Tajikistan Travel Guide
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Guide
Tajikistan's e-Visa at evisa.tj is straightforward for most of the country, and then there is the Pamirs, which need an extra step. The ordinary e-Visa covers most nationalities for a standard tourist stay, but travel into Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Oblast, the GBAO region bordering Afghanistan and China and home to the Pamir Highway, needs a GBAO permit added on top. You tick a box for it during the same e-Visa application, pay roughly 20 to 30 US dollars extra, and it arrives attached to the visa, bringing a combined single entry eVisa and GBAO permit to about 70 to 80 dollars total.
The permit is not just paperwork, it gets checked. Guides recommend carrying about ten photocopies of it, since each checkpoint along the Pamir Highway keeps one, and a traveler entering the region a second time from a different direction, for example via the Kyzylart Pass from Kyrgyzstan after already having entered Tajikistan elsewhere, needs a multiple entry e-Visa with GBAO to cover it.
Border crossings
- Kyzylart Pass, from Kyrgyzstan
The high altitude crossing onto the Pamir Highway from the Kyrgyz side. A traveler using this route after already visiting Tajikistan through a different border needs the GBAO permit to be valid for multiple entries, not just the first one.
- Checkpoints along the Pamir Highway
Not a single border crossing but a series of checkpoints through GBAO itself, each one wanting to see and keep a copy of the permit, which is the practical reason to travel with extra photocopies rather than a single original.
Transit routes
- Tick the GBAO box when you apply, not after
It rides along with the standard e-Visa application at evisa.tj, and adding it later or trying to arrange it at the border is not how the process is built.
- Make copies before you set out on the highway
Ten is the number guides suggest, since every checkpoint along the way wants its own.
Entry point notes
- GBAO is a separate add-on, not automatic
The ordinary e-Visa does not cover the Pamir region on its own, plan for the extra fee and the extra checkbox specifically if that is part of your route.
- OVIR offices exist in most cities for registration questions
Khujand, Khorog, and Murghab are described by travelers as more helpful than the Dushanbe office for this kind of paperwork.