The Quest for Afghan Singletrack

“H is name means ‘soldier’,” says Yaar Mahahammad, our translator. Yaar is talking about Askarkhan, a thirteen year old boy who has been hefting rocks to form the foundations for a new stone hut with the kind of ease that puts my own strength to shame.

Askarkhan looks at us with piercing, curious eyes from beneath his over-sized, hand-me-down clothes. Despite his military-sounding name, his clothes have no resemblance to a uniform, and he doesn’t need one. Here, at 4,305 metres amidst the swirls of a snowstorm in the remote Wakhan Corridor, Askarkhan is far from the war and troubles that have tragically become synonymous with his home country, Afghanistan.

In these regions the best weapon for survival is resilience, not a rifle. Guns are useful against marauding wolves, but it is resilience that will see Askarkhan brave the short, eight-week summer of herding yaks and sheep high on the mountainsides. Resilience that will arm him against the cold of night, the relentless snowstorms possible on 350 days of the year, and the thin air. I have a lot to learn. All in all, this is probably the harshest place I have ever been, so why the hell are we trying to ride bikes here?

Today, the snow buries our six bikes and tents alike. Above us, enveloped in dense fog, sits the way ahead. At 4,860 metres, the Karabel Pass is the second of three high passes that we have to brave during our twelve day pioneering mountain bike traverse through the Wakhan Corridor. Navigating each pass means an early 4am start, as we must give the pack animals carrying our supplies a good chance of crossing while the snowpack is still frozen hard. Each climb requires dragging ourselves from warm sleeping bags to force on frozen bike shoes hours before any sign of breakfast. But each pass, we hope, will deliver another brake-searing singletrack descent.