Episode Details

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Somewhere in the Fann Mountains, Jan Bakker was surrounded by three shepherd dogs — alone, no escape route, thinking: if one of them goes for it, I'm finished. He'd arrived in trail runners on a 60-degree scree slope 300 metres below a high pass, with no grip and no backup. He made it out.

That's what it looks like to build a thousand-kilometre trail across one of the most remote mountain countries on Earth — one where maps were blank until he started walking them.

Jan Bakker is a Dutch guidebook author, expedition leader and trail pioneer based in Uganda. He wrote Trekking in Tajikistan for Cicerone Press and is currently building the Pamir Trail: a 1,000km long-distance hiking route across Tajikistan — from the Fann Mountains in the northwest to the Wakhan Corridor at 5,000 metres on the Afghan border. In this episode, Chris digs into what you'd actually be getting into if you went, and why you should probably start planning now.

What You'll Learn:
• Why Tajikistan felt like a forbidden land on the map — and why a topographic map with nothing but mountains was enough to change Jan's life direction
• What food, water and resupply actually look like on a route where villages don't have shops and you may be carrying seven days' provisions through 4,500-metre passes
• The shepherd dogs of the Fann Mountains — and why they are a more realistic threat than snow leopards or bears
• How to time the river crossings on a trail where the same ford that's passable at dawn is impassable by afternoon as glacier melt peaks
• What the Wakhan Corridor looks like at the end of 1,000 kilometres and how you actually get back to Dushanbe from there
• Jan's vision for linking the Pamir Trail to the Great Himalaya Trail — a continuous mountain corridor from Central Asia to Nepal

JAN BAKKER | Guidebook Author, Expedition Leader & Trail Pioneer
Website: pamirtrail.org
Instagram: @jb37north
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/jan37north
Guidebook: Trekking in Tajikistan — Cicerone Press (cicerone.co.uk)
Platform: bookatrekking.com
Pay It Forward: Women Rockin' Pamirs — womenrockinpamirs.org (supporting women to become hiking guides in the Pamirs)

ABOUT JAN BAKKER
Jan Bakker is a Dutch expedition leader, outdoor tourism consultant and the author of Trekking in Tajikistan (Cicerone Press) — the definitive English-language guidebook to one of Central Asia's most remote mountain regions. Over the past several years he has been building the Pamir Trail: a 1,000km through-hiking route across Tajikistan, currently 85–90% mapped with the help of a small team of international volunteers. He lives in Uganda with his family, where he runs adventure tourism development projects, trains local hiking guides, and is developing a pioneer bush camp and trail network on Mount Kadam in eastern Uganda. He is also a co-owner of the Bookatrekking.com platform and writes for adventure travel publications.

Chapters
00:00 Introducing Jan Bakker — flat country, big mountains
02:08 Why Tajikistan? A forbidden land on the map
03:31 A topographic map that changed everything — 2009
05:40 First encounters — cycling in a country with no hiking maps
06:52 The guidebook, the e-visa and opening a country
08:36 Getting there — Turkish Airlines, Istanbul and a five-hour flight
09:08 The Pamir Trail — 1,000km, 51 stages and a project built by volunteers
12:10 The terrain — Fann Mountains versus Pamirs
13:32 Food, water and resupply on a route with no shops
16:22 Languages and cultures — Tajik, Russian, Pamirian dialects
17:58 60% walked, 40% mapped with help — how the trail gets built
19:03 River crossings, 4,500-metre passes and glacier sections
22:1