Until recently the most challenging ride I have ever done was the North Coast 500 in Scotland. I was very aware that this would be surpassed by the Pamir Highway, but I didn’t expect it to happen with quite such immediacy or brutality. A mere 48 hours into the route through the Pamirs we struck up a deal with ourselves. We needed a reward to keep us going and that reward is not going to Mongolia.
11th – 24th July 2026
There is a myth which spans various Pamir Highway blogs about the obligatory “Khorog rest week” which I thought there was little truth in. I was proven very wrong. When we arrived at our very relaxing homestay in Khorog we initially intended to stay for two days – one for rest and one for admin. When Ben got sick we had no choice but to extend our stay. We finally thought we were ready to go when we realised we had a fatal visa related flaw in our plan for the next stage of our trip. After a poor night’s sleep did little to resolve matters we decided to stay another day so that we could leave with a clear plan for the route ahead. We began to wonder: would we ever leave Khorog?
3rd – 10th July 2026
We had opted not to stay in the hostel in Dushanbe where supposedly every cyclist stays before departing on the Pamir Highway. If we had, we would have learnt that the route option we were about to attempt was brutal. We approached the whole thing with such a naive sense of optimism; Ben assumed that given it was a “highway” it would a smoothly paved surface to the very end. I knew this not to be the case, and despite also knowing that I lack confidence on even the most compact gravel surfaces, I chose to turn a blind eye. Perhaps we both sensed that the only way we’d have any hope of cycling it was by being blissfully unaware.
27th June – 2nd July 2026
After a border crossing where we almost bypassed passport control completely, we were immediately greeted by mountain views and quiet roads. As the landscape became more populated, we received a barrage of “welcome to Tajikistan!” and high-fives from small (and not so small) children. This welcome felt worlds apart from the one I imagine these people would receive on arrival to the UK.
13th – 21st June 2026
It felt like we’d stepped back in time rather than crossed the border into Georgia. Sometimes you barely know you have crossed from one country to another but the change in the buildings and driving was stark. After several kilometres we decided to stop and double check what side of the road they drive on, as it wasn’t immediately clear. The roads themselves started off in reasonable quality, before becoming mottled with potholes which lorries had to navigate painfully slowly. At one point the road disappeared completely. If this was what the roads were like to Tbilisi, we’d be in for a bumpy ride.
