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: producer-declared routed record.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
508 km from Danghara to Danghara, about 10 h 29 of riding. It goes by way of Manzaratepa, Shahristoni Zoli Zar, Shahrtepa and Cultural Heritage Sites of Ancient Khuttal. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 1,150 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. It suits an unhurried touring pace.
Danghara is a small town in the Khatlon region of southern Tajikistan, best known in the country as the home town of the president, Emomali Rahmon, and the road to it is accordingly one of the better ones in the region. The town lies in a broad valley surrounded by low, bare hills, with fields of cotton and wheat watered by irrigation canals. The Makbarai Mavlono Tojiddin, a mausoleum near the town, is a local shrine, a place of pilgrimage and prayer that belongs to the long tradition of saints' tombs across Central Asia. It is among the sites linked to the Cultural Heritage of Ancient Khuttal, the medieval principality that once flourished in this region and that Tajikistan has proposed for UNESCO listing.
Read the complete Makbarai Mavlono Tojiddin write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Makbarai Mavlono Tojiddin is where the day begins. Next is Manzaratepa.
Tepa means mound, and in southern Tajikistan the plains are dotted with them: hills built up over centuries from the remains of mud-brick towns, each layer burying the one before. Manzaratepa, near the town of Vose' in the Khatlon region, is one of these ancient settlement mounds, part of a network of sites in the fertile valleys between the Panj and Vakhsh rivers that were inhabited from the Bronze Age through the Kushan and early Islamic periods. Archaeological work has revealed traces of fortifications, houses and ceramics, and the sites are part of Tajikistan's long, rich and little-known history along the Silk Roads.
Read the complete Manzaratepa write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Manzaratepa comes up about 73 km into the recorded legs. Next is Shahristoni Zoli Zar.
Down in the far south of Tajikistan, in Khatlon province, the land flattens into the wide floodplain of the Panj, the river that forms the border with Afghanistan. The site named Shahristoni Zoli Zar lies in this country, some eighteen kilometres from Farkhor, and it is one of many ancient settlement mounds scattered across the region. Southern Tajikistan was part of ancient Bactria, later the heartland of the Kushan empire, and the fields here have yielded Buddhist and early Islamic remains. A shahriston, in the old local sense, was the inner walled town, and the name suggests that this mound once held a proper urban core.
Read the complete Shahristoni Zoli Zar write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 101 km into the recorded legs you reach Shahristoni Zoli Zar. Next is Shahrtepa.
Shahrtepa lies in the lowlands of southern Tajikistan, in Khatlon province, within sight of the Panj river and the Afghan hills beyond. The word tepa means a mound, and it is the right word: a mound that has built up over centuries as one settlement was layered over another, in the Bactrian country that Alexander crossed and that later fed the Kushan empire. A Buddhist temple site is linked with this area, a reminder that this was once a place where monks, merchants and caravans met on the way between India, Central Asia and China.
Read the complete Shahrtepa write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Shahrtepa, about halfway. Next is Cultural Heritage Sites of Ancient Khuttal.
Khuttal was a medieval kingdom in the south of what is now Tajikistan, centred on the fertile valleys between the Vakhsh and Panj rivers, and it flourished as a crossroads of trade and culture between Central Asia, Iran and India. The region's heritage includes the ruins of palaces, towns and religious buildings, such as the citadel of Hulbuk, near Vose', a royal residence from the ninth to the eleventh centuries, with richly decorated walls, and the town of Kulob, with the mausoleum of the fourteenth-century Sufi scholar Mir Sayyid Ali Hamadani. Several of these sites have been nominated together for UNESCO recognition.
Read the complete Cultural Heritage Sites of Ancient Khuttal write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Cultural Heritage Sites of Ancient Khuttal sits at 135 km, about halfway. Next is back through Shahrtepa.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Shahrtepa write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Shahrtepa comes up about 382 km into the recorded legs. Next is back through Shahristoni Zoli Zar.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Shahristoni Zoli Zar write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 403 km into the recorded legs you reach back through Shahristoni Zoli Zar. Next is back through Manzaratepa.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Manzaratepa write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Manzaratepa, late in the day. Next is Makbarai Mavlono Tojiddin.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Makbarai Mavlono Tojiddin write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 508 km.
Makbarai Mavlono Tojiddin → Manzaratepa is 73 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Manzaratepa → Shahristoni Zoli Zar is 28 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Shahristoni Zoli Zar → Shahrtepa is 27 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Shahrtepa → Cultural Heritage Sites of Ancient Khuttal is 126 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Cultural Heritage Sites of Ancient Khuttal → back through Shahrtepa is 128 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Shahrtepa → back through Shahristoni Zoli Zar is 21 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Shahristoni Zoli Zar → back through Manzaratepa is 31 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Manzaratepa → Makbarai Mavlono Tojiddin is 74 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.