Dushanbe
pop 600, 000 / elev 800m With a cool backdrop of mountains, lazy tree-lined avenues and pastel-hued neoclassical buildings, Dushanbe is Central Asia’s best-looking capital – especially now that the bullet holes have been plastered over.
pop 600, 000 / elev 800m With a cool backdrop of mountains, lazy tree-lined avenues and pastel-hued neoclassical buildings, Dushanbe is Central Asia’s best-looking capital – especially now that the bullet holes have been plastered over.
The stark and elemental Bartang Valley is one of the wildest and most beautiful in the western Pamirs and offers a fine opportunity for an adventurous multiday 4WD adventure.
The wild-east town of Murgab is a day’s drive (310km) from Khorog.
The Pamir Hwy from Khorog to Osh (a section of the M41) was built by Soviet military engineers between 1931 and 1934, in order to facilitate troops, transport and provisioning to this very remote outpost of the Soviet empire.
A 4WD road winds up the Shokh Dara Valley southeast of Khorog, offering a fine overnight excursion from Khorog or, with your own transport, a loop route option, connecting with the Pamir Hwy and returning to Khorog via the Gunt Valley or the Wakhan.
A small mountain-valley town, Khorog is the capital of the autonomous Gorno-Badakhshan (GBAO) region.
The plain is called Pamier, and you ride across it for twelve days together, finding nothing but a desert without habitations or any green thing, so that travellers are obliged to carry with them whatever they have need of.
On a terrace above the banks of the Zerafshan (Zeravshan) River, 1.
Khojand (or Khojent) is the capital of northern Tajikistan (Sughd province) and the second-largest city in the country.
Called Kir by the Parthians, Cyropol by Alexander the Great and Ura-Tyube by the Russians, this small historic town has one of the best preserved old towns in Tajikistan, punctuated with some lovely traditional architecture.
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