The Anzob Pass
Fan Moutains, Tajikistan
September 15, 2007
By Dan Murdoch
10,000km travelled


OUR caravan was going ridiculously slowly as we crawled the Mercedes delicately along the rugged trail. We were following a winding river valley, cut deep into the mountain side and flanked with shingly cliffs. Everywhere the rock face was coming away, and hundreds of Chinese labourers used diggers to clear the path and dynamite the more threatening boulders. On a few occasions we had to wait while a man in a JCB shifted tons of rubble from the road.
Megan and I decided to push ahead to try and reach Dushanbe. We’d scout the place and find a hotel- maybe put a brew on. It was only 130 kilometres, no big deal.
We made it through the crumbling rock formations into fertile river valleys where the once wide waters had deposited beaches of rounded grey, pebbles, threaded with streams and canals. The water was heavy with minerals, looking chalky grey and when we dipped our feet in at a ford we found it icy cold- straight off the glaciers.

It was there that a jeep from the Red Crescent passed us. There was a German inside who seemed shocked we had driven a Trabant out into the Central Asian mountains. He didn’t seem pleased. I would have been delighted to find a Morris Minor our there, but he had a stern demeanour.
We asked them about the Pamir highway: “The Pamir is very high. This could be a big problem for your cars. The road is ok, but very steep. You are going to Dushanbe? The next pass is very high, very difficult, maybe the worst in all Tajikistan,” he told us, “It will be a good test for you. You best approach it during daylight. It is not safe at night.”
With his warning fresh in our ears we stocked up on water, petrol and Snickers bars at a town made entirely of mud and rocks. The Anzob Pass peaks at 3,372m. We began the ascent.
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FEZ didn’t sound good. The engine was throaty, guttural. We needed high revs in first just to make it up the steep paths. He began to lose power, so I got out and popped the bonnet thinking maybe the exhaust had come loose and was making that god awful coughing sound. I couldn’t see anything so cleaned out the air filter, let the engine cool for a bit, and we carried on, spiralling up the craggy grey brown slopes.
But the revs got higher with even less traction, I felt the steering shift. Suddenly turning right became incredibly light but turning left was stiff and awkward. Then Fez just stopped. The engine continued to rev, but to no avail- the wheels weren’t turning. It was the same symptoms as in Turkmenistan and I guessed that the transaxle had gone again. The last time it happened it was not a quick repair job.
I went to the front and looked under the bonnet, Megan and I stood on one side of the car and wondered what had happened. She circled around and then I heard here laughing with what sounded like a mixture of shock and despair. She was hiding her face, afraid to look.
“I think I’ve found the problem,” came her voice, muffled by her own hand masking her expression, “The wheel has come off.”
It was true. The right front wheel was no longer attached to the vehicle. That could be the problem.
This was the same wheel that TP had removed back in Tbilisi a month ago to check the brakes. And again back in Khiva last week. I remember him saying to me: “Just tell me if it sounds like its gonna fall off.”
Well it did.
It was perfect timing. We were high up the mountains, the sun was setting and within a few minutes we were smothered in a dark night time and the temperature began to drop. We had to laugh. No tools, no torch, not even a box of matches. Fucking awesome. 3,000m up the worst pass in Tajikistan without two sticks to rub together.
We ravaged our backpacks for warm clothes and resolved to hitch down a few kilometres to a café we had seen and weight for the others.
There, a few young boys served us a delightful selection of fat and chewy mutton.
Fat is a delicacy here and every time I picked at the plate in the hope of finding a piece of nicely barbecued meat, I seemed to come up with a huge lump of fatty lard. Decorum insisted I ate it.
They set up a bed for us- out in the cold Tajik night. The café was based around a stream which someone had funnelled into a hose. The water was apparently famous because throughout the night truckers stopped to fill their bottles and dowse their overheating engines.
Every time I woke up, protective of my bag of highly valuable but completely useless western electronics. I remember coming to in a daze, being shaken by a dirty man in a greasy jacket who was demanding that I open up the café.
Its not open I muttered, but he continued to hammer at the door until it began to give. I saw one of the boys open up and reason with him, then he left. The same thing happened again a few hours later.
At some point the other Trabbis arrived, we had left them a note on Fez and they came back down the mountain to find us. The diagnosis was bad: “Fez is fucked.” Thanks Lovejoy.
And of course, the job would be a lot easier with one of the A-frames we threw away earlier that day.
Nothing could be done that night, they were heading back down to find food and shelter, we’d try and do repairs and attempt the pass again in the morning. I opted to stay up in the hills for a fractured night of dosing and half dreams.
As a place to kip it was one of the stranger ones. But we managed. And in the morning, as the sun broke over the peaks to warm my bones and lift my chill, I was treated to some of the best views yet.
I watched an eagle fly low overhead, grazing the trail and circling the thermals, gradually ascending as the warm air lifted its wings. The mountains are veined with hundreds of icy streams- they shine out in milky grey, carrying abundant deposits of the minerals they have crossed, and imbuing the local drinking water with an earthy taste and the local legend of healing qualities.
The streams trickle down from the melting glaciers throughout the summer months, leaving the hillside sliced, channelled and carved.
We were in the Anzob Mountains according to my hosts, though the guide called them the Fan Mountains.
Truly it felt like the roof of the world, and I told Megan that I could stay up there- maybe open my own café I joked, pointing at an old ruined stone shack along the path.
We were waiting for the cavalry, but I wanted to be active and so I decided to go for a jog. Within minutes my lungs were burning and I stopped by the road to take deep lungfulls of the dusty air.
A passing family told us they had seen the Mercedes on the side of the road four kilometres away, leaking oil. So we headed down and met the others.
It was decided that a group of us would get a lift with some truckers all the way to Dushanbe. That would help reduce the weight in the cars and they could sort out a hotel, there was no point in eight of us staying here on the side of this mountain.
I went ahead, and endured eight hours in a Soviet truck with two locals. One was everything I’d expected of a Tajik- thin aquiline Iranian features, a long slender nose, with wide, close-set eyes. The other felt whiter- more European. They shared chewing tobacco between themselves the whole trip. To my alarm I was asked to move over for three hours of the descent while one put all his weight into pushing the gear stick into second. He explained to me in charades that if he let go the engine would pop out of second and into third. Then we go straight down the mountain, he explained with some dramatic flourishes.
They were an interesting double act. One of them would ask me question in Russian, I would answer as best I could, and the Iranian-type would transfer my message to his partner, no doubt convoluting it as much as I had done to his original question.
At one point I was presented with an apple that worms had at the very least tasted.
Bolox, I thought as I bit in, that means I have to share my Snickers.

Ends
mrdanmurdoch@gmail.com