We left Mirali and his family early in the morning. Our next goal in Tajikistan were the Pamirs. We were not going to climb but we wanted to ride through them and admire the mountains.

The are two roads you can follow to ride to the Pamirs. The first option is to stick to the Pamir Highway. This option is a summer only option. The second option is go south and follow the Afghan border for two days. After talking to the locals the second option would be the best as the road was better and the first option had a quite steep mountain pass. We decided to take the second route as we wanted to see Afghanistan as well.

We rode one more time through the city and watched the paintings on the walls. In the center we stopped and made a picture at the Rudaki statue. He was the first famous Persian poet.

We filled up the tank and left the city. We soon were in the mountains. After climbing we got to a crossroad, right the new road, left the old one. Yes we took the old one of course 🙂 It let us through a small village to a nice mountain road. In the distance we could see the new asphalt road, and after some time we saw the town of Nurek.

   

We stopped just before the town when we met a Turkish biker. His name was Orhan and he was from Antalya Turkey. We explained we would try to check out the damn and would probably see eachother again as we were both going to the Pamirs.

 

We rode passed the Lenin statue and saw Russian soldiers. This is a sign, it means this town is of some strategic importance. There was even a signicant Russian army base here. Through the town we arrived at the dam, and stopped at a military checkpoint. The soldiers were interested in my bike but could not let us through. They pointed us to another station though.

At the other station we talked to an officer and a civilian engineer from Turkey. They both tried to help us but we could not get it. A clearance must be obtained from Dushanbe. So we just took some pictures and rode on. Not too bad as we needed to cover a long distance today.

After climbing again and riding to the Shar Shar tunnel, we stopped at a great view on the Nurek lake.

The landscape soon changed and became very dry and hot. We were riding south towards the Afghan border, but first we had to go through the birth village of the president. Near Kulab the temperature got 43 degrees. It had to close my visor because the air was just like to hot to breath.

Me made a stop in a nice roadside cafe and had some borsch. We had a nice table in the shade to cool down.

After the valleys we started climbing again. We passed an army base again, and they were target practising. A lot of gunpowder could be seen, and automatic firearms could be heard. It was quite a climb with a checkpoint on the top. We were getting very close to the Afghan border now.

The landscape changed again and was very mountainous now, but it were special mountains, like you would expect in more south-east Asia. Anyway it was beautiful, but care had to be taken, it was already some time withouth asphalt.

There were some obstacles to be overwon, a very tricky bridge, soft sand, big stones, riding close to the water. It was a bit stressful! We stopped when we could see Afghanistan. Wow, what a mountainous country. We descended from the mountain and reached a river. This is the Panj river, which feeds the Amur Darya we had seen in Uzbekistan and eventually the Aral Sea. We also saw the first bridge over the river. We stopped to make a picture when all of sudden soldiers jumped out of the bushes and started shooting in the air! We left very quickly.

We kept riding until it almost got dark and we came to another checkpoint. We had to show our passports as usual. I checked my GPS for some waypoints. I saw one a bit further. So we stopped but it was not the best. It was very close to the water and the rooms were dirty. Next to that there were people coming in and out to pray.

It would be short night…