It used to connect the Central Asian provinces to the Soviet Motherland. Today, all roads lead to China. Mark Godfrey journeys the Pamir Highway.
The highway traces the Pamir Mountains, skirting China and linking Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Afghanistan (above). Service facilities along the way are rough and ready (left)
It is with a feeling of relief that we arrive in Murghab. It is dusk and the town is spread out before us, a fleet of stone and whitewashed cottages huddled in a barren valley. Electricity poles crane into the sky like masts, the silence punctured by the growling engine of an infrequent truck or jeep. A flag painted on a white boulder provides a reminder we are in Tajikistan; 3,650m above sea level in what was once the highest town in the Soviet Union.
We have followed a rough, potholed road for 14 hours through the hulking, biscuit-coloured Pamir Mountains. This is the Pamir Highway, originally hacked out of the wilderness by Red Army engineers to bring supplies to the remote outposts of the Soviet Union, and eventually to provide a supply line into Afghanistan. The Soviets were not the first expansionist troops in these parts. Alexander the Great also led his conquering army this way, more than 2,300 years ago.
The day begins as dawn breaks over the town of Osh in southern Kyrgyzstan, which borders Tajikistan below it. My $70 fare buys me the front seat of a Russian-made UAZ jeep, subsidising the local couple in the back taking their baby to visit cousins in Murghab. During the long drive the husband, a plumber called Muras, blames Josef Stalin for their journey. By clever mapping, the ruthless Soviet dictator broke up Central Asia, dividing the former Turkestan into five new countries – Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan – indifferent to geographic lines and playing on ethnic power struggles.
Tajiks found themselves minorities in Uzbekistan, and Kazakhs and Uzbeks were spread across the region.
Tajik towns became part of Uzbekistan while land claimed by Kyrgyz herdsmen was bundled into Tajikistan.
Today, the map looks messy, but Stalin had achieved his objective of divide and rule – the Central Asian republics were never able to break away from their masters in Moscow.
Thirty years ago I could have completed this journey on public transport, but that is today no longer an option in sparsely populated Gorno-Badakhshan, the autonomous eastern oblast or region, of Tajikistan that adjoins Kyrgyzstan and China. Heading for Murghab, our jeep growls its away along a road overlooking sweeping vistas of valleys and mountains as, for kilometre after dusty kilometre, we follow the barbed wire fence that marks no-man’s land dividing the former Soviet Union and China.
Evidence of even earlier tensions can still be glimpsed, with long-abandoned, derelict tsarist forts now serving as sheltering spots for herds of yak. The buildings are relics of a late 19th-century stand-off, dubbed the Great Game by the British, which saw Russia and Britain striving for dominance in this strategically important region at the edge of their respective empires. Russia prevailed – until 1991, when the Soviet Union collapsed, and the troops and advisers for the most part headed back west.
There are many reminders of those days on the highway. Thinning patches of asphalt look as though they have not been touched since Red Army days, while Murghab market stalls are made from the frames of trucks abandoned by the 201st Motorised Rifle Division, once the main employer in town.
Nowadays, it is Tajik internal security officers who wait at frequent checkpoints on the highway, hoping to apprehend narcotics traffickers ferrying Afghan opium to Europe. What they are likely to see more of are trucks ferrying foreign aid, notably from the Aga Khan Development Network, which Tajikistan has relied upon since the civil war of 1992-1997. The conflict, which pitted forces loyal to a Moscow-backed government against Islamist and ethnic minority groups, is believed to have cost 100,000 lives and saw many forced to flee into neighbouring Afghanistan.
In a bid to regenerate the area, Western NGOs are not only active in the area of direct aid; they are attempting to attract tourists to the region too, offering loans and grants to local families who want to provide homestay accommodation. hese may not offer five-star luxury, but they are comfortable enough, especially after hours spent bouncing around in an ageing jeep. At the Eralis’ home in Murghab, I get to sleep on a comfortable Persian rug in the living room, gazing upwards at the framed pin-up of a 1980s-vintage, swimsuit-filling Samantha Fox. Her gleaming smile is offset by a cobalt blue wall and her gaze is directed cheerfully out of a window whose sill is splashed by red geraniums peeping out of old USAID cans.
‘She’s a famous Western beauty,’ murmurs the family’s 16-year-old son, wistfully, his eyes glazing. I have no wish to shatter his illusions.
That night, struggling with a bout of altitude sickness beneath a huge, starry sky and Samantha’s watchful gaze, I see the light bulb dim and brighten, struggling with an intermittent power supply. The silence is complete, save for the occasional howling of wolves.
The Eralis are hoping to exploit the tourism potential of Tajikistan. This potential becomes even more apparent on the road to Khorog, a bustling market town and capital of GornoBadakhshan through which the Amu Darya river thunders. On the opposite bank is Afghanistan. South-east of Murghab, Khorog has become a crossing point for aid bound for northern Afghanistan, but in earlier decades its sturdy iron bridge carried tanks and military trucks as Russian soldiers passed through to fight the Afghan Mujahideen in the 1980s.
Some of those vehicles are still here. We see their broken carcasses turning orange-brown with rust by the side of the road as we turn north-westwards towards the Tajik capital, Dushanbe, the next day. Our view alternates between snow-capped mountains, the surging Amu Darya, and distant, mud-walled Afghan villages surrounded by neat green fields and herds of goats.
HOW TO GET THERE
Tajikistan Airlines flies from Munich via Istanbul, and from Almaty in Kazakhstan, to Dushanbe in Tajikistan.
www.tajik-air.com
Paperwork
In some cases a letter of invitation is needed when applying for a visa to the region, however, since 2006, most visitors from the US and the EU do not need one if they are visiting for tourist purposes.
It is advisable to check with the Tajik embassy first. However, you will need a separate permit to enter the Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Oblast.
Bus stopped
The public transport system has disappeared across most of Tajikistan. Travellers depend on marshrutka minibuses to get between towns or wait for shared taxis. To travel the Pamir Highway it is best to take a taxi or jeep from the assembly points at Dushanbe’s main bazaar.
Where to stay
For accommodation along the Pamir Highway contact Acted and the Aga Khan Development Network, two NGOs operating guesthouses and/or supporting a range of family homestays.
Acted Murghab, 43 Frunze Street, Murghab Tel: (+8821) 650 601 513
murghab@acted.automail.org
www.acted.org
The Aga Khan Development Network-sponsored Mountain Societies Development Support Programme runs guesthouses in Kalaikhum and Khorog.
www.akdn.org
Occasionally, patches of roadside are fenced off. Behind the barbed wire lie landmines, dating from the recent civil war, the Afghan conflict or even earlier. Fading images of Lenin and inspirational phrases in Russian adorn rusting, empty bus stops, providing a further reminder of the country’s recent history.
It is not difficult to hear nostalgia for Soviet times. At a table under a canopy of fruit trees the proprietor of a local restaurant tells us about the town’s good old days, when jobs were easy to find in one or other of the Soviet garrisons. ‘Anything we needed for our homes we just took it,’ he says, with a sigh, as if he can hardly believe just how good life once was. day later we have left the Pamir Mountains behind and are driving through barley fields on the outskirts of Dushanbe. Traffic is smooth and scarce on the main thoroughfare, named after Abdullah Jafar Ibn Mohammad Rudaki (859-941), one of several famous writers who lived in the region when it was part of the Persian Empire.
