Pamir Mountains

[funky music] Jan Bakker has spent years chasing the kind of adventures that don't always come with a marked trail.

Trekking in Nepal, leading expeditions in the Pamirs in Tajikistan, even coming up with the Pamir Trail itself in Tajikistan.

He's hiked in the Ravansaris, climbed across East Africa, did bunch of African peaks, lots of Munros in Scotland and Highlands, wherever.

He's done, he's done so much that we actually can't even keep track of it.

But, uh-

Yeah, you need to keep moving sometimes

... you know, when you do it, it's such a w- it's like essential, uh, part of the Pamirs, you know? And about ...

Essential part of the experience being in the Tajik Mountains.

From this update, you are gonna learn very quickly that Indonesia has steeper roads than anywhere else that Ollie cycled in.

It's steeper than the Alps, Afghanistan, even in the Pamirs.

We're also gonna hear the cool part about the adventure where this trip has this crossover between Ollie's ride and also that of his dad, Phil, who did the very same route 40 years prior, as well as his brother Jamie, who I guess was just a, a year or so ahead of him on the road, and it's really cool to see how all those three journeys keep overlapping.

These updates are also really handy if you're someone who's planning on riding through these countries because the little details Ollie gives about areas are things that you can probably store in your own little route-mapping ideas to see how your own adventure evolves.

St. Petersburg, First Journey to Western Europe, Chapter 2 At the same time, I worked a great deal for the Russian Geographical Society in my capacity of secretary to its section of physical geography.

Great interest was taken then in the exploration of Turkestan and the Pamirs.

Sievertsov had just returned after several years of travel.

A great zoologist, a gifted geographer, and one of the most intelligent men I ever came across, he, like so many Russians, disliked writing.

Las diferentes formas de vida de la gente, las tradiciones religiosas y los paisajes.

Cruzaron el río Oxus y ascendieron a las montañas del Pamir, el techo del mundo.

Algunos compañeros murieron durante la travesía.

Algunos no pudieron continuar, pero los tres Polo siguieron adelante.

Reaching that spot can involve flying by helicopter or multi-day treks.

For instance, in the 2025 Pamir expedition in Central Asia, they could not get helicopters to 5,800 meters.

So eight Tajik mountain porters carried roughly 800 kilograms of equipment, food, and tents up from base camp at 5,100 meters to the drilling site.

Once on site, the team establishes a camp on the ice.

Frills for this kind of work are often lightweight electromechanical drills.

Some are solar powered for high altitude usage.

In the Pamirs, they indeed used a solar powered drill rig optimized for the thin air.

The drill bores into the ice and brings up cylindrical core sections, usually one meter at a time.

The few passes over its snowy crests ranging from 12,000 to 18,000 feet high and only open for a few months in the year.

Another supposed line of advance for a Russian army, namely by the Pamirs, has of late years been brought forward, but its main features are more discouraging than those of any other.

This elevated region consists of a mass of bare snow-capped mountains attaining elevations of over 25,000 feet, intersected by plateau almost as devoid of vegetation as the mountains themselves.

The lakes are about 12,000 feet above sea level.

The population is scanty and consists chiefly of nomads in search of food and pasture during the short summer.

So that although the Russians might, if unopposed, possibly move in small isolated detachments carrying their own food and munitions over the Pamirs, it would only be to lose themselves in the gorges of the Himalayas.

The conditions above mentioned are for the most part permanent.

Russia may not, and probably has not, any intention of trying to invade and conquer India, but she has not the power, which is a far more important consideration.