Pamir Highway in Tajikistan


The Pamir Highway (or – for the unromantics – the plain old M41) is one of the highest road trips on earth. Over around three weeks and 1,250km, you’ll bump through three countries, from Tajikistan’s capital of Dushanbe to Osh, the oldest city in Kyrgyzstan, on a road with Silk Road origins. Even better: it’s via a gauntlet of lunar mountain passes, furious river rapids, hot springs and geysers.
This isn’t the sort of region you want to admire from afar. You’ll scramble across mountain passes in a four-wheel drive, hike the alpine meadows, stay with the communities that tough it out at 3,650m, and learn about the storied history of the Pamiri people who live here. Because while we might think this is the edge of the world, to tens of thousands it’s still the center. Along the Shuraba Pass (2,267m) – the border region between Tajikistan and Afghanistan – people still tell stories of the shepherds, pilgrims, traders, explorers and soldiers who have traversed these roads for a few millennia.
Read our Pamir Highway guide to see what’s what – and to work out whether this rocky road is your cup of tea at all.
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Essential ingredients: small groups, guides & homestays
The chance to get to know another culture is a two-way street. After all, taking on the full Pamir Highway is still the privilege of the few who are prepared to take on the challenges – and costs – of traveling this isolated branch of the Silk Road. The communities you meet will be as interested in meeting you as you are in meeting them.
Through them, you’ll understand more about the recent border conflicts and malleable territories. In Tajikistan’s Eastern Pamirs, you’ll find ethnic Kyrgyz peoples who still live semi-nomadic lives, moving down to graze cattle in yurt-dotted pastures in the summer and retreating to the mountain villages in the take-no-prisoners winters. Or you might meet the hardy residents who live in Murghab – a town guarded by gleaming 6,000m-plus mountain peaks.
From Silk Road to Soviet
The wild world outside the cities heaves with history, too. Lenin Peak (7,134m) looms over the Pamir Highway much as the dictator’s legacy loomed over Tajikistan during Soviet rule. The Wakhan Valley is shared between Tajikistan and Afghanistan – a buffer zone that the British and Russian Empires wrestled over during the 19th-century Great Game. Before that, it was a route for traders, nomads and caravans for a good few millennia. “I think you learn more and more about the history as the journey progresses,” says Chris. “You see that in real time.”
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The time is now
But in more general terms, the best time to go is right now. Chris explains: “It’s had its ups and downs in terms of internal safety. The politics of Tajikistan is quite complicated. The eastern part of the country is almost semi-autonomous, so it kind of has its own governance and laws. And up until 1997, there’s been a civil war between those two eastern and western parts of Tajikistan, which meant it was tricky to go there. But that has since died down, and the FCO changed its advice so it’s no longer advising against travel there.”