CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
The recorded total and the leg detail need reconciliation. Inspect the leg notes before using this record for timing or navigation. 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.
From Dushanbe it runs 1340 km to Dushanbe; allow about 21 h 02 of riding. The stops in between: Sary Tash, Osh and back through Sary Tash. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 3,750 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. It crosses from Tajikistan into Kyrgyzstan - carry ID and check the toll rules. A steady touring day rather than a sprint.
A high-altitude expedition road from Dushanbe, Tajikistan to Osh, Kyrgyzstan, via Kalaikhum. Key character: Pamir plateau; river gorges; remote passes. Surface: mixed.
Dushanbe means Monday, and the name comes from a village market that took place on that day, long before the city arrived. Today Dushanbe is the capital of Tajikistan, a city of nearly seven hundred thousand people in a broad valley beneath the Gissar mountains, laid out on wide, tree-lined avenues with white marble buildings, fountains and parks, a Soviet creation with a distinctly Persian soul. The Tajik language is a form of Persian, and the poets of the region, Rudaki and Ferdowsi among them, are national heroes, whose statues stand in the city.
Read the complete Dushanbe write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Dushanbe is where the day begins. Next is Sary Tash.
Sary-Tash is a crossroads at the top of the world, a straggle of low houses, yurt camps and cargo trucks at a little over three thousand metres in the southern Alay valley of Kyrgyzstan. Three roads meet here: the one north to Osh, a long day away, the Pamir Highway climbing southwest toward Tajikistan, and the track east to the Chinese border at Irkeshtam. The name means yellow stone, and the colour comes from the dry grass and the dusty hills. Nothing else for a long way is bigger, which is why every overland traveller seems to stop.
Read the complete Sary Tash write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Sary Tash comes up 313 km in. Next is Osh.
Osh claims to be around three thousand years old, and for once the claim does not feel absurd. The city sits at the eastern edge of the Fergana valley, where the flat, hot cotton country runs into the first folds of the Pamir-Alay, and it has been a stopping point on the Silk Road for as long as caravans have crossed this region. With about two hundred thousand people, it is Kyrgyzstan's second city and, in temperament, the southern capital: louder, hotter, more Uzbek-influenced and rather prouder than Bishkek.
Read the complete Osh write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
626 km in you reach Osh. Next is back through Sary Tash.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Sary Tash write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Sary Tash, late in the day. Next is Dushanbe.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Dushanbe write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Finish at Dushanbe. That is the ride.