I continued to follow the Pyanj river down into which the mountains of Afghanistan & Tajikistan fell vertiginously, sometimes literary.
I saw more marked minefields. The sign showed a person's leg being separated from the rest of their body with a comic book bang when they stepped on a mine. In spite of these minefields this was no blighted landscape. There was lots of evidence of house construction, indicating increased confidence & prosperity . My map of the region, published in 2004 showed but a small fraction of the chaykhanas that I saw, evidence of economic revival.
I tried to find honey in the chaykhanas along the route. It was completely unavailable. This backs up the earlier observation that chaykhanas sell produce of their gardens. The gains from trade I suppose will come as the demand for it comes. I'm sure that tourism will be the driver of this.
I'd noticed bicycle tracks in the occasional non-asfalted section & hoped that they were produced by fellow tourers with whom I could team up for a while. I'd been hearing at the chaykhanas at which I stopped of a pair of English cyclists but lacked the vocab in Russian to ask how long before they'd past by. Sure enough at the ideal time to stop for the day I saw a tent & a pair of bikes in a little grove of trees by a chaykhana. They were going much slower than me but it was nice to have some company for the evening.
I cycled 102 km in 8 hours & 29 minutes
Total so far 7522 km in 110 days
GPS Coordinates of end point - N 30°2.556, E 71°18.291
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