The world's second-highest road crosses the eastern Pamir for hundreds of kilometres above four thousand metres, over a bare plateau where nothing grows and the air is barely enough. The Soviets paved it to supply the Chinese border and it has been crumbling ever since — you travel it by four-wheel drive or bicycle, sleeping in the homes of Kyrgyz yak herders. The high point is the Ak-Baital pass at 4,655 metres, and beyond it the road drops towards turquoise salt lakes with not a building in sight.