The river foams and roars. Too much water for this season. The winter was hard. Remnants of snow are still sticking under the peaks, patches the barren slopes like the fur of a snow leopard. A few brown splashes clap from the Panj River, trying to reach the narrow dirt road that clings on the opposite side of the embankment. A loaded donkey is driven by a man with a turban.

We cycle on, focus on the potholes. Why is there on the other side of the river this way? Is a road not enough in this valley? A glance at the map. There, where should be the blue line of the river, a violet ribbon meanders through the valley. The border - Afghanistan. Somehow we made it ousted, the taxi ride from the hot Tajik capital Dushanbe to Kalaikum has gone too fast. The impressions have been too strong. Armed revolts a few days ago have forced us on this route from the bicycle in the jeep. 300 km past by behind the windshield. Thoughts are stucked in the bubbling fountains and wide avenues in Dushanbe. Now they have caught up with us. We compare the map with the windings of the river, the road – Afghanistan.

A few meters separate us from another country. A river, nothing more. And yet the world seems to drift apart. We roll on asphalt, on the other hand sticks the donkey path. The river cuts a gap between here and there. Left and right rise five - and six-thousand meter high peaks. A perfect border. Insurmountable, would you think, and yet Tajikistan has set land mines here in the interwar period. Insurmountable, and yet fly our thoughts to the man with the donkey, who now moves on in our back. How does he live? What does he think about the tourists who come rushing past on the tar road? He must have noticed us, certainly his thoughts has wandered over the border as well. Seemingly insurmountable. The valley widens, small mud huts cling to the slopes. A woman is flitting from one door to another, a red swab only. The sun disappears behind the mountains, shadow fingers up the slopes. Here and there. A shadow world, no matter on which side you are.

From time to time a crack opens in the steep valley sides across the river. A glacial stream winds its way down from the glittering peaks of the Panj, which meanders in the upper part of the Wakhan valley here. Such cracks open the view into the Hindu Kush. Belongs this slope now even to Tajikistan? Are these stones lying on Afghan ground? Pertains that blue shimmering snow field to Pakistan? Curious, we peer into the side valleys across the border, like a cheeky child through a keyhole.

The road spirals up higher. Football large stones, crystal clear height altitude air. A bus full of singing Chinese stops. The passengers clap with white gloved hands applause. "Jesus loves you," the driver said. The echo of his sentence fizzles in the width, loses rapidly between the majestic peaks of the Pamirs. On the top we meet an American photographer in his jeep. He asks questions, shoots pictures. He works for an Adventure Magazine. Great photos: Red jacket, white mountains, blue sky. "Do you ride from time to time off road?" he wants to know. We don't fully understand.

In Murghab we meet Betty and Jean Pierre, a French couple of cyclists in their early sixties. We all have too much time left because we can't leave the country already for Kyrgyzstan because of the visas and so we decide to make a trekking to the Grum Grschimailo glacier together. We continue on to Kara Kol, but the plan seems to fail already at the missing car, which should bring us to the starting point of the trek. Fortunately two German tourists are passing by who want to continue to Osh and to the saving mobile network and they agree to organize us a jeep from Murghab.

The trekking from Pasor up to the glacier is one of the highlights of the first month. Even here, the bureaucratic hurdles are high, and again we encounter obscure officials demanding money for hiking in the National Park, but the archaic world of glaciers, we encounter on our four day hike with donkeys and backpack is indescribable. We walk until altitude, snow and ice forced us to turn back.

Three eagles are circling in the air, swinging themself up, screaming. Hairpin curves squirm thousand vertical meters down into the valley. Last night it snowed for the first time in the no man's land between the Tajik and Kyrgyz border. White tips. The anticipation of the fall in the Tien Shan drives us forward. Osh is quickly reached. Here we don't notice anything of the autumnal harbingers at four thousand meters. It is warm, but the desert-like temperatures of early August definitively belong to the past. Now, a hotel with a washing machine seems important to us - and the supermarket shouldn't be too far away. Yes, we enjoy the comfort in the second largest city of Kyrgyzstan. But the face-up card in the room also assume that we want to get out again soon. To the countryside, into the mountains - to the eagles.