Pamir Highway: Hitchhiking Across Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan

Backstory from 2015 when I hitchhiked across the Pamir Highway, from Osh to Dushanbe. This is part one of my trip from Osh to Khorog. I have added 32 new photos to the blog post.

The Pamir Highway starts in Osh, Kyrgyzstan and ends in Dushanbe, Tajikistan. It’s 1,252 km in length and goes south from Osh to Sary Tash, over the border into Tajikistan, past Karakul Lake to Murghab, then west to Khorog and finally to Dushanbe.

The highest point along its route is the Ak-Baital Pass @4,655 m. It was built between 1931 and 1934 to facilitate Soviet troop movements throughout the region.

I hitchhiked the Pamir Highway in May 2015. I use the term ‘hitchhiking’ as I did not hire a jeep from Osh to Murghab, as is the usual tourist modus operandi.

There is little to no hitchhiking culture here. Paying for the ride is the usual practice. So don’t be cheap.

I took a shared taxi out of Osh to the village of Gulcha, then got a ride with some cool dudes to Sary Tash.

This is the first time I made a sign board:

Sary Tash is little more than a crossroads. Coming from the north, left takes you east to China over the Irkesham Pass. Straight then right takes you west to Karamyk and Tajikistan but the border has always been closed for foreigners. Check if there have been any changes.

​Straight on and heading south takes you to Tajikistan and the Pamirs.

I stayed the night at the Guest House Eliza, which was one of just two guest houses there at that time.

My evening meal & breakfast were both taken at the guest house. There was nothing else open.

Sary Tash is at an altitude of 3,163 m. The weather was bright and sunny, but as soon as the sun went down, the temperature dropped.

This is the road junction in Sary Tash, to the left is the road to Irkeshtam, the border with China. To the right is the road to the Tajik border and also to Karamyk. I was waiting here the next day for quite a few hours:

I took a short walk out of town:

Road sign in Sary Tash with distances to Murghab, Khorog and Osh:

So up with the lark the next morning, I needed to be ready to take any vehicle going. Since I was already 184 km from Osh, It was in for a long wait.
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My hitchhiking was not helped by the arrival of some police who set up a speed trap. At one point, some drivers were filming the shakedown after they were accused of speeding but the guy had a dash-cam and was doing under 50 km/h, whereas the police zapped him at over 80 km/h.

The road out of Sary Tash:

One of the locals had seen me waiting and offered to act as a taxi driver. I was reluctant at first and persevered with my wait but after 5 hours in the cold I accepted.

The car looked like a Ford Zephyr with a big crack across the windshield.

He dropped me at the border post.

At the border, once done with the formalities, I had no choice but to wait. I had no tent, the border guards were not so friendly, and it started to snow. I wanted adventure, come on.

There is 21 km of no man’s land between the Kyrgyz and Tajik border posts. The former is at 3,200 m, the road then climbs like the proverbial, crossing the Kyzyl-Art Pass @ 4,280 m before a short downhill section to the Tajik frontier.

To cross the Pamir Highway, you need to get a permit to enter Gorno-Badakhshan, the Badakhshan Mountainous Autonomous Region.

This was pretty easy in 2015. You get it when you apply for the visa in Bishkek.

I was picked up by a family who ran a homestay at Karakul, the village I wanted to get to. They were on their way to Murghab, the biggest town further along and would return to Karakul and open up for the summer season the next day.

At the top of the Kyzyl-Art Pass @ 4280 m in no man’s land between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan:

​Normally, you always pay for any ride. We did not speak money. They were doing me a massive favour. And when they dropped me off with their neighbours who ran Karakol’s other homestay, they were more than happy with 20$.

​Homestay Aigerim, named after their daughter. A lovely family. Communication was limited. The man of the family knew about 5 words in English. My Russian had progressed to around 30 words, mostly regarding food, drink, numbers and pleasantries. His wife spoke a bit more English.

They were organised by the CBT, Community Based Tourism, where they were talked through the basic needs of travellers so they could open their homes to tourists, supplementing the income generated by breeding, mostly sheep.

View down the road from Karakol village @3900 m.

​Dinner was pasta and potatoes. The meal took an age to prepare. They began at 5 pm to cook, and it wasn’t ready until nearly 9 pm. A meal of pasta and potatoes.

The family were so sweet. The man of the house fussed over the fire to make sure I was warm enough. In fact I was more than comfortable and I told him in a game of charades that he did not need to use any more of the precious fuel, some scrubby bushes, yet still, he brought in more. Things grow very slowly up here at 3,900 m. There are no trees, just these bushes, and winter is long and hard, summer is oh so short.

My room where I ate and slept at 3,900 m above sea level:

The wife would come in to check about the food and my bedding and the grandmother bringing me endless çay. Even Aigerim would come in and straighten out my bedding and blow on the embers.

​I slept fitfully, even though I had been at Altyn Arashan @2,600 m for 5 days, and also the night before in Sary Tash was @3,200 m. Yet overnighting at 3,900 m is never easy. This remains the highest place I have ever slept.

​It snowed during the night. The wind howled. Yet I wrapped up and went walkabout. Desolation in the extreme. Who chooses to live in such a place?

It was one of those places that once you have left, you wish you’d hung around for a bit longer.

Karakul Lake is frozen for most of the year despite being salty. It was formed a millennium ago by a meteorite.

Never before had I been somewhere so extreme, yet I loved it. So peaceful. The air was so brittle, rarefied.

Traffic is slow on the Pamir Highway. On the first day, not one vehicle came past, and so I slept another night in the rarefied air.

I had to wait until 2 pm before the first vehicle came through. A Mitsubishi Shogun, running from Osh to Murghab. The driver dropped off some supplies at my home-stay, and after tea and never-ending bread, they made room for me and took me to Murghab.

The Ak Baital Pass @4655 m, the highest pass on the Pamir Highway, is my second-highest ever, after the Khunjerab Pass in Pakistan, which I crossed back in 2011.

A wonderful day. The guys took me to Murghab, dropping me off at another home-stay. In fact, it seems that every homestay has a son who owns a 4×4, and they become the unofficial taxis across the Pamir.

​Homestay Erali, Murgab @ 3,618 m, after dropping 1,000 m, it felt positively balmy.

Also staying there were two female cyclists, Megan from Canada, and Ilona from Belgium.

We were brought endless chai and bread and the wonderful host with her gold teeth asked continuously if we were ‘хорошо’.

​I was grateful for some western company. We exchanged stories. I was fascinated by their tales from cycling through this mostly inhospitable land. We walked out of town ways, ate lunch and drank a beer at the Pamir Hotel, chatted away the day.

930 km still to Dushanbe, 311 km more to Khorog:

Murghab, 417 km from Osh, 337 km fro Gulcha and 223 km from Sary Tash:

​We took beers back and in the late afternoon, as we waited for dinner, sitting around a yak dung burning stove, we toasted life. And then another night under heavy blankets. Mornings were brutally cold. But spring was here. The sun was gaining strength.

Mother and son at Erali Homestay. Great food here, endless Pamir hospitality!!!!!!

Tajik was my driver for the next leg. He spoke great English. I had met him the day before at the market. He came to pick me up.

We shook hands, and he told me he was almost ready to go. We had to go and pick up a sheep that would be travelling roof rack class, out in the cold for 311 km with its legs tied together and half stuffed into a 50 L rice sack. Poor thing.

I help load him up. And for company, he had a skinned yak next to him, which I also manhandled up to Tajik, who was up on the roof of his Pajero.

In the shop, I picked up an extra chocolate bar. I had an errand. The two girls had left three hours before me on their trusty mounts, and I asked Tajik to stop when we caught them up.

They were having a little picnic in a small hollow, out of the wind. They were delighted. And then, they were alone again. I’d bump into them sometime next week, with the promise of more goodies.

Days end, and we arrived in Khorog, the biggest place I’ve seen in over a week. Time for some RnR.

Straight down to the Indian restaurant for dahl, rice, naan and lassi. Oh, so wonderful. And two rather expensive beers.

Celebration time, as I felt I deserved it after the Pamir crossing.

​The Pamir Lodge was a fantastic homestay; a chance to wash clothes, recharge camera batteries with the 24 hr power, but as the few days rolled by, I longed for the wastelands, the emptiness, the harsh realities of life up at 3,900 m, of eating eggs, potatoes and pasta and wiping my butt with snow.

Life had been reduced to living with just simple necessities.

Life on the Pamir Highway!

Part 2, detailing my story from Khorog and the ride to Dushanbe, never did get written. Maybe one day.