Altitude Profiles
Pamir Highway
The Pamir Highway (between Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan) is one of the world's highest altitude international road in the world, second only to the Karakorum Highway (between China and Pakistan).
Akbaital Pass, Pamir Highway
The Pamir Mountains are also referred to as the 'roof of the world', and on the highway there's a number of high-altitude passes, the highest being Akbaital Pass.
Whilst on the Pamir Highway, I recorded the altitude readings from my GPS. Here are the altitude profiles.
| Samarkand to Dushanbe (via Anzob Pass) | Uzbekistan/Tajikistan |
| Dushanbe to Khorog | Tajikistan |
| Khorog to Murghab | Tajikistan / Pamir Highway |
| Murghab to Sary-Tash (via Akbaital Pass) | Tajikistan / Kyrgyzstan |
| Sary-Tash to Osh | Kyrgyzstan |
During the preparation for this around the world trip, I sometimes wondered how the motorcycle would perform with a mixture of high altitude and bad fuel:
Pamir Highway
The BMW F650 GS Dakar is a fuel inected bike, hence altitude doesn't have much of an effect on power and performance of the motorbike. But it doesn;t have an anti-knocking sensor built in (like the late BMW boxer engines have). And the fuel-injected F650's original exhaust has a catalytic converter built-in.
In most parts of Central Asia, fuel quality is generally OK (although low octane at times), and very rarely leaded fuel.
In the remote Pamir regions, however, the already low-octane fuel often gets diluted down further. On the Pamir Highway, I once found fuel on a bazaar (in Murghab), and by the sound of the engine I guess it was around 70-75 octane at best.
Bike performance in the Pamirs was OK. Easy on the throttle, I didn't hear any alarming noises from the engine. The F650's fuel consumption between Murghab and Osh was an amazing 3.7l/100 km only!