I completed the world’s wildest road trip in Tajikistan — it’s not for the faint-hearted

The rows of gleaming white electric cars look out of place outside the dusty town of Murghab, nestled beneath the peaks of the Pamir Mountains in Tajikistan.

My driver tells me they’ve been imported from China, waiting to be transported along the Pamir Highway to car dealerships in the capital.

The only other vehicles here are rusting wrecks, Russian Ladas lying at the side of the road, relics of the country’s Soviet past. There’s also a crumbling statue of Lenin, and I spy schoolboys wearing Soviet-style pioneer ties on their way to afternoon classes.

The streets are lined with single storey homes, roofs made from corrugated iron, and as the call to prayer echoes, men wearing traditional kalpaks make their way to a tiny mosque. Having rid itself of the communist yoke, Tajiks are now free to follow their Muslim faith.

I’d found myself in this isolated town as part a road trip along the Pamir Highway, one of the highest and most remote roads in the world.

Starting in Osh, Kyrgyzstan and ending in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, it spans roughly 1,250km through the Pamir Mountains. At some of it’s highest points, it reaches 4,600m (15,000ft).

Once part of the ancient Silk Road, the highway was expanded in the 1930s by the Soviets, but was closed to tourists due to its strategic importance, and closeness to Afghanistan and China. Today though, it’s a popular road trip among adventure travellers.

Having visited almost all the ‘stans’ of Central Asia, drawn to their remoteness and beauty, I wanted to tick the final one, Tajikistan, off my list.

So, I’d signed up for a nine night journey (including a detour to Afghanistan’s Wakhan Valley) with Kyrgyz tourist company, Visit Alay.

I could either pay for my own jeep and driver, or reserve a seat for $475, and hope the car would fill up. This journey isn’t for the faint-hearted, but fortunately, I was lucky. There were three other backpackers — two Korean students and a Chinese Canadian woman — wanting to go too.

A journey of a lifetime

After leaving Osh, we had spent the first bitterly cold night in a traditional yurt camp in Kyrgyzstan.

We gathered in one yurt to eat rather bland soup and pasta around a fire. I had quickly learnt that being a vegetarian was not ideal in Tajikistan, and I was also terrified of food poisoning, having read stories of tourists being medevacked. I’d brought some tinned tuna, corn and rice cakes with me, just in case.

The next day, we warmed up with a four-hour hike to Travellers Pass, a viewpoint offering panoramic views of sparkling glaciers and Lenin Peak, one of the highest in the Pamirs. And then, we were on our way, our Toyota Prada climbing 4,300 metres to the border crossing between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.

Our first stop was Karakol, a hard scrabble one-horse town on the banks of a high altitude turquoise salt water lake. Temperatures were below zero, despite it still being only mid-September, and I was grateful for the hot soup and wood fire heated sauna — much needed in winter when temperatures can lower to -50C. 

The town comprised a smattering of one storey houses, some of which have been abandoned due to the harshness of the conditions. There was no running water, so residents relied on communal pumps.

The climate is so cold and the terrain so dry and rugged, that there’s little vegetation, and even fish can’t survive in the salty lake. People survive on traditional nomadic herding of yak and sheep, but such is the poverty that a UNICEF kitchen provides breakfast for children before school.

From Karakol the highway took us through the mountains to Murghab, as I admired a cloudless deep blue sky overhead. On our left, built into the mountains, a simple wooden posted fence separated Tajikistan from China. Desperately poor, Tajikistan still remains dependent economically on Russia and China.

Murghab was made up of mostly white washed mud buildings with a bazaar comprised of Chinese shipping crates from which traders sell cheap Chinese clothes and household goods.

Our next pit stop was the village of Alichur. Here boys and girls played football while women, wearing headscarves, queued at the water pumps and brought their cows to the river to drink.

From Alichur we detoured into the Wakhan Valley. Tourists need a permit to enter here, which can be obtained from government websites, or Tajik or Kyrgyz travel agents, for around $25.

At times the road ran so close to the Afghan border we could see people riding donkeys and carrying hay on their heads along the dirt tracks. We even saw people panning for gold in the river. Border clashes are frequent between the two countries, with multiple armed incursions reported as recently as December 2025.

After driving for several hours, the flat fertile Langar Valley, in Tajikistan, opened up beneath us.

It was a Sunday and families worked in the fields, twisting grasses into bundles while sheep and cows grazed nearby. Colourful picnics rugs were laid out and families welcomed me over for tea and bread, generously handing me gifts of honey and fruit. At times Tajiks and Afghans were only metres apart, separated only by the river.

The next day our journey continued past high rocky mountain forts, with spectacular views of the valley. We stopped to bathe in natural hot springs before arriving at the town of Ishkashim. 

All along the river border, the strong military presence couldn’t be ignored, with armed soldiers patrolling the border. The weekly Afghan/Tajik market, which takes place on an island in the middle of the Panj River, which forms the border with Afghanistan, is now barred to visitors, after the Taliban were caught dressed as tourists trying to cross over to Tajikistan.

We were keen to stop and take photos of life on the Afghan side of the river, but on one occasion, an angry plain clothed policeman ran up to our car and demanded we delete all our photos.

We then diverted away to the Bartang Valley. There was no road, so we walked four hours beside a turquoise river, carrying a few essentials for the night, to a remote village. 

Here, a few families lived in wooden houses beside a lake. Apricots dried on racks, and women cooked on open fires while men gathered the hay into bundles for winter. 

We spent the night in a hut, with 10 beds lined up side by side, before returning the next day on foot to our waiting car, and back along the Pamir Highway.

On the side of the road were derelict farm buildings decorated with hammer and sickles. People picked cotton in the fields and sold pomegranates, pistachios and apricots on roadside stalls.

Finally, after nine days, I was glad to arrive safely in Dushanbe, without suffering any accidents or food poisoning. 

I checked into a hotel with my own bathroom, gleefully stuffing my filthy clothes into a washing machine.

But despite the altitude sickness, the back-breaking hikes and bitterly cold nights in shared tents, my time on the Pamir Highway was an experience I’ll always cherish.

It really was a journey of a lifetime. 

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