The Pamir Highway: Peak Lenin Base Camp, Qarokul Lake and Bartang Valley (August 2024)

We reunited with Simon and his car Otto and together we started our Pamir Highway adventure!
We bought a whole lot of stuff in the supermarket and filled both of Rosinante’s Diesel tanks.
We started in Osh and our first stop was the Basecamp of Peak Lenin. This mountain is very famous because a lot of people say it’s a pretty easy to climb seventh thousand plus mountain.
Racki and I thought about doing it as well at some point of our time in the stan countries but in the end we didn’t do it because it takes two up to three weeks. I love mountains but going back and forth the same routes (for acclimating) for two weeks… I didn’t feel like I wanted to do it although I’d love to reach a 7000m summit.
The area around the base camp was very beautiful and we did a nice hike with a beautiful view.
Unfortunately I had a strong diarrhoea and had to shit a lot and everywhere. So I did not do any big hikes.
These little and sometimes not so little fellows were everywhere and made a lot of squeaking noises.
We continued to the border to Tajikistan and on the way we tried to find some medicine for my diarrhoea. The pharmacies were all closed but we met nice travelers who gifted me some medicine.
We had organized the permit for the Pamir region and everything else in advance and so the border crossing went very well.
The road between the borders was pretty offroady (no photo) and we were wondering how people with vans and motorhomes were doing this. And there were actually living people between the borders.
On the other side of the border the real Pamir adventure began!
The landscapes were super beautiful and we found a very nice camp spot at the Karakul Lake at 4000 meters altitude.
It was crazy. The light and feeling in that area felt very special. I can’t really say why or how.
Racki and I did a nice hike up on the summit of the Urtabuz mountain at 5047 meters. It was a super easy hike.
We met some living friends on the way up.
And some dead. Actually Racki carried this skull, about 4 kg, almost to the summit and the whole way down again to our camp to gift it to Simon who was repairing his exhaust pipe which broke the day before.
The view from the summit was amazing! On 5000 meters  surrounded by 7000 to 8000 meter high mountains and perfect weather.
After a few days we continued our way into the famous Bartang Valley.
Our plan was to enter it from the east for about 40 km and then return because the tracks in that valley were crazy and we had heard a lot about crazy river crossings and cars getting stuck for days.
But once we had reached a certain point we decided to just continue and try to drive through the whole valley because the weather was perfect and had been like that for a long time.
So we guessed that the water level of the river would be pretty low and the potentially muddy parts would be ok.
The scenery and colors were amazing.
The track was ok and driving fast on the super dusty smooth parts was a lot of fun.
We made it easily over the most offroady part, at a small mountain pass. Only at one point, a pretty narrow, bumpy crossing of a stream on the mountain pass, I thought that maybe I would regret trying to pass this valley.
On iOverlander and in the chat groups travelers mentioned primarily three tough sections.
We made it through the two river crossings without a problem. As we had guessed the water level and current were pretty low. But still it felt pretty adventurous.
In the last tough section a land slide had made the track pretty narrow and depending on the water level you had to guess where the track was. Take a look at the photos and reports on iOverlander. When we arrived there, we could see almost the whole track and everything went well.
But this wrack next to the landslide reminded us how it can go.
We found a nice camp spot to relax after the adventurous part of the Bartang Valley.
The views were awesome.
There were some oases in the rocky terrain.
And the switching between rocks, gravel and the green was super interesting.
We always had some sweet presents with us.
In one oasis village we met a group of super friendly villagers. One of them spoke very good English and invited us to spend some time with them.
It was very interesting. We talked a lot about their lives in that remote village and about life in Tajikistan in general.
After they showed us their home, they wanted to see our homes and got very interested in how everything works and how we lived. We gifted them some clothes, medicine and bandages and it felt good to help them just a bit.
We continued our way in the Bartang Valley and found a nice camp spot close to a river to relax and stayed for a bit longer.
There were just a few cars taking the only off-road track through the valley. One day a solo backpacker from New Zealand joined us and together we had a great time with interesting conversations.
We had big respect for how our visitor was traveling: she was going alone through the valleys and crossing mountain ridges which were sometimes over 5000 meters high and was passing glaciers as well with pretty used equipment.
Our visitor got a seat in Otto and together we continued our journey through the valley which became more easy to drive and at some point we got back on a real dirt road.
This bridge looked adventurous but we did not have to cross it.
We did a nice and easy hike to a remote village which was only accessible by foot. On the way we met other travelers.
The village was very beautiful and located next to a lake. We learned about their lives there, how they were making bread and that they try to live in an ecological way.