River
Pamir River
118 km from source to mouth · Afghanistan and Tajikistan.
Afghanistan and TajikistanFlows into Panj River7th longest in Afghanistan
In numbers
Length
118km
Average flow
13m³/s
Basin
4,549km²
Drop
1,314m
from 4,111 m to 2,797 m
Countries
2
The journey
From source to mouth
118 km of river and 2 stops on the way: 0 towns and cities on its banks, dams, bridges and the tributaries that feed it.
- 0 kmZorkulat 4,111 m
- 0 kmZorkul36 km²
- 15 kmChakan Kōl5.0 km²
- 118 kmPanj Riverat 2,797 m
Water level along the river (RiverATLAS; the height is exaggerated). Towns: GeoNames and Wikidata; bridges, dams and tributaries: Wikidata.
River in Tajikistan and Afghanistan
At the mouth it carries 13 m³/s on average: an Olympic pool every 196 seconds. It drops from 4,111 m to 2,797 m, 11 m per kilometre on average. Its basin covers 4,549 km², about the size of TT. 9,385 people live in it. Highest water, with the snowmelt: May; lowest: from January to April. No large dam holds it back: it is one of the world's free-flowing rivers.
Where to start
- KhandūdLargest city on its banks · 5,521 people
- Chitral Airport (CJL)Nearest airport with scheduled flights, 127 km from the city
- From July to AugustThe best months to visit
Pamir River, month by month
Highest water: May
Lowest water: from January to April. Freezing months (average below −4 °C): from November to March. Melting snow makes up much of its water. Best months to visit: from July to August.
From about 1.8 m³/s in the lowest month to 56 m³/s in the highest. An estimate: the monthly flow is modelled from the lowest and highest months of WaterGAP (RiverATLAS, 1971–2000) and the rain and snow along the river (WorldClim). Dams change the real rhythm. The chip is the average air temperature; below it, the month's rain.
Plan the trip
Plan the trip: boat trips, a bed by the river, a car
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The basin
Pamir River: the basin in numbers
4,549 km² of land send their water to this river. This is what lives on it.
- 9,385people live in the basin
- 2/km²people per km²
- 4,528maverage altitude of the basin
- 298mmof rain a year (basin average)
- -4.7°Caverage air temperature
- 19%protected areas
- 1.3%covered by lakes
- 5%glaciers
- 66%permafrost
What covers the basin
- 1% Cropland
- 9% Pasture
- 5% Ice
RiverATLAS (HydroATLAS v1.0, CC BY 4.0): land cover, people, protected areas, glaciers and dams over the whole basin upstream of the mouth.
Cross-checked with our atlases
Pamir River in our other atlases
What our sister atlases know about the waterfalls on this river, the lakes it flows through, the beaches at its mouth, the mountains where it rises and the islands off its mouth.
2lakes on its wayLakeyas
Lakes and reservoirs (2)
Lakes it flows through, by Lakeyas
- Zorkulkm 036km²
- Chakan Kōlkm 155.0km²
Lakeyas is coming soonOpen Lakeyas ↗
From space
The source and the mouth, seen from orbit


Sentinel-2 cloudless 2016 by EOX IT Services GmbH (contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data 2016), CC BY 4.0. The glowing line is the river as drawn by RiverATLAS.
Tributaries
Where it flows, and what flows into it
It flows into
Panj RiverIn the same basin
Nearby
Rivers nearby
Where these numbers come from
| Name, length, places | Wikidata (Q8550) · CC0 |
|---|---|
| Course, profile, basin | RiverATLAS v1.0 (HydroATLAS, Linke et al. 2019) · CC BY 4.0 — followed from the source to the mouth given by Wikidata |
| Flow | WaterGAP (RiverATLAS), 1971–2000 · CC BY 4.0 |
| Climate along the river | WorldClim (RiverATLAS), 1970–2000 · CC BY 4.0 |
| Towns, bridges, dams | Wikidata · CC0; GeoNames · CC BY 4.0 |
| Along the river | © OpenStreetMap contributors · ODbL |
| Images | EOX Sentinel-2 cloudless 2016 · CC BY 4.0; Wikimedia Commons |
| Our other atlases | Lakeyas — Wikidata · CC0; © OpenStreetMap contributors · ODbL; GeoNames · CC BY 4.0; HydroLAKES · CC BY 4.0; NOAA OISST |
Every source and licence is on the data sources page.
The family
Do you prefer beaches, lakes, mountains, waterfalls, islands, rivers or canyons?
Same idea, other landscapes: field atlases built on open data, month by month, in seven languages.

