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My ex called them ‘brain f*cks’. Worrying about something incessantly – something you wish you hadn’t done but now can’t change. I worried for ages about the unfiltered water I drank from the kind Pamir people last night. Slowly my mind cleared as I climbed the valley today, and once again revelled in its beauty.

Around 3500m.

I marvel the touring cyclists around me. With exploded tyres, they stitch them together and take off down the most corrugated roads of the planet without a worry. They are all a carefree, take-it-as-it-comes bunch. I take two spare tyres and numerous inner tubes and still worry.
When filtering water last night, a local woman warned me of camping where we were due to wolves. ‘Ah. We have been camping with wolves all the way,’ said Reece. He is right.
The woman told me that I should have some ‘good’ water from her house. Clean water. Drinking water. Before I knew it, all my bottles were filled with clean looking water from the little stream running past their house. Just the sort of stream that I would normally have filtered. They have a cow. Roaming upstream from the water. How much do the people know about hepatitis? I drank the water, and my mind went in a spin until this afternoon. Having overcome the fear of actually doing this world cycle trip, I still have returns of these mind f*cks. There have been some worriers in my family. I don’t want to be one..

I find myself tonight in an old, dilapidated hot spring ‘hotel’ from the communist times. The actual hot water from the springs is too hot to enter, and is in a mouldy pool that has seen better times. The outside toilet block is a first for me. Three squat toilets next to each other with no dividing walls. I’ve heard more of that is coming in China. Yay! ☺

On mind f*ck days, I am happy to have a roof over my head. Tomorrow I’m going over the first serious high pass – over 4200m. I’m interested to see how that goes.

The underbelly

The valley

Rain is coming