The Pamir Highway, otherwise known as M41, is the ultimate road trip in Central Asia. The stretch between Dushanbe and Osh is 1,200km and passes through the Pamir Mountain range, making it one of the highest altitude highways in the world. Because of its remoteness, there is no public transportation. The only ways to travel are either by hiring a car with driver, hiring a car and driving yourself, or trying to cycle or hitchhike. Journeys along the highway typically last for between 7 days and two weeks, including a diversion from the main highway to the Wakhan Valley which borders Afghanistan.

Because of the altitude, weather on the Pamir Highway can be tricky with freezing cold temperatures at times. As a result, travel on the Pamir Highway mostly takes place during the summer months, from May until October. We visited right at the end of the season, in mid-October, and while the weather conditions themselves weren’t too bad (we weren’t uncomfortably cold) it was noticeable that things were starting to close up for the winter. If self-driving, it is technically possible to visit the Pamir Highway year-round as the road doesn’t close, although I would definitely recommend sticking to the summer months.

After much debate over how best to make the journey, we eventually opted to hire a car and driver for a 7-day road trip using Visit Alay – we chose this company both because of the price, and because they were able to pair us up with fellow travelers in advance so we didn’t have to worry about arranging a group before departing. Whether hiring a driver or self-driving, by sharing a car you greatly reduce costs for everyone involved.

What to expect?

Traveling the Pamir Highway is a fantastic and unique experience. Highlights along the way include the vast Wakhan Corridor and Kargush Pass, the impressive Pamir and Hindu Kush mountain ranges, the high altitude lake at Karakul (4000m above sea level), exploring Ishkashim and 12th century Yamchun Fortress, immersing yourself in the steamy waters at the Bibi Fatima springs, experiencing rural Pamiri life in Alichur and following the Panj river catching glimpses of rural life just across the river in Afghanistan.

Yamchun Fortress, one of the most spectacular places in the Wakhan Valley

The area around the highway is part of the Gorno-Badakhshan autonomous region, which covers all of eastern Tajikistan. To be able to undertake a Pamir Highway road trip you need to apply for a GBAO permit before heading out on the highway. For information about how to get a permit visit the Caravanistan website. Visit Alay arranged ours for an extra cost. There are various military checkpoints along the route and they will ask to see this documentation. You will also need a permit to cross the Tajik-Kyrgyz border – again, Visit Alay took care of this for us.

The GBAO is the poorest region in Tajikistan – almost all essential products have to be imported. Houses are usually more on the rustic side with coal or animal dung burnt for warmth. Alichur was particularly striking with its white-washed, flat-roofed houses so similar in appearance that it was easy to get lost when walking around. It felt like a ghost-town with few residents around and only cows for company. 

The desolate town of Alichur

Pamiri people are distinctly different from Tajiks or Kyrgyz and have their own language, culture and traditions that are completely separate from either ethnic group. There are also ethnic Tajik and Kyrgyz living in the region. Some of my personal favourite moments of our trip were:

• Speaking with a local boy at the Hulbuk fortress who’d learned to speak English in 4 months. One of the original archaeologists now runs the museum and offers guided tours in English. He proudly displays a photo of himself with Emomali Rahmon, and various travel guides in which he’s quoted under the prefix Doctor (although we were informed by the local boy that he wasn’t officially a doctor). In an odd twist, this archaeologist kept grabbing artefacts from the museum shelves and encouraged us to take part in demonstrations with them! He also presented the ladies in the group with roses from the garden – an interesting start to the road trip.

Dan with the doctor

• Watching a member of our group go for a quick dip in Lake Karakul was highly amusing – it’s salt water so the water can reach below 0C without freezing! 

Ice forms around the shore of the salt lake in Karakul

• Slogging our way up to Panorama Ridge with the 600m climb was a real challenge – huddled one behind the other in a conga line all the way to the top. A great sense of achievement for the group when we reached the top. 

• Unexpected bonding session at Bibi Fatima springs as me and another girl had to get naked and go in the springs together. In the end we both decided to take our glasses off so that we couldn’t see each other’s naked forms. This was a great idea until some local women entered the hot spring and we couldn’t tell if they were men or women! 

• Playing with the granddaughter of our hosts in Alichur – she was a very excitable little girl with bundles of energy. 

We loved staying with this family in the village of Alichur

• Seeing the snow leopard cubs with their mother at the snow leopard conservation centre near Murghab – this is one of the only centres in the world where snow leopards are released back into the wild. 

• Marvelling at the size of Peak Lenin, the vast plains of the Alay Valley and glacial lakes near Peak Lenin. 

• The traditional Pamir and Tajik music that our driver, Ibrohim, played on the stereo was a real treat – it almost seemed like the music matched the landscape. Enchanting and rhythmic and hypnotic. 

• Waving to Afghans across the Panj river in the Wakhan Valley

You can see Afghans going about their day across the river

• Watching Afghan TV in Khorog – a rare treat to see what life was like across the river. In case you’re wondering, there are lots of game shows and the call to pray is live-streamed on the tv. 

It’s all about the views on the Pamir Highway

What to expect on the Pamir Highway in October?

No two trips along the Pamir Highway are the same. We visited in mid-October just before the season finished for tourists. Winter is tough along the Pamir Highway. Tour companies like Visit Alay usually cease running trips after October due to the cold temperatures, icy road conditions and snowy weather. Our experience on the highway was therefore coloured by being at the end of the season when most amenities were generally winding down for the winter. We can therefore only comment on our personal experience on the Pamir Highway in mid-October – this would be completely different to someone else’s on the exact same trip in August. 

Braving the conditions atop Panorama Ridge

• Changeable weather – the week before we started there was heavy snowfall. We were very lucky with blue skies most of the way but this could’ve easily not been the case. On the hike up to Panorama Ridge it was initially so foggy that you almost couldn’t see right in front of your face, however the fog lifted and by the time we reached the summit we had fantastic views over the alpine lakes. 

• Cold temperatures at night – more so in the autumn than in the summer months. Inside the guesthouses was warm but outside was freezing in places like Murghab and Alichur, which made using the outside toilets an ordeal during the night. Most of the accommodation available along the route is homestays, where you eat and sleep in close proximity to the family.

• Due to the weather, the itinerary has to be flexible and can change depending on the weather and homestay closures; for example, we had to stay in Murgab instead of Lake Karakul and in Sary Mogul instead of the yurt camp at Peak Lenin due to end of season closures. This probably wouldn’t be an issue in peak season, but there may be other problems with guest houses being fully booked etc.

The town of Karakul was virtually abandoned by the time we visited in October

• Shared rooms – expect to share a room with at least one other person. As it wasn’t peak season, myself and Dan managed to share a room with each other (essentially meaning we had a private room) for 5 nights out of 6, which I imagine wouldn’t be the case during peak season. It’s common to share a room with the rest of your group as most of the homestays have 4 single beds in each room. It’s more cost effective for families to heat only the essential rooms so squeezing everyone into one room is preferable. 

• By the end of the trip expect to be very familiar with your driver and the people in your group. 

• Awful roads – sometimes the ‘highway’ is nothing more than a gravel tracks, and when there were tarmac roads there were inevitably huge potholes. It’s a bumpy ride – not great if you usually get travel sickness or are feeling the effects of food poisoning like us.

A relatively good section of road

• If hiring a car and driver, the driver will change when crossing from Tajikistan into Kyrgyzstan (or vice versa). Due to visa and border tensions, it isn’t possible for the drivers to make the entire journey so you will have a different driver for the Osh-Sary Mogul portion of the trip. The driver change will take place in the no-man’s land near the Tajik immigration checkpoint.

• Most of your time is spent being driven around. Most days are spent on the road with between 5-7 hours per day. This isn’t a problem, we were never bored due to the frequent stops and the fantastic scenery. When we visited in October, some of the hikes weren’t possible so there were fewer stops to break up the driving.

• The polite thing to do is to offer to rotate seats among passengers during the journey so that each member of the group can take the front passenger seat and everyone has to experience the relative discomfort of the middle back seat.

• Terrible toilets – most of the guesthouses have outhouses with a hole. Western toilets are hard to find. There are limited toilets along the route so most of the time we just had to pull over and find a big rock to wee behind. 

Your typical Pamir Highway toilet – trust me, it’s worse inside

• Food Poisoning – unfortunately we were struck down with some pretty horrendous food poisoning on day 2 (me) whilst Dan was suffering from day 3-6 – nasty! We can’t say for certain whether it was something we ate during the trip but another group we met at the GBAO border check was completely struck down, with every member ill for 2 whole days – they had to stay in a small village to recover. There was also a Chinese guy that we kept encountering on the road who was similarly struck down with food poisoning, to the point that he actually collapsed when we went hiking to see the petroglyphs near Langar village. Getting sick on the Pamir Highway is almost an inevitability no matter how careful you are. Bring plenty of diarrhoea pills with you! 

• Unbelievably, we met quite a few cyclists in the Pamirs which was very strange to us as the weather was bitingly cold and cross-winds particularly challenging at the time of our visit. 

• Food – we were pleasantly surprised to find that vegetables and fruit were included with most meals at guesthouses. Even in the more remote village of Alichur there was some carrot in our buckwheat-style plov. We expected there to be a general lack of fresh vegetables and fruit but this wasn’t the case. There are shops/markets in Kalaikhum, Khorog, Murgab and Sary Mogul where you can stock up on snacks and water. Make sure you have additional snacks as we unexpectedly skipped lunch after climbing Panorama Ridge, which was a mild annoyance after expending so much energy to summit the ridge through the freezing conditions – we weren’t forewarned about this so all of us were very grouchy on the way to Alichur. 

Plov and manti is on the menu in the Pamirs

• Water – there are plenty of shops along the route where you can stock up on water, in places such as Kalaikhum, Khorog, Murgab and Sary Mogul.

• Bedding – all guesthouses provided ample bedding. We read some advice online to bring a sleeping bag, but this was not necessary at all

You encounter a variety of landscapes along the Pamir Highway

• Showers – there are probably going to be places along the route where it’s not possible to have a shower. I can report that there were warm showers in our guesthouses at Kalaikhum, Khorog, Langar and Sary Mogul. During the colder winter months the water freezes in the pipes so there was no running water in Alichur and Murgab. Of course, the hot spring at Bibi Fatima was a highlight and also much appreciated with the limited showering facilities on the route. It was possible to wash in a Russian sauna at our guesthouse in Murgab (Guesthouse Erali) which was kindly arranged by the family. Sheep dung was used to heat a small outhouse with hot water in urns available for a wash. It was a truly authentic experience. 

• Electricity – we were able to charge our phone at every homestay along the way so you don’t need to panic about not having enough charge left on your phone to take photos. Battery packs are also advised as there are sometimes power cuts along the route – we experienced this firsthand in Murgab. 

We experienced power cuts in Murghab

• FYI, don’t take photos of the Tajik border guards along the Panj river as they’re sensitive about being photographed. We were also told that they don’t like tourists stopping along the Panj and others have reported being moved on to a designated stopping place. 

• A snow leopard conservation centre is located near Murgab – ask your driver to stop there. It’s not an official stop but we asked our driver, Ibrohim to stop there and he obliged us. 

• Make sure you bring the recommended amount of Tajik somoni with you – you MUST get this before you depart on the trip. It’s not easy to procure Tajik somoni along the way. There are banks in Khorog if you find yourself out of money but little to no other ATM facilities along the route. 

By October, most of the guesthouses along the route were closed for winter – sometimes it was difficult for our driver to find a guesthouse that was still open. This was especially true for Alichur. We had to stay in Murgab instead of Lake Karakul due to the lack of homestays still open. 

In October there are also less people on the route – we had Panorama Ridge, Ishkashim Fortress, Yamchun Fortress and Traveller’s Pass in Kyrgyzstan to ourselves. I can imagine that during peak season it’s probably impossible to be the only group at the various stops along the route. 

Driving it yourself vs. hiring a car and driver

If you’re trying to decide whether to go with a tour company like Visit Alay or hire a 4×4 to take to the roads independently, it’s important to consider the pros and cons of each option which I’ve listed below:

Self-drive

• More flexibility with the route and duration (you’re not fixed to a schedule).
• More comfortable journey as you can have the whole vehicle to yourself – not crammed into the back seats between two other people
• Most likely more expensive unless you’re sharing with a group 
• The roads are terrible so you could easily damage the vehicle – you may have to pay for any scratches which are sure to happen on the roads. 
• You might even get lost along the route. 
• You don’t want to break down on the Pamir Highway as it’s super remote – if you take a tour there is the added protection of it being the responsibility of the tour company to sort out any breakdowns. There is a general code that if you see any vehicle on the side of the road you have to stop and assist them. 
• Refuelling may be an issue along the route as beyond the cities of Khorog and Murgab there aren’t many petrol stations. 
• There are long distances between villages and towns along the route so this could be an issue if you become ill or something unexpected happens. 
• Finding accommodation and safe places to eat may be an issue as they are not always marked online or on maps – it would be necessary to arm yourself with this information before setting off

Hiring a driver

• The driver will speak Pamiri so can communicate with the hosts of the guesthouse if necessary
• The driver is familiar with the roads so you’re in safe hands – the road and weather conditions can be challenging to say the least. 
• Likely to be less expensive if you split the cost with 3 other people, and companies like Visit Alay can pair you up with travel buddies if needed
• The driver will drive you to guesthouses so you don’t need to worry about finding somewhere to stay.
• The driver will take you to restaurants which may not be on Google maps and has local knowledge of which are the best ones. 
• You can sit back and relax whilst being driven around – you don’t need to worry about directions, restaurants, guesthouses or any logistics. 
• You are providing stable work opportunities to a local who can then provide for his family. 
• Taking a tour allows you to share the experience with others – it’s a great way to meet other travelers as you’re constantly with each other 24 hours a day. 
• Visit Alay organized our GBAO and Kyrgyz border permits so we didn’t need to go to the OVIR Office in Dushanbe – this takes the hassle and bureaucracy out of trying to do it yourself
• If you get ill or something unexpected happens on the highway, your driver will be able to assist. 
• You are on a fixed schedule so if you want to spend an extra day somewhere or add in an extra hike you can’t do that. The driver will stop if you want to take photos or go to the toilet but you can’t hang around much beyond short breaks at unscheduled stops. 
• The driver can communicate with border soldiers about any unexpected delays along the route. This happened to us when we were told that the road had to be closed due to the president passing on the road to Khorog. In the end he ended up taking a helicopter but we were unexpectedly halted for about 30 minutes and would’ve been very confused were it not for our driver

Our group with our driver, Ibrohim

Ultimately you can make your own decision based on your circumstances and priorities; it will surely be a memorable adventure no matter what!

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