The Pamir Highway
The Pamir Highway is a road across the roof of the world: the M41, built by Soviet engineers to move soldiers, runs from Dushanbe up the Panj river — with Afghanistan on the far bank, close enough to wave — through Khorog, the small Ismaili capital of the Pamirs with its botanical garden and its Saturday market of Afghans crossing the bridge, and then climbs, past the Wakhan valley of fortresses and hot springs facing the Hindu Kush, onto a plateau at four thousand metres where Murghab is a town of shipping containers and yaks, where the Ak-Baital pass reaches four thousand six hundred and fifty-five metres, where Karakul is a lake in a meteor crater, and where the Marco Polo sheep still stand on the skyline before the road drops into Kyrgyzstan and down to Osh.
The traveller hires a Land Cruiser and a driver in Dushanbe or Khorog, gets the GBAO permit, and gives the road a week: two days up the Panj to Khorog, with the villages of Afghanistan going by across the water; a night in the Wakhan for the fortress of Yamchun and the hot springs of Bibi Fatima; up over the plateau to Bulunkul, the coldest place in the country, and Murghab, sleeping in homestays with felt on the floor and bread on the stove; over Ak-Baital in the morning, when the sky is hardest, to Karakul for the lake; and down over Kyzyl-Art into the green of Kyrgyzstan, where the first tree in a week looks like a miracle.
The Guide's honesty: the Pamir is high, remote and thinly served — the altitude is serious from Murghab on and the road gives no time to acclimatise: sleep low first, drink, and carry the pills; the GBAO permit is required and the border with Afghanistan means checkpoints and, some seasons, closures — check before you commit; the road is broken in places and the driver is the trip: hire one who knows it and pay him well; the homestays are simple, warm and the best thing about the journey; the season is July to September and the rest is snow; and the Pamiris' hospitality is a law of the mountains — the traveller who accepts the tea, sits, and does not hurry has understood the road.