Dushanbe- Kalai-I Chum, Tajikistan 02 June 2011

From this morning we will enter a zone where communication and electricity will be minimal. We leave this morning for a 8-hour trip to Kalai-I-Chum where we will follow the road along the Tajik/Afghan side. We will do the 2^nd lap to Khorog the next day before going through the Pamir mountains among peaks of 4200 to 5700 m then to Kyrgyzstan.

No pain, no gain. We preferred the long road to the Dushanbe – Khorog one hour flight for which the Russian pilots are paid danger money. Nevertheless it took us 12 hours to reach Kala-I-chum with a lot of fears. But one of the hardest elements on the way was not being cramped among the 8 passengers in the Toyota Land Cruiser but the same Tajik music for 12 hours non-stop. It was harder than the bumps, the holes, the engine repairs. But this was largely compensated by the 360° views we had all the way. We were in the 3D cinema. The scenes and natural landscape are unbelievable, beyond description.

We slept at Bahrom Sangkuka, an inhabitant of K-I-chum in his house with breakfast and hot shower! We used for the first time our silk sheets and extra-slim pillow. No dinner as we arrived at 22H30.