April 26 -Day 12 -Turguart Pass

Day 12

Friday, April 26

    

TURUGART PASS TO NARYN, KYRGYZSTAN   Many places are called the Roof of the World, but we give this honor to the Pamirs for two reasons. One: sheer ancientness. When Marco Polo passed through here 700-odd years ago, it already had long and logically been called Roof of the World.

The Pamirs aren't a spine, but a broad and high back, complicated by meandering peaks. Polo called it a land of "many rivers and desert tracks, without...any habitations or the appearance of verdure." It was a place as high as the ancients wanted to get. Second: the Pamirs are one of Earth's great artworks. From the whorls of the Pamir Knot radiate five of the planet's highest mountain ranges: the Tien Shan (the "Celestial Mountains"), the Kun Lun, the Karakoram, the Hindu Kush (the "Hindu Killers"), and the Great Himalaya itself. For the geographer, the historian, for the armchair explorer, these names are a heady incantation of adventure and romance. Geographic Expeditions' (formerly InnerAsia) 1989 Pamir Knot travelers were among the very first group of westerners since Marco Polo's day to cross the Sino-Soviet border at the Turugart Pass (12,307 feet). These are rare precincts, fragrant with intrigue, hardship, and beauty. Francis Younghusband, spy, explorer, invader of Tibet, mystic, and all-around Great Gamesman, recalled his first view of the Pamirs as "one of those sights which almost strike one dumb." Skrine praised their glorious "cleanness and spaciousness." And one is reminded of the old caravaner's warning "Here thou art as a tear on an eyelash!"

This whole area is a remote yet crucial flashpoint for three empires. Britishers like Younghusband roamed the Knot, probing Russian defenses and intentions while the weak and wary Chinese Qing Dynasty tried to keep from being engulfed.

In a very long day of driving and border crossings, you’ll cut the northern cord of the Pamir Knot, crossing the multifarious watershed, and from the basin of the Taklamakan Desert, across the Turugart Pass, to Naryn in Kyrgyzstan.