Day 1 in Dushanbe

 

Against the odds, after a long day getting to Dushanbe and not great sleep, K1 and I both woke up at about 9:00. We're four hours ahead of the UK now, by the way.

Neither of us were hungry but we went to the hotel's breakfast room anyway. The food on display was largely unappealing. We're aiming to be careful with food and water and so anything washed in water is likely to be avoided. I don't eat meat in general but K1 is planning to avoid meat here too.

We both had a couple of small slices of bread. That's all we wanted anyway.

The general idea for today was to get various chores done so we could have tomorrow free to be tourists.

This included:

1. Get cash, which for me meant collect the Western Union transfer I'd initiated last week. We didn't know what it meant for K1 at this stage!

2. Get me a SIM card for the megafon network. Apparently this is best for the eastern Pamir region where we're headed.

3. Visit a supermarket and get some provisions for the road and for today.

4. Buy petrol for our stoves.

5. Check the bikes after yesterday's hasty reassembly outside the airport.

We started by focusing on cash. The Pamir is cash based. We don't expect to be able to use cards once we're on the road. So obtaining enough cash for our journey is critical.

K1's problems with Western Union continued. None of the cards he used to transfer money were accepted and no reason was given. K1 used his bank's system to send money to my bank account so I could try using my Western Union account. But I had the same problems. Evidently the issue was something to do with us being in Tajikistan. A quick Google search indicated that our scenario which involves initiating a transfer from a UK bank account whilst physically outside of the UK looks suspicious to Western Union so they reject the attempt with a vague message, presumably not wanting to give useful information to naughty hackers.

K1 requested help from Western Union support. They were useless.

This all took place at the hotel where we have WiFi. We gave up eventually and walked to a bank that the Western Union app indicated would be able to process my transfer and allow me to receive the money I'd sent myself from the UK.

It was an 8km walk and took about 30 minutes. It was already feeling pretty hot, apparently in the mid-thirties Celsius.

Walking allowed us to see part of the city. The streets in general. The construction work going on. Small tea shops and bakeries. A festival of Korean culture which included music and street food. An impressive theatre/opera house that was scheduled to host a K Pop concert! A cool, shady park with animal statues and other art in it. It was a good introduction to "real Dushanbe".

We entered the bank and by chance the young man I first approached spoke excellent English. Apparently he'd taken extra classes at school :-)

He listened to what I needed and walked me to another small bureau belonging to the bank via the street. He then stayed to help translate to the man working behind the glass.  It all seemed to be going fine until I was asked to provide proof of the address I was staying at. I tried to show our booking.com reservation details on my phone but without access to the mobile network, couldn't easily. The clerk tried to set up a WiFi hotspot on his iPhone for me to use but it didn't work. The two bank staff really tried! But in the end, I couldn't satisfy the bank's rules which seemingly insist on some kind of printed statement that indicates the address of your hotel.

The helpful young man suggested a different bank that he thought didn't need the paper-based proof of address.

We left and I was feeling frustrated. Everything depended on being able to fund our journey. No cash, no trip.

We visited a supermarket close to the hotel and I bought oatmeal, stock cubes, sweets and coffee. I shall not starve. K1 paid using a card which here in modern Dushanbe is an option although we found the supermarket allowed Visa payment cards but didn't support MasterCard which is my preferred card when travelling.

Back at the hotel I found that the man currently working on reception spoke English! This was good news as it's not that common to find English speakers apparently. I explained what I needed and he was able to help. He created official looking letters on hotel paper for both K1 and myself indicating we were guests and stating the address.

K1 revisited his Western Union situation while we had WiFi but nothing has changed.

We looked for the other bank on a map and found it was only about 1 km away and so walked to it. Except that it didn't exist. It's shown on the map but nobody we asked knew for sure where it was. It may be a corporate office was on an upper floor rather than a retail branch outlet.

So that left one option. We walked all the way to the first bank again, me with my proof of address hoping to collect my Western Union transfer and K1 hoping to use an ATM with one of his cards.

I was successful! It's a big relief to have both local currency (Somoni) and some extra US dollars which can be useful and in particular might come in handy when we first cross into Kyrgyzstan.

K1 however was not. He'd forgotten his PIN and with no mobile internet access couldn't use his bank's system to find its value.

M1 decided to try one of his cards and was able to withdraw a maximum of 2000 Somoni which is roughly £200. This was handed straight to K1 who finally had some local currency!

After returning to the hotel, K1 sorted out his PIN and was able to obtain another 2000 Somoni from another ATM. And (drum roll) we went out again in the evening and got another 2000 each from yet another ATM. So K1 now has 8000 Somoni and is getting close to what we think is needed for six weeks on the Pamir Highway. We'll obtain the rest tomorrow.

This all took forever. We walked about 20 km, got very hot and sticky and there are still items on our To-do list. We'll have to get them done tomorrow.

This evening we're enjoying the air conditioning of our hotel room and eating salty snacks to make up for all the salts lost through sweating. I've been stricken with nasty cramping this afternoon probably because of dehydration and salt loss so that big bag of crisps is officially medicine :-)

Photos

Our bikes in the hotel courtyard 

The theatre 

M1 and fountain 

K1 and fountain 

The flag of Tajikistan perhaps with that of Georgia?

Believed to be a Myna

Definitely a statue

Korean street food 

A street we walked 4 times today!

Tea shop

Outside the hotel

Pamir Highway - Travelling to Dushanbe

 

Introduction

The big day has arrived. After years of thinking about the Pamir Highway and watching others make the amazing journey on YouTube, and months and months of planning and organising, today is the day that I (M1) and brother-in-law K1 travel to Tajikistan to start our adventure.

The plan for today was simple enough. Drive to London Gatwick airport in a hired van, fly from there to Istanbul, Turkey and then catch a second flight to Dushanbe, Tajikistan. Once on the ground in Tajikistan, all that would remain is to cycle to the hotel we'd booked for three nights. Simples?

London - An Early Start

Our day started early. Very early! With our flight leaving London's Gatwick airport at 7:00 a.m., we were required to be there by 4:00 and this meant we had to wake up and get out of bed at..... 3:00 a.m. Gulp!

And "we" was three people at this stage. To get to Gatwick, I'd hired a van that was big enough to carry the partly disassembled bikes in their large cardboard boxes and our luggage. 

My son had kindly agreed to be our driver, so he too had to get up at the unholy hour of 3:00. I'm hoping the case of beers I left for him will buy his forgiveness eventually :-)

 

The van which we loaded up yesterday 

So, not so bright and very, very early, we all got out of bed this morning. Even M2 got up to say goodbye.

My son drove the van like a pro and got us to Gatwick airport by 4 a.m.  We unloaded quickly so he could get away and avoid having to pay even more than the standard £10 for the privilege of dropping off passengers (such a rip off!).

K1 went to get a couple of trollies to make getting our luggage into the airport easier. To our dismay it turned out that airport trollies have gone the same way as supermarket trollies and you need a pound coin to unlock one. Of course we had no coins at all! My son gave me a couple of £2 coins before driving off but we were unable to split them into £1 coins. Oh dear. 

Fortunately, K1 found a single unlocked trolly and we were able to balance both bike boxes on it. K1 pushed the trolley and I carried the two large laundry bags destined for the hold along with my cabin bags. My shoulders felt like they were dropping off by the time we got to the check-in desks.

Getting the bikes and luggage dropped off was more complicated than expected and it took a lot of time and energy. But every one of the airport and Turkish Airlines staff we dealt with were excellent; helpful and friendly despite the early hour.

Details of the issues and the process we had to go through have been added to the end of the Flying with Bikes post for those who want to know. 

When we'd eventually got the bikes on their way we proceeded to join other passengers passing through the usual security process. Naturally both of us had our cabin bags siphoned off to one side for further inspection!

In the end it took nearly two hours from arriving at Gatwick to us being through security and in the departures area. A long process for sure but made bearable by the excellent staff.

Our flight left on schedule at 7:05 and the journey to Istanbul was uneventful. That's how we like our flying to be :-)

Istanbul 

The airport is modern and comfortable which is just as well because we had five hours to wait for our connecting flight to Dushanbe.

On the whole, we just relaxed, had a coffee and snack and I wrote some of this blog post. It pays to be productive.

K1 also decided to take advantage of the lengthy wait between flights to start to organise a Western Money transfer of cash from his UK bank account. I'd done the same thing a week ago, the idea being I wouldn't need to carry large amounts of physical cash into the country but instead, collect it from a bank in Dushanbe on our first day. For me, the process of "sending" money went fine.

For K1 it was far from fine! Attempting to make the money transfer while in Turkey made his bank's fraud detection systems anxious. The transaction was stopped and K1's bank card blocked!

K1 then had to go through a complicated process with his bank to get his card working again. The Western Union money transfer remained incomplete at this stage. 

Not long before we were due to board, A Turkish teenager introduced himself in excellent English and asked us where we were from, why we were going to Dushanbe and so on. He'd learned English from computer games. We exchanged names and shook hands before boarding.

Our flight to Dushanbe took 4 hours and 35 minutes. It too was uneventful. My beetroot based Asian Vegetarian dinner was very nice. 

Dushanbe

We landed in Dushanbe at 1:05 in the morning.

I confess I'd been a little nervous about Dushanbe airport. I'd read accounts of corruption with fake fines being levied by officials. One account involved a woman being relieved of £700!

Our experience couldn't have been better. Passing through passport control was straightforward and didn't take too long. 

Our laundry bags emerged from the hold of the aircraft and appeared on the carousel. Hooray!

Our bikes in their big boxes appeared a while later on another side of baggage reclaim. Hooray again!

I went looking for trolleys but couldn't see where people were getting them from. I asked a Tajik man who immediately said "Take mine! It is your first time in Tajikistan, you must have my trolley!". I tried to dissuade him but was unsuccessful. He was quietly insistent. How nice was that?

With both bike boxes on one trolley again, K1 did well to manoeuvre the trolley through the sliding doors and out of the terminal. Outside it was busy with taxis, taxi drivers and passengers. We found a quiet corner though and proceeded to unbox and reassemble our bikes.

This all went fine but took a while and we were both feeling pretty tired.  Eventually though the bikes were ready and we crudely lashes everything to them just to be able to get everything to the hotel. Packing for flight is not the same as packing for cycling so it was not exactly streamlined but at this time of night we really didn't care.

We jumped on The Mule and Donkey and rode them through the well lit streets of Dushanbe, arriving at our hotel at around 3 a.m. Fortunately we were expected and a member of staff greeted us and showed us to our shared room.

We were both very tired now but cycling and perhaps being a little excited about.. ACTUALLY BEING IN TAJIKISTAN meant we both struggled to get to sleep properly. But we did get some sleep and were up at 9 a.m.  But that's a whole other day and the subject of the next post on this blog.

We made it to Dushanbe! We're there! Our luggage is here! Our bikes are here!

Not a bad start :-)

Photos

Building the bikes

Loading the bikes up 

En route to the hotel 

Our hotel room. Nice chandelier!

Packing List for the Pamir Highway

Introduction

Bikepacking the Pamir Highway is different so not surprisingly this has had an impact on my bike and the items I'll be taking.

Regarding "stuff", there's new stuff, more stuff and overall, the full set of stuff is heavier. And some it I will probably.... hopefully..... never use. Whaaaaaaat?

Blame the Risk Assessment

Bikepackers sometimes like to pride themselves on being able to "travel light" and not get sucked into taking things they don't really need. For this trip though, I'm knowingly taking things that I very much hope I won't need. It's all a question of risk and early on in the planning process I carried out a fairly formal risk assessment, listing things that could go wrong, how likely I felt this was and what the impact would be (graded as low/medium/high).

Amongst the various categories of risk were things that might affect the bike (e.g. various mechanical failures) or my health (accidents, injuries, illnesses etc).

I then looked for ways to mitigate each risk, assuming I thought it worthwhile and that there actually was something I could do. Not all risks can be mitigated of course. And it was here that I started to add things to the packing list; first aid items, tools, spares and repair materials.

Bike Changes

The Mule has new wheels designed specifically for touring with a heavy load. Details can be found here. This was motivated by the fact that any type of wheel damage worse than a broken spoke could probably not be resolved, possibly ending the trip. Your bike's wheels are somewhat important.

The only other change made specifically for this trip is the tyres. I'm still using the excellent Continental Contact Plus tyres but this time went for a larger 47 mm tyre. Previously I've always fitted 43 mm tyres. 

The idea is just to have a greater volume of air supporting the heavier load being carried on this trip.

Carrying Stuff

The main carrying system consists of:

• 2 x Ortlieb Back Roller Classic panniers (40 L capacity total)
• 1 x Ortlieb Rack Pack (31 L)
• 1 x Ortlieb Handlebar Pack QR (11 L)

And new for this trip to provide extra capacity:

• 2 x Ortlieb Fork Packs (5.8 L each)

The Mule with the six main bags

In addition, I bought a dry bag from Alpkit (13 L) which I can use to carry extra stuff such as food, with the dry bag lashed to the back of the bike using one of two bungee cords or the luggage straps that I'll have with me.

I also have a small frame bag on the top tube. This is mostly used to carry my phone for navigation. 

A small saddle bag contains tyre levers, a spare inner tube, mechanics gloves and a bike multi-tool.

Indirectly related to this topic, I also bought a dry bag for my sleeping bag from Sea to Summit. This gives me the option to carry my relatively bulky sleeping bag strapped to the bike rather than taking up room in one of the panniers.

So, I have the ability to carry a greater volume of stuff and spare capacity for the food I expect to need to carry in the more remote, higher altitude parts of the journey. 

Keeping Warm

It's likely to be hot during the day time, especially at lower altitudes nearer to our start point, Dushanbe. But it's possible that at high altitude it will get quite cold at night, maybe a few degrees below freezing point. That means that not only is it essential to be able to keep warm in the tent at night but also sitting outside the tent in the evenings and when first cycling early in the morning. To that end, the following new items are coming on this trip:

• Sea to Summit Spark -9 C down sleeping bag

• Rab down jacket

• Sealskinz mittens

Mittens may seem like a questionable choice given we're expecting day time temperatures around 35 degrees Celsius! But, I have shockingly bad circulation in my hands and suffer badly in chilly (but above freezing) conditions so without them would struggle on those cold early mornings we are expecting to encounter at high altitude.

As well as the new additions, as always I'll have merino wool leggings, a long sleeved top and and a hat for extra layers to wear whenever necessary.

Drinking Water

We've been advised to not drink tap water. We also know there will be occasions where tap water won't even be available and mountain streams and rivers will be our only available source of water. So the kit list includes the following water purification tools:

• Katadyn BeFree water filter - this is a one litre flexible bladder with a screw on filter. To use it, you fill the bladder from a tap or stream and then push the water through the filter and nozzle by squeezing the bladder. It's quite a slow process but will reduce the presence of particles, bacteria,  protozoa and parasites.

• Steripen Ultralight - The water filter doesn't remove viruses. The steripen should. Steripen is an electronic ultra-violet emitting "wand". It is used by  immersing it in water that has been through the filter and then switching it on. UV is emitted for a period of time before the device switches itself off. It has a rechargeable battery in it with a USB socket.

• Water sterilisation tablets - we shouldn't need to use them but if for example the Steripen breaks or if we simply want to be extra careful, a tablet left in the water for a suitable period of time will get rid of (most) bacteria and viruses.

We also have the option to boil water as well.

The usual strategy will be to filter water using the Katadyn filter first and then zap it with the Steripen.

Food 

We expect to wild camp sometimes, possibly most of the time. So for the first time, I'm taking cooking equipment with me. 

I had to buy a new stove. My existing equipment either uses gas canisters or alcohol. Neither of these fuels are easy to obtain in Tajikistan. So that left fuels such as petrol, diesel and kerosene. There are a number of multi-fuel stoves on the market that can run off any of these types of fuel and I bought an MSR Whisperlite.  I also bought a titanium pan and a fuel bottle to carry fuel for and be connected to the MSR stove.

To carry the MSR fuel bottle and its contents, I bought a Blackburn bottle cage which is to be lashed with cable ties to the underside of the bike's down tube.

These stoves seem to use fuel quite quickly so I'll be taking a second fuel bottle made by Trangia so that I can carry extra fuel. I'll either be cramming it inside the Ortlieb Rack Pack or I'll be lashing it to the bags at the rear of the bike. Necessity is the mother of invention. 

I don't eat meat but I'm not a vegan. I'm hoping to be able to buy fresh eggs from time to time as these will be a valuable protein source for me. To ensure I can carry up to four eggs without breaking them, I bought a couple of plastic 2 x egg boxes.

The final new item in my camp kitchen is a collapsible colander. I'm expecting to buy grains such as oats, lentils and buck wheat and will need to be able to rinse them before cooking.

Tools and Spares

More tools and spares than ever before are being included for this trip. Not only might I need to deal with mechanical problems in a remote location but I'll also need to reassemble my bike after flying and to prepare it for boxing and flying home at the end of the trip.

The tool bag contains:

• A full set of hex keys 
• A small torque wrench set
• Scissors
• Pliers
• Small flat headed screwdriver
• Spoke key
• Chain whip
• Socket bar
• Cassette lock nut
• Pedal spanner
• Chain link pliers
• Chain connector aid
• Tyre levers

These tools will allow me to:

• Reattach my handlebars and derailleur and tighten bolts to the correct torque.
• Reattach my pedals.
• Tighten or undo any bolt on my bike or luggage system.
• Replace or repair the chain.
• Replace a spoke, including on the rear wheel, drive side which would require the cassette to be removed.
• Remove tyres.
• Deal with other miscellaneous issues.

The "Spares and Repairs" bag includes:

• 2 tent pegs
• Pole repair tube
• Spare rack bolts
• Selection of M4 and M5 bolts with a few nuts and washers
• Cable ties (3 sizes)
• Gorilla tape
• Insulation tape 
• Derailleur hanger mech
• Chain links
• Set of brake pads
• Puncture repair kit
• Puncture repair patches
• Gear change cable
• Threadlock paste
• Super glue
• Safety pin
• Rubber bands
• Spare 114 link bike chain

First Aid 

My kit includes the following:

• Plasters
• Sudocrem
• Cotton wool pads
• Paracetamol
• Ibuprofen
• Aspirin
• 3 x bandage / dressing - Extra Large, Large and Medium
• Diarrhea remedy  (Immodium)
• Tweezers
• Triangular bandage (sling)
• Azithromycin (antibiotics for diarrhea)
• Acetazolamide (altitude sickness)

Note that:

• Ibuprofen is not recommended if dehydration is a risk. Paracetamol is preferable for basic pain relief.
• Aspirin has been included as it can be used to thin blood in the case of a cardiac issue.
• Large dressings can be folded to make them smaller 
• Diarrhea is a high risk issue and in the case of serious food poisoning could take us out of action for a week. Azithromycin can be effective more quickly than over the counter remedies.
• Acetazolamide helps the body adjust to lower oxygen levels at high elevations by promoting deeper, faster breathing.

Electrical Items and Power

The solar panel I took on last year's trip has an even more important role to play this year. Since we're expecting a significant amount of wild camping to be done, we'll only occasionally have access to electricity supplies. Hopefully we'll have a lot of sunshine and be able to keep our power banks topped up.

I'm taking two power banks this year and bought a fast charger too. The idea is that if we're staying in a homestay, plug sockets may be few and we may need to share with other people so the quicker a power bank can be charged the better.

Here are the specific products:

• Belkin 20000 mAH power bank
• Ugreen 25000 mAH power bank
• Ugreen USB-C fast charger with USB-C to USB-C cable

Items I'll need to charge are:

• My Android smartphone 
• My Suunto 9 Peak Pro watch
• The Steripen Ultralight 
• My kindle
• Front and rear bike lights

Other Stuff

Wild camping has other consequences. I've always packed but never used, a small plastic trowel for digging holes. I am pretty certain I'll use it on this trip!

In the hope we'll make minimal impact on the environment, we're taking biodegradable bamboo toilet paper and biodegradable wet wipes. We're also using environmentally friendly soap but will take care to avoid polluting streams and rivers with it.

We're bound to generate rubbish/ trash. I'm taking a whole roll of plastic rubbish sacks so we can ensure we leave nothing at places we camp (apart from obvious stuff buried in holes!). I don't know how we'll dispose of rubbish bags but hope to fall in with local practices.

That's it!

Pamir Highway - Flying with the Bikes

 

Introduction

To date, I haven't flown with my bike. I've always cycled from home to a port and caught a ferry across to France to start a bikepacking trip in Europe. But this year's trip will start in Tajikistan and end in Kyrgyzstan and so The Mule will be taking its first flight on a plane.

Airlines publish fairly general information about packaging your bike so that it can go in the hold of the aircraft but you're left to figure out the details yourself. Luckily there are plenty of videos on YouTube that cover the subject with people sharing their experience and recommendations. I watched several and knowing more about the subject, devised a plan for getting my bike to Tajikistan and later, home from Kyrgyzstan.

Airline Tickets and Cost

Airlines don't usually carry bikes for free (i.e. as part of the cost of your standard ticket). We're flying to Tajikistan with Turkish Airlines and had to pay an extra £160 for each bike. Our return flights are with budget airline Pegasus and it cost an additional 65 euros for each bike.

Baggage Items and Weight

Our standard ticket gave us the usual entitlement to a single item of luggage in the hold of the aircraft and two items in the cabin. It's worth remembering that the bike isn't the only thing that needs transporting that you wouldn't need to worry about on a typical holiday. Panniers and other bike luggage has to somehow go on the plane as well. 

On Turkish Airlines, maximum weight limits for the various categories of baggage are as follows:

Bike in box : 23 kg

Hold: 23 kg

Main Cabin Baggage: 8 kg

Personal Item in Cabin: 4 kg

Everything has to be packed into these four containers somehow and weight distributed such that the various limits are not exceeded. In addition, certain items cannot go in the hold such as batteries and power banks.

Pegasus Airlines have slightly different weight limits:

Hold: 20 kg

Main Cabin Baggage: 8 kg

Personal item under seat: 3 kg 

No information about the maximum weight a bike (in box) can be is published by Pegasus so we're bracing ourselves for an expensive shock on this point.

The Mule weighs just over 17 kg (The Mule is chunky) and the cardboard box a further 5.6 kg, so there's not a lot of spare weight capacity in the box. 

The Bike

Bikes have to be in a "sturdy box" and adjusted to ensure the bike does not need an overly wide or high box. More on how this is accomplished appears below.

Six into One?

I have six main bags that I attach somehow to the bike. At the rear I have two panniers and a large bag for the tent and other things that goes across the top of the panniers. At the front I have two fork bags and a handlebar bag. But I'm only allowed one bag in the hold.

I also have a "bum bag" I carry stuff I want to have immediately at hand such as money, documents, sunglasses and so on.

I will be taking one pannier and the bum bag (as what Turkish Airlines call my personal item) into the cabin with me. That leaves the other pannier, the large camping bag, the two fork bags and the handlebar bag to somehow get into the hold. To solve this problem I bought a large nylon laundry bag. It only cost £5 but hopefully will do the job. Twice. Because I intend to carry it all the way to Osh in Kyrgyzstan and use it for the return flight too.

I might be able to squeeze a fork bag or two in with the bike in its box but this has not yet been tested and there's not much spare weight allowance in the bike box.

Preparing and Packing a Bike for Flying

We tried to get a cardboard bike box for free from a local bike shop but gave up when we couldn't get a box big enough. In the end we paid about £30 each for bike boxes from a UK bike builder called Ribble Cycles. They're good quality cardboard boxes of exactly the right dimensions. It's a shame we'll have to abandon them at Dushanbe airport!

Before packing my bike into its box I will need to undertake certain steps. I rehearsed the process recently and it went something like this:

1. Remove the front wheel

Removing the front wheel and putting it into the box alongside the frame makes the bike shorter. I wedged a piece of card in between the front brake pads to ensure it wasn't possible to accidentally apply the brake and lose a load of hydraulic fluid in the process!

There's a risk the box will have other items stacked on top of it in the hold so to protect the front forks from being compressed, I cut a section of plastic pipe and wedged it between them with the quick release axle pushed through to ensure the pipe couldn't get pushed out.

2. Remove the pedals 

Airlines indicate that pedals should be removed. This makes the bike narrower.

Pedals are tightened to quite a high torque so can be tough to get off. Even tougher if you forget that the direction to undo or tighten a pedal is the opposite to the norm on the non-drive side! The general rule is that turning the nut in the same direction the wheels rotate in will always tighten the pedal. Anyway, fortunately I didn't forget :-)

I wrapped the pedals in bubble wrap and to reduce weight, stuffed them into the bag I'll be putting in the hold of the aircraft.

3. Remove the handlebars 

Also intended to reduce the width requirement, handlebars must be detached and fastened vertically to the forks. It's worth noting their orientation before removing them.

I ensured brake levers were oriented away from the sides of the box so they couldn't be subject to pressure e.g. if another box was stacked on top of mine.

I screwed back into place the retaining bracket and bolts for safe keeping.

4. Remove the rear derailleur 

The derailleur is vulnerable to being damaged. I removed it (but left the cable connected) and taped it to the inside of the chainstay where it has some protection. I also wrapped a cloth around it.

5. Lower the saddle

To create more space in the box I removed my saddle bag and lowered the saddle.

6. Beware Pressure Changes

Given the pressure changes that occur once airborne, even in the hold of the aircraft, airlines mandate that tyres be deflated.

It's probably also a good idea to leave tyre's valves open, any water bottle valves open and the fuel bottles I'll probably pack in my bike box open as well. Just in case. 

7. Put everything in the box!

I needed to take care to ensure everything got packed, including the front wheel and pedals. It would be shame to arrive in Tajikistan and realise I hadn't packed my bike's front wheel!

I stowed the front wheel with the disk rotor facing inwards for protection and added some cardboard to cover the hub on the other side. Its sharp edges were snagging on the inside of the box.

8. Final Review and Extra Protection 

With my bike in the box, I inspected carefully, looking for points where the bike or anything attached to it were in contact with the inner surfaces of the box, especially under tension. I noticed that one of the mount points for my fork bags was pressing against the box and had already started to gouge a hole. My pannier rack was also in contact on one side at the level of my rear wheel's hub, as was one of the bar ends on my handlebars. I slipped squares of extra cardboard into position in cases like this to provide extra protection.

Finally, despite having initially followed airline instructions and lowered my saddle, I raised my saddle so its upper surface will be in contact with the box lid. I'm hoping this will stop the bike moving in the box in that direction.

9. Extra Things in the Box

With the bike packed, there's quite a bit of space available in the box still. I needed to be careful to not exceed my weight allowance but I have some bulky but lightweight things that I've also stashed in the box. Specifically, this was my two plastic water bottles, my two fuel bottles and my cycling helmet.

The Return Flight from Osh to London

We'll have to go through the same procedure to get our bikes home from Osh. But we'll first have to obtain (or make) a box since the boxes we will be using for our outbound flight to Dushanbe will have to be left there. I've already identified a bike shop in Osh that other travellers have had success in buying boxes from so we'll try there first.

That's it!

Update - Packing Luggage 

I just finished packing everything well in advance of our departure date just to check the general strategy would work. And it does :-)

In the photo, the pannier will accompany me in the cabin and only weighs 6 kg. The bum bag on the right will be my personal item and weighs less than a kilo.

The laundry bag contains the other pannier, the Ortlieb rack pack, 2 fork bags and my handlebar bag. It weighs about 16 kg which is well under my 23 kg allowance. 

I also put my somewhat heavy sandals in the laundry bag and as mentioned above I've also put my bike's pedals in there as well.

The luggage straps lend strength to the flimsy (cheap!) laundry bag. 

This might just work :-)

What happened on the day 

It did just work! But things were a little more complicated than expected. Here's what really happened on the day, highlighting issues and useful things we learned.

1. To obtain a trolley at London Gatwick you need a £1 coin. We had no coins whatsoever and in fact no British cash. Luckily K1 found a trolley that was not locked so we loaded both bike boxes onto it. M1 carried the big laundry bags and between us we got everything into the airport.

2. We started at standard check-in as normal. They weighed our luggage for the hold and our hand luggage there. We retained all bags at this point though because our laundry bags are not deemed "proper luggage" and so have to be treated as though they're over-sized.

3. Our bike boxes (away from the queue) had labels attached by a member of staff.

4. The staff member then walked with us to the Oversized Baggage area. The hold bags and bike boxes were weighed and measured.

5. It was determined that our boxes would not fit through the security scanners (with conveyor belts) so porters were called and they helped us move the bike boxes to a special airport security area behind closed doors.

6. Our boxes were opened by cutting the parcel tape we'd sealed them with and manual checks made by security staff. Once completed they resealed the boxes and retained them. 

7. We were then able to go to the usual security line with our cabin bags.

Phew! So, all's well that ends well. Next time, knowing the boxes we'd used are a little on the large side, we'd probably reduce their size so they exactly fit the bikes and don't exceed the maximum width the airport scanners can handle.