We got an early start this morning, after saying goodbye to our Swiss friends. We were on the road by 7:00am. According to our map we would follow the Panj River for another 100 km and then finaly head away from the river cross country towards Dushanbe. It is hard to believe that we have been following this same river (except for our side trip up the Gunt) since the town of Langar and our first day on the Wakhan. In other words we have driven beside the Panj river for 4 1/2 days, and to give some indication of the state of the road we have averaged less than 20 km/h on each of those days.

The Panj did not disappoint us and continued to provide spectacular gorge scenery, though now the road was mostly good pavement with only the occasional sections of gravel. In a couple of years this section of the highway will be an international standard road.

Late morning the road finally exited the gorge and passed into open rolling hills. Then after maybe 10 km of really rough temporary road across river beds and all kinds of obstacles we started to climb up onto a plateau and towards the sizeable farming and market town of Kulyab and away from the Afghan border.

From Kulyab we spent a hot afternoon (95°F with no A/C) on good secondary roads winding our way across the Tajik lowlands roughly in the direction of Dushanbe. We passed through a number of police traffic stops, a number of border patrol check points and even army check points all without any hassles.


Around 6:00pm the road climbed to pass beside the south western end of Nurek Resevoir, towards the top of the climb we found a parking lot big enough for us and far enough off the road to be safe from crazy Tajik drivers. As a bonus the place had a breeze and the outside temp was down to 85°F. The temperature alone made this a good camping spot.