After the Garif and Yury’s departure, there was a brief interlude when two friends visited. There is no ‘normal’ tourism experience in Tajikistan but theirs covered the typical highlights: a night stuck sleeping in the land-mined, no-man’s land between Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, stunning vistas, bumpy car rides with local adults kindly screaming an invitation at the passing car to offer tea and a meal in their mud-brick home, and altitude headaches while hiking in the high eastern Pamirs to hot springs only considered hot by the nomads whose only other source of water is rivers flowing directly from ice. They had a great time.
They left us in the Pamirs ready to paddle. The first outing was to paddle from the high plains outpost of Murghab down through Lake Sarez to the Bartang Valley. This route’s intrigue lay largely in the prospect of paddling across Lake Sarez and had little to do with gradient. Lake Sarez was formed in 1911 when an earthquake moved a mountain into a river. Ever since then, the lake has been filling. Now water filters through the Usoi natural dam, named after the village it demolished. Usoi is the world’s largest dam- natural or man-made, and is considered unstable and, by some, a colossal natural disaster in waiting. If the dam breaks some estimate that the flooding would wipe away villages thousands of miles away in the deserts of Uzbekistan. Going there requires special permission which we obtained by watching lengthy repeats of a commander’s son’s amateur judo matches.
We put on the Murghab River in the town of the same name with spectators of all ages. Behind them was the town of small square mud homes; in the other direction 50 feet of marshy grass near the river and then dry dust rising into hills 13,000 feet high.
The first two and a half days the river wound through the dry mountains, bordered by grasses and forests of small willow trees. Standing up on land we realized the vegetation forms only a tight border close by the river and is unable to extend too far from the water into the arid, rocky mountains. We spent the days paddling and occasionally floating in total silence under the blazing sun.
Without whitewater, the highlights stick out: the piping hot Eli Su hot springs, seeing two herds of rare ibex, and freezing temperatures at night.
On the afternoon of day 3, the river narrowed, and big boulders created fun class III slots to run. A horizon line with a solid rock wall on the right and a long steep slope of scree on the left had us scouting in the cold wind for the first time. The rapid was comprised of several drops. The entrance looked good but the last drop had no line that didn’t furiously drop onto rocks. Middy was edgier than usual- this being the first whitewater since the Garif,- but we both made the eddy on river left above the lip and portaged. Not willing to let the whitewater go easily, we seal launched into the backwash of the last drop and headed through the class IV downstream. Half a mile downstream the river went through trailer size boulders with a toilet bowl flushing underneath a rock; again we seal launched in to get every last drop of whitewater and squeezed out between boulders into more class IV. The whitewater eased as we passed the Pshart confluence and a meteorological station abandoned after the collapse of the USSR.
The wind whipped us, and we paddled steadily to stay warm down easy water. The sun set behind the mountains. It was time to get out of the boats as soon things would be freezing. Rounding a bend, we saw the steep mountainsides fall into flatwater that then stretched around the next bend. We camped where the Murghab River flows into Lake Sarez.
For the next three days we paddled the length of Lake Sarez. We paddled in the mornings and relaxed in the afternoons when the winds would kick up. Our relaxation was occasionally broken by the rumbling of small rock and dust slides falling into the lake, a good reminder of the area’s instability. The water was crystal clear, forming a blue that we imagined only existed in magazine photos of the Caribbean. Of course, Sarez was cold as hell. Our camping locations were exclusively made in the deltas of tributaries, as the rest of the lakeshore consisted of steep slopes feeding directly into the water and no place to sleep. On the third afternoon on the lake, it started to drizzle which 1000 feet above coated the mountains in snow. This completed the spectacular scene.
Our fourth day on the lake began with a small paddle to the base of the land dam. From there we portaged, but not before the three friendly officials at the seismic monitoring station checked the Ministry of Emergency Situations permits that allowed us to be on Sarez (it is closed to foreigners, unless you are willing to watch a lot of judo). After radioing their headquarters to verify their authenticity, they gave us tea and bread. This was welcome, as we had underestimated our food rations and been rather hungry since Murghab.
The portage took all day. Even almost 100 years later the Usoi Dam still has the feeling of an avalanche, with rocks of all sizes piled awkwardly and fine dirt filling in the voids. Late in the afternoon, we got to the bottom, where the path meets the river, which has just filtered through the dam in small rivulets, joined together, and dropped steeply but has once again started to reconcile itself to normal river behavior.
The whitewater is hardly the story of the next day, but we’ll start with it anyway. The gorge below the natural dam is narrow and pretty much devoid of life, as if it had already been scoured by a massive dam-rupturing flood. The river hustles from wall to wall over a bed of small boulders. The only sign of life were early-warning flood detectors that had been installed by western organizations to give the towns downstream a few minutes to clear the way for a 200 foot tall wall of water to come down the canyon. There were few obstacles in the river, but it moved fast. Paddling the first straightaway, we couldn’t help but smile, rolling over huge, translucent waves that seemed to be made of stained glass. Eventually we reached Barchadev, first on the list of villages to be destroyed if the dam crumbles. After the previous night, waking to every rumble of rocks falling and thinking ‘now we’re screwed,’ living in Barchadev seemed needlessly chancy. But then, passing the village, the risks suddenly didn’t seem so gratuitous. The town is only 10 or so houses, built against a hill in a widening of the gorge with trees all around. Maybe it was just a while since we’d seen a tree, maybe it was because of the time of year. There were red and green trees, bright green grass, and the desolate rocky backdrop of the Pamirs and, not far downstream, huge Peak Revolution to remind everyone of the sacrifices Lenin and the boys made to bring us the workers’ paradise we see around us today. We paddled down from Barchadev, past the Khudara River confluence, through a brief tall canyon, to the town of Savnob.
When we arrived, around noon, our driver was already there with some drunk he had picked up in Khudara, whose role we never discovered. It was raining and cold there, an unexpected September taste of winter. We drove from Savnob to Khudara with our two- now there were two- drunk hangers-on in back. Our driver was a Kyrgyz guy from Murghab with a light green UAZ jeep; he may have been the only person in the world who could have gotten us out of the Bartang Valley that day and- it follows- that year before the onset of winter. Or he may have been the fearless and irresponsible driver who nearly killed all of us. But first there was the town of Khudara to deal with. We told our driver, Sulyboi, that we did not want to stop there, in light of last year’s ripping off at the hands of a Tajik Parks representative. But we had to drop off the drunkards, then suddenly we had to buy a sack of potatoes, so we spent 20 minutes there, itching to leave. We saw a few of the guys that had been hanging out, still hanging out this year. Our car became for a while a sort of town cultural center, gradually attracting everyone to see for themselves. Luckily, we got out with the potatoes before whatever Khudara trouble could find us. We did stay long enough to learn that our drivers from last year had some sort of massive car trouble(the Russian word for ‘explosion’ was used) trying to get out of the valley and ended up have to make more than one trip in and out of the valley to repair and retrieve their car. While it took a year to get the news, the tightness of this karmic circle made us smile as we left.
Now, are you ready to hear about the most terrifying hour of our lives? Good. We headed out of Khudara, up the wide, glacial Tanymas Valley towards the point somewhere upstream where we knew the valley’s snowline met our own path. The road is terrible, but it gets occasional traffic from trucks heading to Kok Jar for firewood. The Kok Jar pass itself gets far less, maybe one trip a week while the weather is good. This day the weather was bad. There were a few moments heading up the river when the car would fishtail towards a drop-off a few feet away. “Yes,” Sulyboy told us,” a wet road is OK when it’s rock, it’s only with mud you can’t be certain.” At last we reached the bottom of the pass, where the road climbs out of the Tanymas Valley to our drop-off point for the Takhtakorum Pass portage and Muksu River. We were in luck, as we still hadn’t reached snow. We started to climb, and it was immediately clear that this road was no longer fit for vehicular use. Sulyboy, however, was experienced and determined not to leave his car in the Tanymas Valley for the winter. And anyway, we couldn’t lose momentum. We followed the road, which was cut into the side of the mountain a few hundred feet- then a thousand feet- above the valley floor. There was no room to spare on the road in most places, so the driver kept the outside wheel within a foot of the cliff’s edge at all times. We came to a straightaway of soft-looking dirt just the width of the UAZ, and what should we see at the end, glistening in the fog? Mud, of course. A mudflow had dripped from the uphill side of the road and was narrowing the track and slickly banking the road towards the void. It just got constantly narrower, and we doubted that the road was passable any more. But we made for the mudflow, fishtailing slightly towards the edge. Andrew’s rat brain had taken over from more sophisticated but less functional layers of brain and was repeating slowly, ‘ho-ly shit ho-ly shit.’ Middy was quiet and serious but no less certain of the coming end. He was focused on his task assigned by the driver- to hold the car in gear, Andrew had to hold the 4-wheel drive lever in place. We reached the mudflow, the narrowest and slickest part of the road, the outside tire maybe one muddy tire’s width from the edge, the car banking outwards, our eyes locked on the road, but the wide valley floor visible through a few low layers of cloud, hundreds of feet below. We made it through. But much more was ahead. A few switchbacks later, and the wet ground turned to snow. We kept climbing until the tires lost their grip on a steep section, and the car stopped.
We practically fell out of the door. Middy’s impatience while Andrew first put on his shoes could have been funny, but we certainly weren’t laughing. We had to dig the snow out around the tires and push the car every few feet. We had to hand it to the driver; the man could drive, and he lacked no courage. But then he missed a switchback and began driving on the old road, where we had portaged last year and where we knew the road to disappear in a washout. This is when we came to understand that the driver’s confidence was not a reflection of his competence or his mastery of the situation but came from something more profound and much sketchier- his personal faith. So he missed the turn, and Andrew had to run up and explain to him that he had to turn around. This was possibly the closest the truck came to its destruction. At several points he started to fishtail towards the edge and only at the last possible moment found purchase and brought it to a stop. We helped him turn around and get back to the right road. The rest of the ascent was dodgy but not comparable to the lower stretches. From the top, Middy stood on the tailgate and Andrew got in the passenger seat but kept the door unlatched and was ready to bail.
Shortly thereafter we came to the turnoff. We had a decision to make. It was almost dark, and there were a few inches of snow on the ground, 15 horizontal and 1 vertical kilometers from the Takhtakorum pass. The decision- Muksu or no- would usually be the most serious decision a kayaker could ponder, but it now seemed like the most trivial we’d ever made, like picking a movie to see. We were disturbed and elated to still be alive; peering into the darkness and seeing only fog and snow, we could just imagine what was in store for us at the top of the pass. So we got back into the car and headed for Murghab.
The rest of the drive was exhausting but beautiful. As we went east, the snow was gradually shallower until it was just a sparkling coat in the headlights. At 11, we got to the main road and stopped at a guest yurt. But sleep would not come easily. After lying in the dark a while, Andrew asked ‘Kok Jar?’ and Middy said ‘yeah.’ We talked a while about what was so unsettling about it. Kayaking is nothing without fear, and previously, it had been easy to conclude that we could handle fear from the corresponding evening euphoria after a day of paddling. But far from being satisfied now, we were left feeling uncertain, not even relieved. Is it that the fear you face when you’re paddling is only an indirect brush with something that is much more serious and ghastly when seen from closer in? It’s easy to forgot that our version of ‘mastery of fear’ is only a sport. We’re still scared.
