High Routes of Tajikistan
High Routes of Tajikistan
*This is an ongoing project.* I have completed some of the hiking routes below; and some are outlines of a planned trek. Do not attempt any of these routes until full information is collected and the routes are properly scouted. You may die.
This is a long-term personal project, and I don’t expect many other people would be interested in the planned or completed routes below due to the isolation, dangers and difficulties.
Western Tajikistan (Fann, Hisor, Zarafshon Ranges and Rasht Valley)
Sogdiana High Route
Western Pamirs (Darvoz, Badakhshan)
Badakhshan High Route (incomplete work in progress)
Northern Pamirs
Eastern Pamirs
Murghob to Bachor (incomplete work in progress)
What is a “high route”?
High routes have always existed, just above hiking and well below mountaineering. The term, as used by hikers, was popularized after the Sierra High Route in California was mapped in the early 1980s. But a “high route” can mean different things to different people, and no consensus definition has emerged. I will summarize below the high routes I have mapped and researched in Tajikistan. Briefly, the Tajikistan High Routes have these characteristics:
About 50% of the hiking is off-trail in open terrain, and each route varies (from 10% to 80% off-trail).
No technical climbing, but some easy to moderate scrambling.
Stays below 5300 meters in eastern Tajikistan, and 4800 meters in western Tajikistan.
The direction and course of the routes are selected to assist in acclimatization to high elevation.
High passes and elevations above 3500 meters have the risk of snow, even in summer.
Sections of isolation, far from villages or shepherd pastures.
Serious river crossings on some routes, but none that would qualify as swimming.
Difficulty in estimating time required, as that depends on your conditioning, acclimatization, comfort with open terrain and orienteering, hours per day on the trail, comfort off trail while scrambling, etc..
Can I do these routes?
Maybe. It depends.
I’ll make some comparisons: successfully trekking popular routes in Nepal, Patagonia, the Alps or in national and state/provincial parks in North America does not mean you are ready, but it also doesn’t mean you are not ready. You just need to be in good shape, be able to navigate a route off trail and be able to deal with all the listed difficulties below.
What compares? Alaska off-trail routes, the Canadian backcountry/bush, and Greenland in terms of open terrain difficulty and isolation (but not elevation). The American high routes for navigation/orienteering and technical difficulty of open terrain (Wind River or Sierra High Routes, for example). Scrambling in the European Alps in terms of technical scrambling difficulty (minus many of the Tajikistan-specific difficulties listed here). But none of these above combine all of the difficulties present on Tajikistan’s High Routes.
Difficulties:
I will offer a comparison using a popular trekking destination: Nepal. While the most popular treks in Nepal go higher (well above 5000 meters), these Tajikistan high routes are at a latitude farther north (colder), and they don’t have the range of teahouses, grocery stores, accommodation, porters, English-speakers and high-quality trails & bridges that can be found in Nepal. Off-trail scrambling in Tajikistan at 4500 meters in complete isolation with a week’s worth of food, a tent, a stove and a sleeping bag in your pack and a previous week of having slept in a tent and eating ramen is easier than Nepal’s 5000+ meter passes/routes only in terms of elevation. Everything else is more difficult on Tajikistan’s High Routes (note: this last comparison has the Annapurna Circuit in mind, not the occasional semi-mountaineering of the Great Himalaya Trail High Route).
The are some short glacier sections and snow fields/patches where crampons and an ice axe are recommended (but there may be a less direct route around the glacier/snow on bare rock, talus and scree). The routes usually avoid any glacier areas with crevasses or bergschrunds, but not always... (read the route descriptions).
As mentioned above, there is a chance of summer snowfall at any time at 3500 meters or above (but not heavy snow like in a Himalayan storm). The routes includes stream, river and snow bridge crossings, with bridges only at lower altitudes near shepherd pastures and villages. Some river crossings will be uncrossable for certain hikers, especially in mid-summer when glacier and snow melt is at its maximum.
There will be extreme isolation in some areas. Nobody else will be there, ever. After you leave the pastures (and the good trails), the locals have no reason or interest to go on these routes over open terrain. High mountain villages of the type that can be found in Nepal, Switzerland or Georgia don’t exist in Tajikistan, as they were destroyed and their population exiled and forced to pick cotton on the lowlands as part of Communist economic and social engineering projects from the 1930s to 1970s. The remains of these villages can be seen in ghost towns in the upper reaches of the Vakhyo, Yazghulom and Yaghnob valleys. When the roads end, the villages end. After this there may be a few shepherd summer camps, but only in the pasture areas.
There is no rescue service in the style of European or North American search and rescue services. It exists, but it does not have the resources of American and European counterparts. So even if you have a satellite phone or emergency beacon and rescue insurance, the response will be slow and with less resources.
For those who just arrived to Tajikistan from lower elevations, you will have difficulties if you try to gain elevation too quickly (below 5000 meters the problem are mostly headaches, dizziness, sleeplessness and upset stomach, but there have been rescues below 5000 meters of impatient trekkers who rushed to the mountains and tried to hike through a high pass as quickly as they could, notably two different groups in recent years who each had one member who got high-altitude pulmonary edema. Luckily, one group was on a very common route close to a settlement, and the other group had rescue insurance and was in a wide-open area where a helicopter could land. All other rescues and evacuations have been of mountain climbers, and these involve much higher altitudes.
Many routes require you to have a large external battery pack (power bank) if you use GPS regularly and take photos and videos on your phone. You won’t be in a guesthouse every night with electricity to charge your battery. And even if a guesthouse has electricity, it can be unreliable or turned off at night.
Orienteering skills are required. You may be going through a maze of sheep and goats trails (with no signage) and then across open terrain where expert map reading skills are required (if using a paper map) or competency in using a GPS device or your phone for navigation. Preferably you should have both a map on your phone and a paper map.
Sheep guardian dogs in Tajikistan are very unfriendly (“all bark, no bite” but very scary nonetheless), and usually appear in a groups. This is no longer a problem once you hike above the grass line (at mid-altitudes) and out of the pastures.
A destroyed bridge at lower and mid-altitudes can end your hike if there is no safe alternative crossing. But generally bridges are destroyed in the rainy spring and during peak snow melt. By August and September they have usually been long-since repaired by shepherds and villagers. However, sometimes a bridge is deemed by the locals to be too time-consuming or expensive to be worth repairing. Plenty of maps have non-existent foot and car bridges.
Read our general mountain advice (relevant also for high routes in Tajikistan).
Transportation/Accommodation:
These high routes use 5 different towns/cities as places to store your baggage, buy supplies, use wifi, find reliable accommodation (where some English is spoken) and find a taxi or public transportation (shared cars and minivans) to the trailheads. These towns/cities are: Panjakent, Dushanbe, Qalai Khumb, Rushon, Murghob and Khorugh. If you are new to Tajikistan, stick to these places as your base to prepare and depart (especially if you don’t speak Russian or Tajik or another local language). Panjakent and Dushanbe are the places to do lots of online work and research (and upload photos/videos), with Rushon, Murghob and Qalai Khumb’s guesthouses perhaps not having working wifi even if advertised. For Khorugh, read online reviews of accommodation, as at least one very popular place does not have wifi for most of the day, and when it does it is basically unusable.
For other regional non-tourist towns: If you speak Tajik or Russian, you can find accommodation in regional towns and villages closer to some of the trails with few issues. But for those foreigners who only speak English, be warned: with nearly zero tourist visits, the hotels and guesthouses in these towns (usually outside of the Pamirs) may view you as a foreign employee of an NGO or international organization (UN, etc.) and, assuming you are charging everything to an expense account rather than out of your own pocket, will try to charge you a high rate (in addition to assuming you have a local guide/translator/employee with you and that you don’t need any special help). The usual $15 price is suddenly $50+. However, some routes have great trailhead villages where you can stay at the start or the end of your hike in guesthouses and homestays designed for tourists. Each route description will provide this information.
Each route will come with its own specialized transportation instructions. Some will be easy and cheap, some will be more expensive or a little difficult (in some areas the drivers have never dealt with a foreigner before, and in some places there is very little traffic).
Why go despite all these difficulties?
Few to zero other tourists on most routes.
Full isolation most of the time.
The beautiful viewpoint you find won’t already have 1000 tagged photos on Instagram. For some areas I am unable to find any photos anywhere online or in archives, or the last photos were taken in the 1960s or 1970s by Soviet scientists or climbers.
Shepherds and villagers are super friendly in areas that almost never see foreigners (no tourism fatigue).
Unique geography and wildlife that’s hard to see in the popular areas.
For all the main high routes listed, any required fees and permits are sorted out when you get your e-visa online, or when you meet a ranger on the trail. No need to submit applications, visit an office or put your name on a list or into a lottery.
Local transportation is extremely cheap if you are either (A) a patient person with lots of time who can tolerate alternating between waiting forever and jumping in and out of local “public transportation” or (B) you speak Russian or Tajik (or Kyrgyz or one of the Pamiri languages, depending on your location) and you can talk to a (non-tourist) driver and work out a deal to get to a trailhead.
You can start whenever you want (weather permitting) and spend as long as you want on the trail.
You can camp anywhere (as long as you respect villagers’ privacy near their homes).
There is no forest fire danger due to grazing and firewood collecting.
The bears here are very shy (four attacks in a decade, with two being provoked - one by a hunter and the other by an aggressive dog). And as far as we know, the wolves have only attacked people in winter (when they are starving).
Very little in the way of pesky insects at altitude (compared to North America), except for horseflies in some pasture areas near the flocks.
Bureaucratic requirements:
None of these routes are in special restricted border zones (e.g., Muksu River along the Kyrgyz border, the Upper Zarafshon Valley near the Kyrgyz border, Zorkul Lake on the border with Afghanistan, the Shuroobod Afghan border zone, Chinese border areas, etc.), but many of them require the GBAO/Pamirs permit (easy to get at the same time you get your e-visa online).
None of these routes go in restricted nature preserves where permits or permission is required (such as in Tigrovaya Balka), nor does any listed route go by the west end of Lake Sarez, where you must pay $50 per day ahead of time and show proof of medical insurance.
Some routes require a fee to be in the Tajikistan National Park (formerly known as the Pamir or Badakhshan National Park), payable to the forest rangers (forest ranger in Tajik: Jangalbon; Russian: Lesnik) if and when you meet them (15 to 20 Somoni per day per person, less than $2). You do not need to pay this fee ahead of time (unless, of course, you meet a ranger at a trailhead). In some areas, they collect fees 100% of the time, and in other areas they never do. To be clear, you do not need to secure permission or pay a fee ahead of time. It seems that the rangers would actually prefer you wait and pay them directly instead of paying at their head office (as far as I know, it’s only possible to easily advance pay at the PECTA Office in Khorugh). Some Russian climbing groups have had a tour company purchase their permits ahead of time in Dushanbe (where and how, I do not know), but when they met the rangers at the trailheads the rangers said their Dushanbe-purchased permits were not valid, and that they need to pay the ranger directly. So I prefer to wait until—and if—I meet a ranger to pay for the permit. I have never heard any story of a forest ranger turning someone back, denying them entry, or fining them.
Outside the Tajikistan National Park, parts of the Fann Mountains have a fee payable to local district forest rangers (same price as above, no need to get it ahead of time).
Each route description will provide exact information.
Acclimatization Guide for Tajikistan’s High Routes
We have a separate article for acclimatizing to the high altitudes of the Pamir mountains, including a suggested acclimatization itinerary for those arriving on the Pamir Highway from Kyrgyzstan. If you are coming from Dushanbe (and unacclimatized) to the Pamirs, then you will need to slowly gain altitude at the beginning of your treks, and on some treks this may leave you camping and slowly hiking in a boring and non-scenic gorge for far longer than you want.
For western Tajikistan (Fann Mountains, Zarafshon range, etc.), there is good news: the altitudes are less, and the scenery is as good or better. So you need much less time for acclimatizing to the passes (around 4000 meters), and the scenery at lower and mid-altitudes is better than the equivalent in the Pamirs, making your slow progress uphill far nicer. Also, in western Tajikistan you can lose altitude quickly and get to much lower altitudes than the Pamirs. Note, however, that the Fann Mountain’s 4760 meter Chimtarga Pass has some challenges of acclimatization.
Looking for something easier? High elevation, but not “High Routes”
Looking for something less technical? And with no scary river crossings? These four treks (all in GBAO/Pamirs in eastern Tajikistan) listed below can be very difficult due to elevation and bad weather, but they are technically very easy for acclimatized hikers and mostly on smooth trails. Any open terrain is easy (compared to other treks listed here) and there is no hard scrambling or dangerous river crossings. But they do fit into some very loose definitions of “high route” if elevation is emphasized over terrain. We will provide limited information on these treks, and refer to more information elsewhere. All of these passes can be found using the search function on the OsmAnd Maps app.
Gumbezkul Pass (4731 meters). Day trip from Murghob. Very safe. The driver drops you off, and then meets you on the other side (both the start and end points are about 4000 meters in elevation). The pass connects the Pshart Valley and the Madiyan (Murghob River) Valley. No overnight required. Your Pamir Highway driver should know where this is, especially if they are ethnic Kyrgyz. For a video of this hike, and a warning against hiring a driver who does not know this area, see this Youtube video. The first two minutes of this very well-shot video feature a trek through this pass (before it was mapped).
Bachor to Bardara trek (Shteklozar Pass, 4796 meters). A relatively well-traveled route. Included in the Trekking in Tajikistan guidebook. Includes some time on a glacier. Safer, but not safe. This route does not go through the nearby permit-required Sarez Lake zone, but… a group of trekkers had a member get altitude sickness, and left this route to go down to Sarez Lake, where they were arrested, imprisoned and fined for not having a Sarez permit. Yes, the expensive Sarez Lake permit system has nothing to do with safety and is just about making money for the government and one or more tour companies. The most recent group to do an emergency exit towards Sarez Lake were not fined or arrested, so this may be a thing of the past. This later group, however, had activated their emergency satellite beacon, which meant that an emergency rescue insurance company had contacted the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to coordinate a rescue. Attention and publicity like this means favorable treatment and no fine/extortion.
Khafrazdara Trek (Cold Pass, 4650 meters). See Adventures of Nicole’s guide (ascent to Cold Pass not included). The gorge at the start of the trek may require some easy scrambling during high water. See here. A viewpoint above Cold Pass at 4730 meters is the best place for a non-mountaineer to see a view of a truly massive glacier - the Muzkulak Glacier (Soviet and tour company name: Grumm-Grjimailo Glacier).
Looking for something even easier?
The Trekking in Tajikistan guidebook has easy and moderate routes listed, along with some harder hikes.
Does this all sound too easy? Want something harder?
The next step up is mountaineering (as dangerous glaciers, permanent snow and cliffs stand in your way), or the inevitability of an surprisingly dangerous unnamed tributary river ending your well-planned hike (example), as rivers are the major obstacles to anyone who thinks they can see a non-mountaineering route through the mountains on the map.
More reasonably, if you want a long-distance challenge, keep an eye on the ongoing Pamir Trail project as it will be far, far longer than any one of the routes listed here, and longer even than all the high routes added together.