The Diarrhoea Diaries

If you mention 'The Roof of the World' to anyone, chances are they will instantly think you are talking about either the Tibetan or Bolivian plateau. There is, however, a third 'roof of the world'. Higher than Bolivia and more accessible than Tibet, the Pamir Highway runs from Osh, Kyrgyzstan, to Khorog, Tajikistan, crossing a desolate high-altitude plateau (over 3000m above sea-level) and littered with huge peaks that soar to over 7000m.

In the southern Kyrgyz city of Osh, Daniyar, the owner of Osh Guesthouse (where most every Central Asia backpacker makes a pit-stop) sends jeeploads of backpackers on their way south to Tajikistan as soon as there are four people who want to go. Due to high travel costs in the area, these four people will inevitably become travel companions for the next week or more. It's pot luck who you end up with, so you cross your fingers and hope that you get teamed up with a decent crew.


Our motley crew consisted of two young Belgian school teachers, Inge and Elke, and a 48-year-old Italian school teacher, Marcello. The two Belgians turned out to be a lot of fun, while Marcello, well, what can I say about Marcello? Displaying almost Rainman-like nervous ticks and autistic tendencies, Marcello was a constant source of amusement. The ultimate Italian, he talked more with his hands than his mouth, and stuttered nervously when he spoke in English or Russian (which, unfortunately for us, was the best of our group!). His random outbursts (usually because he couldn't get any meat to eat at homestays) were often hilarious. His profuse sweating and resistance to deodorising or changing his t-shirt more often than once a week, were not so hilarious!

The four of us were driven south on the road to Sary Tash (which I saw for the third time), before heading straight into the Pamir mountains (the world's fourth-highest range) and the Tajik border.

The border was little more than a grouping of shipping containers and large metal capsules which were used as offices and sleeping quarters for the baby-faced, barely-done-with-puberty border guards and their superior officers. Our driver gave out loaves of bread and a wash basin, presumably knowing that this would aid in a smooth crossing of the border. Tajikistan, due to its unmanageably long border with Afghanistan, is one of the biggest drug-trafficking nations on Earth. Feeling the harsh, cold climate of the region, seeing the basic conditions in which these boy-soldiers live, and knowing what a pittance they are paid for their efforts, it suddenly made a lot of sense to me why so many of these soldiers are also involved in cross-border opium smuggling operations.

We'd left the verdant pastures of Kyrgyzstan behind, and now the landscape was a painters palette of earthy reds, browns and oranges. There was little sign of life, save for the occasional truck rumbling past us towards the Kyrgyz border. No trees exist and there is little grass or arable land. In the few green oases that exist, there is a random cluster of yurts and the occasional grazing yak. Despite being Tajikistan, the eastern Pamir is predominantly Kyrgyz - another stroke of brilliance on Stalin's part when he scribbled impratical borders across the region in order to keep the republics divided and therefore easier to rule.

After crossing the first high pass on the highway, some 4200m above sea-level, we descended to the beautiful lakeside village of Karakul. The town sits at around 3900m and is a cluster of square building-block houses, telegraph poles and eerily silent dirt laneways.

We stayed in a traditional Pamir homestay, with an old couple who'd lived in this inhospitable place their entire lives. We wandered down to the shore of the huge, deep-blue lake, encircled by jagged snowy peaks and desolate hills which glowed red as the sun set on the other side of the lake. The wind off the lake was intense and cold, creating a swell on the lake that made it feel more like being beside an ocean. Watching waves crash at your feet at 3900m is a strange experience.


In the morning, we set off towards the largest town in the eastern Pamir, Murghab, crossing the highest pass on the highway - some 4,655m above sea-level!


Centred around a dusty bazaar selling little other than past-use-by-date chips and chocolate bars, Murghab is the home of Maria Guesthouse where we parted ways with our driver and spent the night. For about $6.50 we got a bed in the large, mattress-filled dorm, and three meals. Maria seems to understand what backpackers want in terms of price, but perhaps hasn't quite worked out the food thing - It was liver noodle soup for dinner.....
And so, about six hours later, began the first nasty bout of food-poisoning of my trip. I was forced to run to the outhouse and stayed there, slumped against the interior wall for the two-minute stretches between bowel movements! The toilet itself was a sight to behold! Rather than the usual wooden footholds on either side of a large hole, this was instead two opposing metal dishes, much like a large, metallic venus flytrap. I had visions of it snapping closed on me in mid-squat, closing viciously around my privates and refusing to let go! Oh, to have a western toilet when you're sick in Asia....

I'd not been in the toilet long when Elke joined me, liver soup coming out the top rather than the bottom for her! We bonded that night as only two people who have taken turns shitting and vomiting into a large iron insect trap can.

Maria scolded us in the morning, saying that we shouldn't have sat in the sun the previous day writing in our journals! It was no wonder we got sick!


Feeling much better in the morning, the four of us, and a German/English fellow Mark (who spoke fluent Russian and seemed more content being around locals than foreigners, often pretending he was actually Russian!), we found a surly marshrutka driver to take us to Khorog at the western end of the Pamir Highway.


Khorog, after the dusty villages of the eastern Pamir, was a nice surprise! Set on either side of the rushing Gunt, the town is an oasis of green tucked into the dry brown mountains. The park at its centre (where kids and adults take turns diving into the free pool) is actually garbage free, nicely landscaped and well kept (a rarity in Asia).

We stayed at the Pamir Lodge, sitting high above the town, in the gorgeous garden of a mosque overseen by a Pakistani and former mathematics professor at the University of Birmingham. He uses the money he makes from travellers to fund the mosque and was also a key player in bringing food aid to the Gorno Badahkshan Autonomous Oblast (the Pamirs) during the civil war in the 1990s during which supply to the region was cut off and thousands of people starved or froze to death. A brutal time for the whole country, but even moreso for GBAO natives - If you produced a GBAO I.D card to authorities when asked in the Tajik capital, Dushanbe, you were shot dead on the spot.

This was one of the key stops on the Mongol Rally. A huge charity rally 'raced' each year from several start-points in Europe to Ulan-Bataar, Mongolia. Bizarrely, no matter how remote of a location you think you've found in Central Asia, you can bet that you share it with several brightly-painted, euro-flag-waving 4WDs, VW Beetles or motorcycles!


Marcello, the girls and I paused just long enough in Khorog to arrange a jeep and driver to take us on the next part of our journey: A loop along the Afghan frontier via the Wakhan corridor and the Shokh Dara Valley.