Mountains, mountains and more mountains

A quick summary of what has happened the last few days: in Tashkent we fixed our motorbikes (almost) and then had to leave the city quickly, because we really didn't want to stay in a city any longer. It was hot, still around 40 degrees Celsius, and we rode towards Tajikistan. Finally... we have been looking forward to this country for quite some time. Uzbekistan is nice, but Tajikistan has mountains... a lot of mountains. Basically it consists only of mountains. So we crossed the border just before Pendshikent and on the border met an Austrian motorcyclist. He told us about a nice place called Seven Lakes, so we went there together and found the most beautiful quiet campsite between mountains on a blue lake, no people, high mountains surrounding it. Lovely... but the roads... I am having constant heart attacks. And on the way up (above 2300 meters) we found out that a computer fan is not an adequate substitute for a motorbike radiator fan... but with a few breaks Marcin's bike made it up there too. Going up is one thing, coming down another. I first dropped my bike having a little heart attack and then rode it into some rock at the side of the bend... well, nothing happened to me or the bike. It was just a little difficult to get it out of the rocks again :)
Anyway, after that we were prepared for Tajik roads... they are great. Great exercise for our motorcycling skills. Yesterday we went up to around 2800 meters on gravel roads, with all sorts of gravel. Small, big, loose, solid. The most exciting part was a tunnel. All we could see was a totally black hole, a big gravel hill in front of it, a deep water hole and as far as you could see into that tunnel you could not see the ground, only water. Lots of fumes coming out of the tunnel, very bad smell. And very loud noise too. We waited for a car to come up that tunnel, and it was about 50cm deep in that water. Some workers in front of the tunnel told us it would not be good on the motorbike, but other motorcyclists went through the tunnel before us. Since there is actually no other way to get to Duschanbe- coming from Pendshikent - we had not much choice.. and it turned out to be fun to go through a dark (but not pitch black, there were a few light bulbs hanging around) tunnel, where you cannot see how deep the water is. With hidden holes and hills. After that we camped in the garden of a nice Tajik family and today reached Dushanbe. Not the nicest city, but well... more soon! Photos in a few days!