This impressive canyon can be glimpsed from the roadside but it's best getting out of the vehicle to appreciate it properly. A 30-second walk from the signboard for Shokhirizm village leads towards a perch, high above the river gorge into which the road later burrows. It's a vista akin to the Grand Canyon that demands to be photographed.
Canyon Viewpoint
The Pamir Highway
Lonely Planet's must-see attractions
22.14 MILES
This 12th-century fort is the most impressive of the Wakhan Valley's many tumbledown castle ruins, complete with multiple walls and round watchtowers. The…
28.31 MILES
At the entrance to the Shokh Dara Valley, 5km east of town, this arboretum encompasses a couple of hundred hectares of parkland and is claimed to be the…
23.98 MILES
Some 500m off the main road in Yamg (Ямг) is the reconstructed house museum of Sufi mystic, astronomer and musician Mubarak Kadam Wakhani (1843–1903). One…
21.84 MILES
Set within a traditional walled enclosure and now protected within an octagonal cover added in the 1990s, this is one of several authentic ancient Ismaili…
7.09 MILES
In the village of Sezhd (Km71), a tough, easily missed 4WD track spirals up and over a dusty ridge finally petering out after 6km in the green, very…
24.81 MILES
As the road doubles back beside a small mountain stream there are brief but impressive glimpses of two iconic peaks. At over 6000m a piece, Engels (6510m)…
29.07 MILES
A 1928 truck on a plinth just below the hydroelectric dam at the eastern end of Lenin, commemorates the opening of the Pamir Hwy to Osh after over 20…
9.88 MILES
The minimal ruins of this old 'red fort' has lent its name to the valley's main town. The town has a small bazaar and a fine location at the base of a…
Nearby The Pamir Highway attractions
7.09 MILES
In the village of Sezhd (Km71), a tough, easily missed 4WD track spirals up and over a dusty ridge finally petering out after 6km in the green, very…
9.88 MILES
The minimal ruins of this old 'red fort' has lent its name to the valley's main town. The town has a small bazaar and a fine location at the base of a…
20.14 MILES
This 8th-century Shashbuvad Fort is easily missed as it resembles an unfinished local house but it makes a necessary leg-stretch on this long and rough…
21.84 MILES
Set within a traditional walled enclosure and now protected within an octagonal cover added in the 1990s, this is one of several authentic ancient Ismaili…
22.14 MILES
This 12th-century fort is the most impressive of the Wakhan Valley's many tumbledown castle ruins, complete with multiple walls and round watchtowers. The…
23.98 MILES
Some 500m off the main road in Yamg (Ямг) is the reconstructed house museum of Sufi mystic, astronomer and musician Mubarak Kadam Wakhani (1843–1903). One…
24.81 MILES
As the road doubles back beside a small mountain stream there are brief but impressive glimpses of two iconic peaks. At over 6000m a piece, Engels (6510m)…
25.63 MILES
Close to Yamchun, on an obvious salt-bleached patch of mountainside directly behind the hamlet of Vrang (Вранг), is a five-level stone monument claimed to…