The Puntito sounded like hell, and Vogel was driving it as best as he could. The engine kept sounding worse and worse, and all the proud feelings of patching up the car in the middle of the Pamirs were quickly fading away. We all knew that what we were hearing was a death rattle, but we still held our breaths, until the engine finally gave up and sputtered to a halt. We knew instantly that there was some serious damage.
I could still see up ahead another Mongol Rally team that had passed us a few minutes before, and I immediately got out of the car and started running up the highway, jumping and waving my arms above my head for them to come back and give us a hand. As I saw their ambulance get smaller and smaller, I stopped running and waving my arms, and the feeling of being completely stranded in the middle of nowhere hit my like a punch to the stomach. I walked slowly back to the Puntito to see Enrique and Vogel.
This is when we decided that we had to get the hell out of the Pamirs, with or without the car. Luckily the first car that passed through promised us a solution in the form of the truck (see previous post) and since there was no cell phone reception, Vogel left with the car and promised to secure our rescue from the Pamirs ASAP. The driver said that the truck would leave from Murghab the instant that he had reception and was able to call them, so this meant that the truck would pick us up about three hours from then (it was 3:30 PM), so sometime between 7 and 8 PM.
3:30 PM
As soon as the car was out of sight, Enrique asked me “Do you have the keys?”. I searched my pockets, and looked at the ignition, and quickly realized that Vogel had accidentally left with the keys. Enrique and I walked down to a stream at the bottom of valley, to wash up and to refill our water bottles. The water didn’t look fit to drink, so we just washed up and walked back to the car. We sat down in the Puntito and waited for the truck to come.
7:00 PM
Three and a half hours had passed, and still no sign of the truck. We were sitting there in the car, nervously eyeing the rearview mirror for signs of the truck. Not a soul on the road.
8:00 PM
I see in the rearview mirror dust stirring in the highway behind us. A car!! I stare at the mirror as it gets closer, but my hopes sink when I can see it is not a truck. As it gets closer and closer, it starts to look familiar, until I recognize it: it’s another Mongol Rally team! Between a Yak and a Hard Place, an ambulance with two English guys, who we had run into in the Transfagarasan road in Romania. They stop right next to us, and then we see another rally car, 3PANDA, pull up on the left of the Puntito. We got out of the car and explained the situation to them, exchanged some war stories, and had a couple of laughs. Like every other rallier, they offered to help us in any way they could, but since we didn’t want to leave the car for fear of missing the truck, we thanked them and told them we would wait for the truck to arrive. Josh and James (the two guys in the ambulance) were kind enough to leave us plenty of water, and then both teams drove off. It was a hard moment. We saw them drive away. It was getting dark, and the wind was picking up.
8:30 PM
At this stage, our hopes were dwindling that we would get out of the Pamirs that night. We had full confidence in Vogel, but we were very aware of the difficulty of arranging transport in Murghab. We realized that we might have to spend another night in the Pamirs, sleeping in the Puntito. We sent out a Spot GPS saying “Puntito hotel once again. Que onda Vogel?” in the hopes that Vogel would see that the car still hadn’t come. We decided that if by 9 PM the car hadn’t come, we would pull out our small stove, cook some food and then pull out the sleeping bags. I remembered that I still had half a bottle of Ballantine’s Finest stored in my bag, and so I pull it out with two glasses. In situations like this, whiskey definitely helps. A lot.
9:15 PM
Night has fallen, and it’s freezing cold. Enrique and I are sitting there in the car, and we see a car approaching from the opposite end of the road. The Puntito is parked right smack in the middle of the road, and the car is heading right at us. As it gets closer, we see it is the awesome guys from 3PANDA. They tell us that they are camping about 500 m ahead, and that if we want to join them for some food and hot drinks. They offer to tow us, but since we didn’t have the keys, the steering was locked and maneuvering was impossible. The wheels were slightly turned, and we tried towing it but it was impossible. Afterwards, they offered to let us use their satellite phone to call Vogel. Standing in the freezing cold, I dialed his number and waited for the call to go through. It rang and then he finally answered, and he told me that the car would be coming in two hours. I tell Enrique, and it lifts both our spirits immensely. We agree to go to their campsite, get into their wood-colored Fiat Panda, and head over to a small crater where they are camping. We still had a bottle of wine which we had bought in Dushanbe, so we take this with us.
A great aspect of the rally is the amazing people that you meet on the road. In the campsite, in addition to the three Swiss guys from the 3PANDA team, there was a guy from LA who had been hitchhiking through the Pamirs, as well as two Frenchmen who were cycling through the Pamirs, and had been on the road for 14 MONTHS. We sat around a fire were they had cooked a large pot of the most delicious rice I’d ever tasted, exchanged travel stories, and in general had a great time. It made us forget for a while that we were stranded in the middle of nowhere. It was unbelievably cold though; I almost wanted to stick my foot into the fire to warm it up. We were not well prepared for cold weather.
11:00 PM
Christian and Jan (the Swiss guys) give us a ride back to our car, and we thank them for everything and assure them they will see us soon on top of a truck. It’s freezing; we get into the Puntito and pull out our sleeping bags. We sit there talking and waiting for the truck that is coming soon.
12:30 AM
After more than three hours had passed since the phone call, we realized that the truck might not be coming for us that night. We were struggling to stay awake, trying to create some sort of system where one of us would sleep and the other would remain awake, but since we were in the car and had poor ventilation because of the cold, and the fact that we were exhausted, we were both falling asleep. I sent out a Spot GPS message saying “No lorry in sight. Puntito suite tonight”, and then fell asleep, shivering inside my sleeping bag.
2:00 AM
I wake up to see the unmistakable front lights of a large truck in the rearview mirror.
To be continued…