Day 8:

We have been talking with another couple (@Uralistan.roadtrip on Instagram) that is traveling on a Ural on Instagram and following their trip from France to Mongolia and back to France. Our timing for the Pamir Highway overlapped so we kept an eye out for them on the road! We ended up spotting them and both pulled over and spent an hour chatting, hanging out, and getting to know each other a bit more.

Day 9:

When we exited out of Tajikistan, the border control guys invited us into their shelter for tea and cookies, they were really generous! One of the guys was super excited about our Ural so we snagged a photo with him ;)

Goodbye Tajikistan!

Once we left Tajikistan, we had about 20km (12.5 miles) of no man's land until we reached the border control of Kyrgyzstan. It was the longest and most rugged no man's land we have been on!

Google maps showed red this section of the road:

During our ride through no man's land, we broke many pieces on the bike but didn't notice until we crossed into Kyrgyzstan. We made it across the border which was a great thing instead of being stranded between countries, yikes!

We snapped a big bolt that helps attach the sidecar to the motorcycle:

We met a really cool couple (Max is from Germany and Vithya is from Singapore) who had an extra ratchet strap so we ratcheted the sidecar to the motorcycle as a band aid until we could get to a shop that would help us weld a new piece. It worked like a charm!

The next thing we found was the frame of the bike was broken and detached...

We used a strap and tightened it with a wrench and zip ties as a tourniquet to secure the frame together for the remaining 200km (125 miles) until the motorcycle shop. It was a success too!

We made it to Osh, Kyrgyzstan; it had a great motorcycle shop that we visited the next day.