Trying to get high in the Pamirs

The local nickname for the Pamirs is Bam-i-Dunya – the Roof of the World. With 5000m-plus peaks, unpeopled valleys and astounding scenery at every turn, it’s a trekker’s paradise – as long as you can cope without signposted trails and tea shops.

But getting high in the Pamirs isn’t as easy as we thought.

Attempt 1: Lenin eludes us

7134m Peak Lenin straddles the Kyrgyz-Tajik border (officially it’s been renamed but everyone still uses its Soviet moniker – there’s also a 6507m Engels and a 6723m Karl Marx).

Mountaineers ascend it in two days. Our ambition was more modest: to walk the few hundred metres from our yurt to their base camp, and we could barely manage that.

Within a couple of strides we were short of breath, and a gentle incline reduced me to a wheezing jelly. I just hoped it was the altitude and not the mountains of mutton I’d scoffed in Kyrgyzstan.

Lenin disappeared under a shroud of heavy cloud that was heading our way (he’s supposed to be in the middle in the photo above), so we huffed and puffed back to the yurt.

Yaks gambolled past, purely to show us up.

Attempt 2: Snowbound in a frontier town

Unlike some grey-faced tourists who crumpled after the 4655m Ak-Baital Pass, we escaped altitude sickness (apart from one pleasing side effect – Matt developed a weak bladder while mine temporarily forgot its usual feebleness).

No, our second hike was foiled by the weather. We’d planned to trek up the photogenic Pshart Valley but its colourful mineral layers were still buried under snow. Matt and I would probably have ploughed on regardless, but our Austrian travel buddies were wiser. (Note to self: worn-out running trainers with no grip aren’t ideal for hiking. Pack fewer books and more shoes.)

Instead we explored Murgab, the only town in the eastern Pamirs. It sits at 3576m, started life as a Russian garrison and still feels like a frontier settlement – sunbaked, scruffy and encircled by rocky cliffs.

The residents were surprisingly sharply dressed, especially the older men who wore elegant long coats or leather jackets over suits. They greeted each other with hugs and walked arm-in-arm, but I could imagine them shooting one-liners in a saloon – except Murgab’s two roads didn’t stretch to bars.

There was a frayed hotel with sporadic electricity, a bank, a lively shipping container market (it should be twinned with Pop Brixton), and several government buildings adorned with life-sized posters of Tajikistan’s authoritarian president strolling through flower gardens.

As we huffed back to our homestay feeling scruffy, two schoolboys asked to be photographed. When I pointed the camera at them, their cheeky grins turned to solemn stares.

Attempt 3: An evening at the end of the world

On day four, we turned off the Pamir Highway and rattled down a dirt track. It wound between barren mountains for 20 minutes, then deposited us at the village of Bulunkul.

The Lonely Planet describes Bulunkul as an “end-of-the-world settlement”, which proved prescient. It’s the coldest village in the country and named after a lake, but there was no sign of water – just a handful of low-slung houses, a little school and a lot of dust.

Chris (the Austrian), Matt (the current boyfriend) and I decided to walk up the ridge to watch the sunset.

Off we strode across the valley, but after a while we noticed the ground was growing lumpy and moist – channels of water pooled between the knolls of tough yellow grass.

We hopped on, ignoring the fact that the stepping stones were shrinking and the ditches were widening… until we were marooned.

Trust us to find the only bog in this desert land.

The three of us pirouetted on our islands: the village looked miles back; the ridge beckoned, tantalisingly close. So we jumped on, squelching ankle-deep into the stagnant water when our leaps fell short.

The flatness of the valley and the height of the hills had tricked us into thinking they were close. There are no trees to help you calibrate in the eastern Pamirs.

I wasn’t seriously worried until Matt went in up to his waist. Then I did, and couldn’t reach any solid ground to pull myself out. What if one of us went in up to our neck?

I tried to look on the bright side as I slithered out, legs slick with smelly slime. We’d go down in local history. We’d be a cautionary tale told to bored children and wide-eyed tourists for decades to come.

Would our Bulunkul hostess inform the British Embassy of our deaths? She didn’t even know our names. Which would decompose faster – my passport or my body? Does travel insurance cover death?

Oooo, maybe we’d be a footnote in the Lonely Planet’s next Central Asia edition. They might even include a photo of us! No, they’d never do that, it would put people off the Pamirs…

I looked up and I was alone.

Matt and Chris had ignored my self-pitying shrieks and were wringing out their socks at the foot of the elusive mountain.

I waded on, trying to look on the bright side – didn’t I have Matt’s passport in my bag too? Wouldn’t it be a shame if it fell out…

Sunset was over by the time I threw myself upon dry land, so we scurried back around the edge of the valley. We reached our homestay just as night enveloped the village and put on a spectacular show of stars.

*Many thanks to Chris for providing photographic evidence of this character-building episode

**This blog has been experiencing technical issues but sellotape has resolved them: