The best trekking destination you've never heard of

If you’re a serious mountaineer, you’ll find some of the world’s highest peaks here, as well as the world’s longest mountain glacier CREDIT: CAROLINE EDEN

Isolation can be a beautiful sensation and good news has arrived for fans of far flung places. As of yesterday, the Foreign Office is no longer advising against all but essential travel to Tajikistan’s Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Oblast (GBAO), aka the Pamirs.

Lifted just in time for the short-lived summer trekking season (late May to early October), this remote eastern part of the country, bordered by Kyrgyzstan, China and Afghanistan, is known locally as the ‘roof of the world’ (‘bam-i-dunya’). Making up almost half of the landmass of Tajikistan, but home to less than five per cent of the population, here you’ll find virtually no outside influence or modern-day convenience. This is a trekking destination for open minded and well-equipped walkers who are willing to trade in the comforts of tea huts, lodges and paths for an untouched paradise of high-altitude, physically challenging valleys.

The Pamirs are now safe to visit, according to the Foreign Office CREDIT: CAROLINE EDEN

Rarely visited by foreigners, adventure opportunities abound in the Pamirs. In the morning, you could be walking from one sparkling turquoise lake to the next then in the afternoon, mountain biking along a section of the Pamir Highway, one of the world’s most audacious mountain roads. Or, if you’re a serious mountaineer, you’ll find some of the world’s highest peaks here, including Peak Ismoil Somoni (7,495m), Peak Lenin on the border between Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan (7,134m) and Peak Karl Marx (6,723m) as well as the world’s longest mountain glacier, Fedchenko (77km).