CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
Ordered leg totals agree within rounding. Stop distances are approximate sums of rounded legs. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: planning record, not independently verified geometry.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distances and riding times are planning figures. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
A one-way ride of 475 km, Murghob to the finish - roughly 6 h 31 in the saddle. The stops in between: Ak Baital Pass and Karakul. The highest point is about 4,650 m. It crosses from Tajikistan into Kyrgyzstan - carry ID and check the toll rules. A steady touring day rather than a sprint.
The ride follows Murghab → Ak Baital Pass for 141 km.
The ride follows Ak Baital Pass → Karakul for 127 km.
Murghab is a town at the top of the world, or close to it. At around 3,600 metres on the high Pamir plateau in eastern Tajikistan, it is among the highest settlements in Central Asia, a scatter of low buildings and shipping containers set on a vast, cold desert of gravel, with bare mountains standing on every side. The air is thin and dry, the sky is an intense blue, and the nights can fall well below freezing even in summer. In winter, temperatures drop to minus thirty or lower.
Read the complete Murghab write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Murghab is where the day begins. Next is Ak Baital Pass.
The Ak-Baital Pass, at 4,655 metres, is the highest point on the Pamir Highway, and it looks the part: a bare, windswept saddle of grey and tan rock, with no trees, no plants and scarcely any life except the odd marmot, on a high plateau where the sky seems dark blue even at noon. The name means White Horse, and the story is that a white horse once crossed here and left no tracks, though no one can say when. The road climbs from the east across a long, rough plateau and drops to the west toward Karakul, with the borders of China and Kyrgyzstan not far away.
Read the complete Ak Baital Pass write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Ak Baital Pass comes up about 141 km into the recorded legs. Nothing on this route is higher. Next is Karakul, mostly downhill.
At about 3,900 metres, Karakul is high enough that you will notice every step. The lake lies in a bleak, enormous basin in the eastern Pamirs of Tajikistan, a sheet of cold, salty, turquoise water ringed by bare brown mountains and white peaks, with the Chinese border not far off. It filled the crater left by a meteorite that struck the Earth some five million years ago, according to the geologists, which explains its odd, nearly round shape and its lack of any outlet. No fish live here, the water being too salty, and in the early morning the surface can be glassy and still.
Read the complete Karakul write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 268 km into the recorded legs you reach Karakul. Next is Sary Tash.
Sary-Tash is a handful of low houses and a few guesthouses at a crossroads in southern Kyrgyzstan, at about 3,100 metres, and it has a lot of importance for a place so small. Here the road from Osh, coming south over the passes, meets the route that turns east to China at Irkeshtam and the one that turns south to the Pamir Highway and Tajikistan. In the old days, caravans on the Silk Road passed through, and the Soviet Union later built the road that is still the main artery of the region.
Read the complete Sary Tash write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Sary Tash closes the day.
Murghab → Ak Baital Pass is 141 km. This is the part worth slowing down for - look through the bends and use the pull-offs.
Ak Baital Pass → Karakul is 127 km. Brakes and eyes forward; the views are behind the corners, not in them.
Karakul → Sary Tash is 207 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.