When we weren't eating dinner and talking to the 3 other guests, we spent the evening in Arslanbob doing some planning, as we hadn't got anything more than a very rough idea of how we are going to get to Bishkek from Arslanbob and we couldn't put off any longer getting a plan. The guidebook says "beware although maps show a road across Kyrgyzstan...the central cross-mountain section...is an unpaved, seasonal affair. It can become impassable after mudslides and closes altogether from October to late June." "With barely 2 vehicles an hour passing through even in summer." We looked it up on the map and noticed it went over a 3000+m pass. We asked the CBT coordinator in Arslanbob. Bad road he said "very rough". That sealed it and it became our Plan A - to get ... read more

As much as anything Osh is a functional stop to give us chance to regather before we head off on the next leg - we need a couple of consecutive hot showers to steam the dust off, good internet so we can get some of the videos uploaded, to do the laundry that has been backing up since we left the heat of the Wakhan Valley, and to switch the alarm clock off for a day. We also haven't got past the stage of only having a very loose plan for the rest of our trip because our pre-trip reading/planning focussed mainly on the Pamir Highway and we were too social at the homestays to have got any more reading done. With a bit of internet at the hotel in Sary-Tash we'd looked up and found ... read more

It was 100km or so from Karakul Lake, Tajikistan to Sary Tash, the first town over the border in Kyrgyzstan. With the border crossing it took us around 4 hours to get to the Sary Mogol, the next village over. We left at the same time as the other bloggers from our homestay, so for the first little while we were basically a convoy of 3 vehicles of travel bloggers, which was fun. Not so fun was the slightly gurgly stomach and persistent stomach ache I'd had after eating for the last couple of days decided to turn productive and we were in a flat landscape. So we nearly completed Tajikistan and the Pamir Highway without either of us getting sick, but not quite. Luckily it was just mild and once my stomach was empty I ... read more

It is 220km from Bulunkul Lake to Murghab, but with the sealed highway it only took us 3.5 hrs with a couple of stops; one at the 'holy' pond of the white fish spring, a freshwater spring pond full of fish, a little hut next to it serves up the fish, but it was too early in the day for us to contemplate eating so we passed. It was strange to be on seal after so many days of rough unsealed road, even if some parts were not so good. The scenery was pretty cool - typical high altiplano, but we've been a bit spoilt lately so it didn't blow us away. Murghab sits at 3,618m, and with Khorog, is the only town in the Pamirs. It's known as one of the few points of civilisation, ... read more

Day 5 and the 3rd day of our Wakhan Valley detour. We spent the day in Langar, we didn’t want to just rush through everywhere and given we were nearly halfway through we thought a rest day in Langar would be perfect. We had a slow start and then we went down to the main part of the village which is very spread out across the road. We were staying up a level effectively on a flat piece of the hillside which meant that we got great mountain views. As we were walking through the village we got invited in for chai by a family. The eldest daughter spoke good English and while we were there one of her brother’s turned up he didn’t speak great English, but did speak a little. He offered to take ... read more