We drove from Murghab along the sensational Pamir Highway to Khorug, a journey of about 6 hours, if I remember correctly. The road surface is variable but the rough patches slow you down for more time to appreciate the scenery. Lunch was taken at a small village of Alichur - a meat and vegetable soup with bread.
Khorug seems like a metropolis after the high land of the Pamir mountains. Set in a valley bottom on the Afghanistan border it has a pleasant climate and the autumn colours were lovely. The town has a University which is being developed further with funding from the Agha Khan Foundation, there is a museum and shops and some of the toilets even have seats!
We visited the second highest botanic garden in the world and saw the huge new president's conference centre, recently built to celebrate the peace after the civil war. We were told that it was in some ways a demonstration from the president that the AK Foundation doesn't fund everything here!
Believe it or not I met someone in a restuarant that I knew from the UK and he handed over his apartment in Dushanbe for us to use, but more of that later.
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