Central Asia Pamir Highway

Day 1 - Home - Departure

Day 2 - Arrival - Osh
You will be picked up from the airport and taken to the hotel. Osh is the second city of the country. Here people speak more Uzbek than Kyrgyz. It is a city that has been set up by the soviet with wide streets and squares and a beautiful statue of Lenin on one of the streets.

Day 3 - Osh - Tashkent
Early in the morning we will cross the border to Uzbekistan. This brings us to the Fergana valley. This is a fertile piece of lowland surrounded by mountain ranges. The valley was drawn during the division of the countries near Uzbekistan. It is only connected to the rest of the country with a narrow piece of land, there is only one road. We follow this road and at the most narrow point we will cross a beautiful pass. After the descent we arrive in the capital of the country, Tashkent.

Day 4 - Tashkent - Samarkand, Day 5 - Samarkand - Stay
We are now in the lowland part of the country. The Russians have planted this area full of cotton plantations. They got the irrigation water from Lake Baikal. It shrunk to less than a third of its original size. So it's a flat landscape. The city of Samarkand is where we spend the night. The city is mainly known for its large silk route settlements. This is the Registan. We have a day off here to visit these buildings.

Day 6 - Samarkand - Seven Lakes
It is only a short distance from Samarkand to the border of Tajikistan. This is also the border of the landscape between the flat Uzbekistan and the mountainous Tajikistan. After the border procedures we drive to Penjikend for lunch. Then we turn south. There is an unpaved road that runs alongside a number of lakes. The road gets worser after each lake, we drive to the seventh lake. Here we spend the night in a homestay. It is a deserted but beautiful area.

Day 7 - Seven Lakes - Dushanbe
We start to drive back along the lakes to the main road. Once there, we continue to head east through the mountain landscape of West Tajikistan along winding roads and deep gorges. The road here is in good condition but the gorges next to it are immensely deep. About 80 km before Dushanbe we have to go through the infamous and dangerous Anzob tunnel - "the gate to hell" -. The road surface in this tunnel is full of holes and the reinforcement bar is loose everywhere. The holes and channels are almost invisible because of the water that flows down from the ceiling. The cars criss-cross each other and there is no lighting, but there is sometimes a big broken fan in the way. An exciting ride that you will not soon forget. Towards the end of the afternoon we arrive in the capital of Tajikistan, Dushanbe.

Day 8 - Dushanbe - Stay
This city is one of the most beautiful cities of the former Soviet Union and is located around 160 kilometers from Afghanistan. We stay here for two nights in Rudakistraat, within walking distance of the Presidential Palace, the museum, the reclining Buddha and the local market.

Day 9 - Dushanbe - Kalaikum
We drive out of town on the main road and after 20 km we take a narrow paved road. Along the hydroelectric power station and the large dam we drive to Dangara where we stop for lunch. We drive south and approach the border with Afghanistan. You have checkpoints throughout the ride and local police officers can stop you. You must show respect for their work and patiently undergo the checks of your passport. Usually the agents are just curious and want to be photographed with you and your motorcycle. Today it can again be a hot day, meandering through the curves and along the beautiful Blue Lake. We end the day driving through an endless plain with grain fields.

The route of Kulyab is partly unpaved and it is a beautiful area, even below the tree line. Almost the entire day we drive along the Panj River that separates Tajikistan from Afghanistan, through the mountains. We pass a few checkpoints and end the day in a simple guesthouse.

Day 10 - Kalaikhum - Khorog
We leave early and follow the border with Afghanistan and the river all day. This is a very sparsely populated rugged area and the peaks around us reach over 5,000 meters. This is the autonomous region of the Pamir people. Pamirs are rocks that have been carved by glaciers. After a particularly impressive route through the mountains we arrive in Khorog. We spend the night in a simple hotel. The area around Khorog is beautiful and rugged. The two high mountain peaks are from the Skalinsky of 5700 meters and the Shavash of 5300 meters.

Day 11 - Khorog - Langar
We continue to follow the river border with Afghanistan in the province of Badakshan. The peaks around us now reach over 6,000 meters. We visit the hot springs of Gharm Chasma. These springs are in limestone rocks and have a resemblance to the springs in Pamukkale in Turkey. Then we slowly drive on a bad dirt road into the Wakhan Corridor, along a meandering river bed with the foothills of the Hindu Kush on one side and the Pamir Mountains on the other. Ishkashim is a border town with Afghanistan. Here the Great Game ended and the Russians and British agreed to turn the Wakhan Corridor into a neutral zone.

We drive further into the Corridor and see Buddhist caves in the rock face and remains of what may be a Buddhist stupa. Snowy peaks appear around us and along the river we finally arrive in Langar. Here the Wakhi River flows together with the Panj River and becomes the Pamir River. A bridge is being built to Afghanistan to connect the Pamir Highway with the Karakorum Highway in Pakistan, which may herald a whole new era in this isolated region. We spend the night in Langar again at in a simple homestay.

Day 12 - Langar - Murghab
In Langar we bend off the river and climb the Khargush pass of 4344 meters and thus leave the Afghan border. From here, the Pamir Highway is an unpaved road through a deserted wasteland along various mountain lakes with salt beaches. A beautiful day that leads to the small village of Bulunkul. There are seldom foreigners in this remote village, certainly not on motorbikes. After a few hours' drive we arrive in Murghab.

Day 13 - Murgab - stay - daytrip
Murghab is the largest settlement in the area. We get a first look at the mountain giant Muztagh Ata, located on the Chinese side of the Pamir. Unemployment here is almost 100%, a result of the collapse of the Soviet Union on which the Russians who took care of the work almost all left. Very special is a market neighborhood that is made up of various containers.

Day 14 - Murgab - Sary Tash
We are now driving close to the border with China. For that reason there is again a military control post after an hour's drive. On the other side of the border is the Chinese province of Xin Jiang with the capital Kashgar. In this still wild area we pass the Akbaytal pass of 4655 meters. We then arrive at Lake Karakul, an opal blue lake with snowy mountain tops in the background. We stop here for lunch. Then we climb to the border post. This is located on a pass of 4300 meters. After the formalities it is not so far to Sary Tash. We do not spend the night in the village itself, but a bit outside of it at Kamp Lenin. This camp is named after the highest peak of Kyrgyzstan, on the border with Tajikistan. If you are lucky with the weather you can see the peak from the camp.

Day 15 - Sary Tash - Osh
After Sary Tash it only goes downhill and we leave the Pamirs behind us forever. At the end of the afternoon we arrive in Osh. We hand in the bikes and spend another day off in this small town to do your last shopping and to recover from this impressive journey.

Day 16 - Osh - Home