Our Pamir Highway Adventure
One of the great adventure trips along the Silk Road is to take the Pamir Highway between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. It is a high road journey through the spectacular scenery of the Pamir mountains. It takes a minimum of 5 days and passes through some of the remotest parts of Central Asia. The Pamir Highway is an epic journey that ranks as one of the greatest road trips in the world and should be at the top of any adventure traveller’s To Do list.
Organising transport for the Pamir Highway
There is very little in the way of public transport for the Pamir Highway so the best way to do this trip is by hiring a 4×4 and driver. That costs money so the best way to make it affordable is to share with other travellers to keep the cost down. So before we even got to Kyrgyzstan we started looking for people to share the trip with. We used the excellent travellers forum on caravanistan.com to find a group to share the journey with, and it wasn’t long before we had a trip organised.
In Osh we teamed up with our new found travel buddies to begin our adventure. We were with Daniel, an Australian, Francois, a Frenchman and Katie and Jake, an English couple who’d done the hard work of organizing the vehicle and driver. It was organised through Apple Guest House in Osh and the cost for our 5 day trip to Khorog was $100 each for the transport. This was a discounted marketing trip and the usual starting price for a 5 day trip is around $720 for a vehicle for 6 people. The accommodation we’d pay for en route. It was a great deal.
Katie and Jake write great blogs on their site – www. untoldwanderlust.com and they have useful information on the Pamir Highway trip on this blog post
Our Pamir adventure begins
We left Osh for a long drive day on Day 1 to the Tajikistan border at Borodoro. Our car was a sturdy Toyota Land Cruiser and our driver, Beka, was an experienced Kyrgyz who had made the trip hundreds of times and knew the roads and his vehicle well. He was the perfect man for the job and we were soon very relaxed and comfortable with him.
It was a bit of a tight squeeze in the Land Cruiser with six of us so we agreed to swap seats in shifts to share the seats around. Less legroom in the back row but very comfy in the middle and up front, with the left window seat being the prime position for photos!
High mountain passes
It was a long 230 km journey to the Tajikistan border from Osh but the scenery was definitely worth it, with beautiful sweeping views of the Pamir mountains from the high mountain passes we were crossing. At Chyiyrchyk pass we stopped and chatted with nomads, who gave us warm mares’ milk that they took straight from the mare in front of us. It was warm and delicious.
The road turned rougher as we approached the mountains and climbed to the border. Beka was happy to stop for us whenever we wanted to take photos, which was often. There was so much awe-inspiring scenery to enjoy, and also there were the grazing yaks and horses, and the occasional bright orange marmot darting around the high plains. They are just the cutest of creatures.
Across the border
The border crossing took an hour, but we patiently went along with the speed of the military border guards. They eventually processed us and were quite friendly and professional. We even got a smile from some of them. I’ve found that when they have automatic weapons it’s always best to smile back!
It snowed high up on the pass and the wind blew ferociously as we tried to get photos. We were at over 4,100 metres here and we could feel it, finding it challenging to breathe and certainly feeling the cold.
Tajikistan
We were now in Tajikistan and the mountain scenery was just as incredible as Kyrgyzstan. Dropping down slightly we followed the barbed wire fence that demarcates the 20 kms of no mans land to the Chinese border.
Heavy clouds hung low over the snowy mountains to the west. They cast amazing shadows over the sweeping plains. The landscape looked like a surreal painting. We were all gasping with wonder at the stunning natural beauty around us.
Our drive day ended at Kara Kul lake and a pleasant homestay on the lakeside. $15 got us a bed, dinner and breakfast there. Yaks grazed by the turquoise water and friendly village kids came out to great us as we wandered around the sleepy village. Everyone seemed so friendly and welcoming here. It was a great introduction to Tajikistan.
Day 2 – Kara Kul to Murghab
A brilliant blue sky after a clear night of glittering stars. The perfect start to a day. Beka drove us to a great spot on Kara Kul’s lakeside with a dramatic backdrop of the Pamirs. It was another great day of driving through more breathtaking mountain scenery as we climbed over the mighty Akbaytal pass at 4655 Metres.
Another bonus was an unexpected stop at an old run down fortress that was built by Tsar Nicholas 2nd to defend Russian interests in the Great Game. It faced the imposing mountains that make the Chinese border and symbolised the furthest outpost of the Russian empire at that time. It was an eerie place but so interesting to scramble over the remains of that bygone era.
The run in to Murghab was just as impressive and the dry, dusty frontier town was very welcoming and interesting. We explored its tumble down container market and its back alleys and spent a pleasant night at the Filura homestay ($15 with dinner and breakfast). The boys even had a sauna in a Russian style banya they had set up there to wash away the dust and grime from the road.
This was a great start to this awe-inspiring journey and there was still a lot more phenomenal scenery to come…
Watch on YouTube…
Read Part 2 of this trip for Day 3 to 5 along the fabled Wakhan Valley and the Afghanistan borderland.
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Find more Frugal Travel adventures in Central Asia from our travels in Kyrgyzstan Kazakhstan Uzbekistan Turkmenistan and Iran
