The Break Up
Khorog, Pamir Mountains, Tajikistan,
September 25th and 26th, 2007
By Dan Murdoch

“And ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation.”
Kahlil Gibran

WE STOCKED up on supplies in Khorog, sent our bags ahead in a van to lighten our load, and headed off in caravan- one Mercedes short of a full trek. Today we tackle the Pamirs- the range of mountains that have loomed large in our consciousness for so long. Would our cars be able to make the journey? Do we really have the time to tackle the mountains? What if we break down up there? How will the carburettors cope with the reduced oxygen in the air?
The unknowns added to the excitement as we drove through a warm sunny lunchtime, filling up on petrol and beginning on the low foothills leading to the first pass, a warm-up on the well-paved nursery slopes.

Thirty kilometres in there was a bang from under Fez, the car listed to the right and the sound of tyre on chassis filled the cabin.
Thirty kilometres.
The distance hangs on our horizon like an angry dust storm- the near unbreakable limit of a day’s travel by Trabbi in Tajikistan.
Megan and I jumped out and watched a puddle of oil form under the car. The rear right wheel was jutting strangely into the wheel arch. The rear control arm looked broken again and this time under the minimum of duress, but we couldn’t tell where the oil was coming from.
We prowled the Trabbi and waited for the others to realise we were missing and turn back. When the formation had assembled we got the car up on a jack and removed the wheel- the reinforced metal bar that held the disc in place was sheered in half, a recurrence of the injury we had welded a few days before.
“The guy did an ok job,” TP said of the welder, “but it’s a bad break. We might need a new piece.”
And the oil?
“A bolt has popped out of the engine mount, it keeps all the transmission fluid in place. You’re lucky that the wheel broke or you would have destroyed the engine driving it without any oil.”
So the oil was no big deal- in little time TP had found a replacement bolt, and we could refill it easily. But the control arm was a real problem.
“We can go back into town and get it welded properly, maybe try and get it reinforced,” TP said, “But this is probably going to keep happening.”
We had ditched the replacement part back on the Turkmen border three weeks ago. “It is almost impossible to break one of these,” TP had confidently asserted at the time, “they have been reinforced.”
“Maybe we should go back to Turkmenistan and get the piece?” Carlos suggested with a smile, to widespread derision.
We discussed getting a new part. There were a few people in Hungary who would ship it to us- but where to? Bishkek? That meant getting over the mountains. Dushanbe? That meant going back on ourselves. And how long would it take?
Either way our visas had just four days to run and we had learned in Turkmenistan that the former Soviet republics of Central Asia are pretty pernickety about visas. Lovey reaffirmed our suspicions: “The Swiss people I spoke to in Dushanbe had overstayed their visas when they were in Murghab and they had to go all the way back to Dushanbe to sort it out. It was going to take them two weeks to do.”
Back to Dushanbe for a two week wait was a nightmare scenario that would jeopardise our China visa’s fixed entry date and possibly the whole trip.

“So maybe we should dump Fez and carry on,” OJ suggested.
Adding to his line of argument was the dodgy bearing on Fez’s front right wheel. It had never been properly fixed since the wheel fell off on the Anzob Pass, and despite multiple attempts TP had been unable to find a new bearing to fit. He freely admitted that we were driving Fez until the wheel fell off again, but he couldn’t give us a decent approximation of when that would happen.
From our previous experiences I would say it was destined to happen as far from civilisation as physically possible, when we’re low on food and petrol, at night, in subzero temperatures, with no cash left in a country that thinks Mastercard is a cotton derivative and we’ve found a rare stretch of road that you can actually hit 80kmph on.
The problem with dumping Fez is that, without the Mercedes, we would be down to two cars. Dante can take two people, Ziggy three, but there were seven of us. Megan had already announced her intention to leave. She was out of cash. But we would still be one slot short.
OJ: “So someone either goes home or follows by public transport.”
So we draw straws to see who drops out? To me that was a horrifying scenario. It was unrealistic to think anyone could follow the trek by public transport- the trek operates in its own little time zone it would be nigh on impossible to keep track of.
“Unless anyone here is seriously considering dropping out anyway, I don’t think we should consider that an option,” I ventured. I would rather ride in the boot of Ziggy for the next two months than have to fly home. I would prefer to spend a month in the mountains working on Fez than face the short straw.

But even if we got the car welded that night and set off the second it was done, making it to the border before our visas expired would be a massive gamble. Judging from our previous progress a two-day trip could take us a week.
So someone was going to have to fly back to Dushanbe and try to extend visas. There was no point the remaining six people all sitting it out in Khorog, so we decided that three trekkers and Megan should go ahead to Kyrgyzstan, this would help reduce the weight in the Trabbis, increasing the chances of them making it over the mountains, and also reduce the number of people with visa issues.
Two people would stay and work on the Trabbis and one person would fly to Dushanbe. Various combinations were experimented with, but eventually we decided the Europeans (Carles, Zsofi and I) would go ahead with Megan. TP had to stay with the cars, and he chose OJ to stick with him, and Lovey would fly to Dushanbe to extend the visas and try to get a new passport for himself, as he had run out of pages.

We were dividing.
Team Europe and Team USA.
There is a strange symmetry to it. We are almost exactly two months into what is supposed to be a four-month trip. We are almost geographically half way, about 12,000km into a 24,000km journey. We’ve shed the support vehicle that we felt was holding us back, and after Megan’s departure it will be just the elite six who plan to go the whole way to Cambodia.
And after two months of Trekking, and for most of us two and a half months away from home, we’d enjoy a break from the road. Even if it was an enforced lay-off, Team Europe would be spending a week in the Russified Kyrgyz city of Bishkek, Team USA would have a week in the stunning mountain town of Khorog.

We bought lots of beer and went back to our hostel to discuss the divide and work through a number of potential scenarios for the next few weeks. It was entirely possible that we wouldn’t meet up again for a fortnight, even three weeks.
We got drunk and, knowing we were dividing, laughed easily and let the pressure of the past few months ebb away. I felt happy, and sucked away on the grainy, green tobacco powder a trucker had given me near Anzob. You put a pinch of it under you tongue for five minutes, then spit the dregs out. It tastes bitter, nasty and causes the under tongue to throb. It made me feel light headed, grin inanely, grind my teeth and concentrate on not being sick. Then I dressed up as an explorer using a lamp stand and outdoor rug, complete with walking stick and compass and collapsed in bed.


Driving Ziggy into town the following day to find a bus to Murghab, I was struck by a feeling of loss. There was a chance that I would never drive a Trabant again. This could be the end of Trabant Trek for Team Europe.
The cars may not make it over the mountains. They may break irreparably, or have to turn and head back through the north of the country- both options had been raised the previous night.
Most of us agreed that even if the Trabbis faltered, we would continue to Cambodia, but it wouldn’t be the same.

As I climbed into our hired 4x4 with Carlos, Megan and Zsofi, I felt excited to be away from the rigours of trekking, to be heading off without the limitations of Trabant travel.
But it felt like the end of a story, or the closing of a book, and I just hoped that Trabant Trek would reopen for Part 2.

Ends
mrdanmurdoch@gmail.com
For more of Dan’s blogs visit: danmurdoch.blogspot.com or trabanttrek.org
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