Today was a big day for we crossed the border from The Kyrgyz Republic into the high mountains of eastern and southern Tajikistan and started along the famous and maybe even legendary Pamir Highway. This next section of our trip to Dushanbe (the capital of Tajikistan) has been both alluring and forbidding since our first tentative thoughts about this trip. And today we are there, it is no longer somewhere in the future.

The day started with a picturesque drive up the broad valley of the Gul'cha river through many quaint but tidy villages, and past teams of locals out cleaning rubbish from the road side. Along the way chatted with a few local women, and a number of motorcycle tourists as well as enjoyed and tried to capture with our cameras the impressive mountain scenery.

To our surprise the road was good, even excellent, a big contrast to when we were here in 2008 and the road was dirt and infested with potholes.

At the end of the valley we started a steep climb to Taldyk Pass at 3540 meters (11,614 ft). The roadway was simply amazing. A tight series of switch backs snaked up the steep head wall of the valley and in places the road was literally carved into the side of the hill. The roadway is now "paved" but the mountains and the weather are clearly putting up a strong rear guard action. In may places part of the road way was blocked with recent gravel falls, in other places part of the roadway simply had vanished, and in yet other places the mountain had uplifted 100 ft sections of 12" thick concrete road surface and moved it out of the way.

From the top of Taldyk Pass a little more climbing brought us to the village of Sary-Tash where the road forked, with one branch going to China via the Irkeshtam Pass and the other going to Tajikistan via the Kyzyl-Art Pass at 4280 meters(14,042 ft).

We spent a little time in Sary-Tash while Nina tried to find some ladies she had photographed here in 2008. She had brought with her a book of those photos and hoped to give them to the ladies. As it turned out she did not contact any of the ladies but did meet one of the daughters. She hopes mum gets the book before the grand kids reduce it to paper mache. While Nina searched the village I chatted with a Slovenian couple trying to hitch hike to the Chinese border. This seemed like a bit of a challenge as while we were in the town no vehicles departed for China.

Our road was initially south across a wide river valley or plain directly towards the border and an imposing range of mountains. Consulting our map we identified Peak Lenin at 7134 meters (23,400 ft). This was the highest (actually second highest) mountain in the old USSR and sits right on the Tajik border. Once across the plain the road entered a wide valley that started a gradual climb. At this point the road surface was old pavement with scattered potholes and occassional sections of gravel; but all in all not too bad.

After traveling for sometime we came upon the two couples we met in Osh yesterday and stopped for a chat and to fill our water tank from a nearby stream.

The Kyrgyz border post was only a few kilometers up the road and it took us only about 15 minutes to complete exit processing and then we were on our way into no mans land. The next 20 km to the Tajik border post followed a series of river valleys, deteriorating road conditions and some steady climbing before before the final push to the summit of Kyzyl-Art pass and then a short descent to the Tajik post. We were pleased that the truck made the climb without missing a beat, though like its owners the thin atmosphere required slow going and some careful gear selection. Kyzyl-Art pass is marked by a couple of monuments one each for Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.

The Tajik border post was only a few kilometers beyond the pass. Initially we thought things were going well as we got done with the officer who initially met us in about 15 minutes, only to discover that we still had to do customs and transport police. This was all a bit perplexing as unlike most border posts there was noone outside pointing to where we had to go next. I guess at this altitude staying inside and warm was a higher priority than helping travelers work out what to do. So between this lack of clear process, and getting behind a local with a truck load of goods that caused a very long conversation with customs it tooks us a couple of hours to get through. It also cost us $40 at customs for the truck and $20 at transport police again for the truck. The amounts seemed somewhat arbitary but in both cases we got receipts that included the officers name and the all important official stamp.


We drove a couple of kilometers down the road from the post, dropped a few hundred meters of alititude and pulled off the road on a nice flat spot for the night at 4060 meters (13,350 feet). We had a somewhat restless night thanks to the altitude.