couple of days than I could ever mange to write about. This is, after all, what we signed up for.
Cheers!