Pamir pit stop

High and isolated the Panj flows emerald, as pure as the clean peaks that feed it. For days we ride upstream through bucolic hamlets with strange names - Pish, Zong, Vrang, Shitkharv - each twist of the valley unlocking fresh views, ranges; The Wakkhan Salient; The Hindu Kush. A crisp dawn above Layangar reveals three countries, Pakistani mountains behind Afghan ones. The river's fertile wake is quilted by smallholdings, the land teems with animals and their keepers. Boys herd goats and kids, yoked oxen plough. Time travel. We're invited into many Pamiri homes. Poplar and mud construction, female places of many generations with multi-level flooring. Their apricot jam is thick and pitted, the bread subtly spiced. My Persian coffee supply runs out the same day as the asphalt. We get remote and simple as electricity and traffic fade away, breaking frozen brooks to drink. One morning we lose young William, ahead in his zone, to a puncture stop. For days we follow his tyre tracks over the mountains and wonder what he's eating without a stove - there are no stores. We subsist on supernoodles, rice with condensed milk, eggs hardboiled days in advance (frozen at breakfast), snow and apricots and all better than it sounds. At four thousand metres we lose his profile to blessed tarmac and instead track him at police checkpoints, by then a day ahead, one faster than four.

Descending at speed to the Pamir plateau I hit a big stone, burst both tubes and take a fantastic tumble unscathed. The Belgians witness my action roll, impressed... Four or five, six? There's a dilution of prudence in company, my third crash since riding together against not one fall in nine thousand miles previous. We all four sit in the road (I've seen better engineered riverbeds) to fix my punctures and I know I'll miss the team stuff. Lauren's bicycle collapses up the mountains: one day a broken axle, the next a cracking frame. We find improbable bolt shops and hillside welders, luxuriate the long breaks in the thin air. I'm impressed at this resilience (remember my Tbilisi flight); seems you can fix anything anywhere.

It isn't as cold as hyperbolic bloggers and weather worriers had us believe. Minus five or so by night, nothing on Armenia. The main challenge here is climbing with less oxygen. There are weak days, today it was Tieme against the headwind. We rode the best part of sixty miles in a tight diamond, carrying him along in our sweet spot and enjoying the task. In this way a dull day brightens, in this way we reach Murghab. Not a halfway point but the first town in a week. Blazing yellow pastures frame curling blue streams. The police checkpoint had a fresh shot wolf bleeding out of a sinister sack. Four thousand people at four thousand metres. The bazaar is a row of shipping containers. We have a homestay, macaroni and a tempremental generator. A whisper of 3G... Tomorrow morning we'll reload noodles and stove benzine, instant fizz drink for the two hundred and fifty miles to Osh. Photos when we get there.