Well, Tajikistan will go down in our tales and recollections of this trip for all of time. For pure cycling greatness, I don’t think it will ever be topped. Quite literally because we reached the dizzying height of 4655m! The roads at time were testing on body, mind, and bikes. But the views and epic sense of achievement made every inch of terrible road worth it.

From the first days cruising through the Fan mountains and over the pass to Dushanbe, to the punishing gravel of the North route to Khali Khum, along the Afghanistan border towards Kurog, then up and over the high passes and finally to the border crossing pass, Tajikistan has been seriously impressive.

The views were, at times, unbelievable. As we kept saying to each other, we cannot believe we are actually, finally, on the Pamir highway. It feels like the whole trip has been so we can ride this 1200km stretch of road. I felt like it couldn’t possibly live up to it’s reputation and hype, but if anything it exceeded them all.

If you are into cycling, get to the Pamirs as soon as possible. With flights in and out of Dushanbe, there isn’t much excuse not to do it. You don’t even need to camp if you really don’t want to. We found it to be too windy and cold lots of the time, and our days seeded to coincide with homestays, almost too well sometimes, so we only camped 4 nights on the Pamir proper (above 3000m).

I don’t think any country we visit will ever live up to what Tajikistan gave us.

Jim