Our route North this morning along the M34 was more spectacular canyon, and thankfully good road. We noticed electrical transmission towers situated high up on the steep walls of the valley and we spent some time discussing how they would have been erected.

At the town of Ayny we turned west towards Panjakent and a currently closed border crossing to Uzbekistan. We still had a few days to kill before we could enter Uzbekistan and so decided to explore some of the Panjakent road. Well it quickly became obvious that this was another typical Tajik road. It follows the steep valley of the Zeravshan and for many miles actually runs along a series of shelves cut into the wall of the valley. It passes through many small villages and you guessed it, it is very rough. In places we came across road crews using jack hammers to remove overhanging rocks. We also had the pleasure of a couple of very dubious bridges with decking made from patched-up steel plate. The signs near the bridges claimed they could carry 30T, and we saw many large trucks crossing them, but the look of them did not give much confidence.


We drove only about 20 miles along the Panajakent road (until the canyon widened out) before returning a bit to a nice flat area for our nights camp. We occupied some of the evening by defrosting the refrigerator; as you can see in the not-too-flatering photograph of me above.