Pamir Highway cyclists find warmth on the hard journey through Tajikistan | Vancouver, Canada | Straight.com

By Margo Mactaggart, April 19, 2011

From a cluster of sturdy buildings on the tundra, a woman in a bright kerchief strides towards the road through driving sleet as we approach. She beckons us into her farmhouse. We lean our bikes against the building and enter a carpeted room. Once we are seated among cushions that line the walls, we gratefully accept wooden bowls of steaming milk. We taste warm sweetness as we empty them. Offered more, we nod yes. “Chas,” says the woman in Russian—just a minute. Someone is sent to milk another yak.

It was June, yet we’d awoken that morning to 15 centimetres of wet snow on our tent. We were a chilled pair of greying Canadians, cycling with sodden gear toward the 4,600-metre Ak-Baital pass. We were pedalling south on the Pamir Highway in eastern Tajikistan, a former Soviet Republic.

–snip– This was only the first of countless acts of hospitality we were to receive in Tajikistan, and which came when we needed them most from people whose own next meal was an uncertainty. Although we would offer payment when we accepted this hospitality, it was usually firmly refused. Tajikistan is an Ismaili Muslim area where the Islamic ethic of generosity is practised to the fullest.

–snip– Being able to find food is not a given in the Pamirs, which we learned were blockaded during and after Tajikistan’s recent civil war, which ended in 1997. Only through interventions by the Aga Khan was widespread starvation averted. The area depends on imports, since the short growing season severely limits local production. Village shops sold little more than pasta and candy; vegetables and protein remained in short supply.

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