Tajikistan - Dushanbe, Panjakent and an Incredible Day at Voru.

Tajikistan - a new country! 

On our final day in Kyrgyzstan, we met a representative of the car rental company in Bishkek and he drove us to the airport in our faithful rental car. He immediately put the car windows down and, as we drove through the city, the black exhaust fumes poured into the car. We had gone to so much effort on our trip to keep the fumes and dust out but locals just don't seem to bother.

Bishkek airport was all shiny and new, however it was fairly small. We were crowded onto a bus which took us about 100 metres to the plane. We could have just walked! 

As we waited our turn to go up the stairs to the plane, a passenger ahead of us came back down, obviously thinking he had lost his boarding pass. An Aussie voice clearly said, "It's the small one you're holding, Dick". It was Dick Smith! What was he doing on a plane to Tajikistan? It was his wife Pip who had spoken to him. We then found there was an Aussie tour group on the plane as well. The ones we spoke to were from Birdsville. I don't think anyone has ever said they're from Birdsville when we've asked where they're from before! We never found out if Dick Smith was part of the tour group or not.

We got seats on the left side of the plane as John had worked out we should get views of the mountains. Did we ever! The views were over what was probably the Pamir Mountains. They were incredible!

We flew to Dushanbe, the capital of Tajikistan. What a strange place it was! It was a city under construction. Single storey houses were being bulldozed by the hundreds and were being replaced with high-rise apartment and office buildings. 

Entire blocks were surrounded by high fences while foundations were being dug inside. 

There was so much construction there that they even had special 'construction markets' on the edge of town. Pockets of older buildings still existed but, in some areas, they were few and far between. Our lovely hotel was in one of those remaining pockets.

One wide main street ran through the middle of the town. Arched walkways led through trees.

Lining the main drag were some incredibly flash buildings, many financed by China and many adorned with large pictures of the president. His face stared heroically off into the distance from LED screens, posters and sculptures. You could even buy paintings of him from shops just in case you needed to look at his face even more often. 

The main road led to an area of beautiful parks with many monuments. 

Mosaic work lined this arch.

The city employed so many gardeners! Women squatted on their haunches aerating rose beds. They created huge floral displays on metal frames. 

Men dragged thick hoses around, watering. They were generally a cheerful bunch. One woman picked a rose for me then I carried it around feeling like a criminal because people might think that I had picked it myself! 

There were also endless Witchiepoos, women in long dresses who swept the main boulevard with straw brooms. Actually, only the straw brooms were Witchiepoo-like. There were no pointed hats or black capes in sight, lol.

There were many monuments, but the newest and biggest was the Istiqlol Tower. It was built at a huge cost and I'm really not sure what purpose it served. 

Huge carved wooden doors led us inside. A museum of sorts took up the ground floors (with more presidential paintings inside) then a lift took us to the top where there were good views of the city.

Outside, a relief sculpture showed the president in all his glory, depicted as being significantly larger than other figures in the scene. I know nothing about this guy, but seriously, I think he has a bit of an ego problem.

We wonder what the locals think of all this money being spent on presidential images and grand monuments when the average salary in Tajikistan is USD330 a month with the minimum salary set at USD105 a month. And what do the people think who have been kicked out of their homes so the high rises can be built? I would love to have had this discussion with people, but the language barrier makes it hard.

There were also Tajik flags everywhere. They hung from poles, they flew from buildings and they seemed to decorate every spare space. 

This photo shows three things that stood out to me about this city - the construction, flags and the endless green and white taxis.

We caught taxis a few times. They were usually Chinese electric cars and most had large video screens that played YouTube videos as the drivers drove!

We met a Spanish guy at breakfast in our hotel one morning. He was working for an NGO counting trees to show the decline in tree numbers in the country. He told us that the people who have been removed from their houses can't afford to live in the apartments that are replacing them and are being forced to move further out. 

The Spanish guy's mother was from Venezuela. We joked that Venezuela's the capital of plastic surgery. He told us that most of his female cousins who live there received money from their parents on their 18th birthdays for plastic surgery, usually a boob job!

Like the plastic surgery, I feel that Dushanbe is a facade. The grand buildings, the sculptures and endless gardens feel fake. It's like it's pretending to be fancy but it's obvious that it's not fancy at all. The traffic is chaotic. Horns toot as the ubiquitous green and white Chinese electric taxis squeeze into spaces too small to fit them. Crossing the road at a pedestrian crossing requires focus. There's no guarantee that cars will stop. The city is a mess of building debris, broken footpaths and high construction fences. I've never seen so many cranes in such a small area.

We found a great restaurant and ate there two nights. On our first night we were sitting next to an Aussie tour group! Just how many Aussies are in Central Asia? Our waiter was great. We didn't tip him the first night as a 10% service charge is automatically added to the bills. On the second night, he looked after us really well. At the end of the evening, he used Google translate to say to us, "I am hoping for a good tip tonight"! Nothing like being up front about it!

Back at our hotel, we met a couple of Russian guys who had just come from Afghanistan. Their vehicles were filthy and one had a broken window from being broken in to. They had a great time though. They got talking to some Taliban members somewhere and ended up holding their AK47s and posing for photos! They also met a woman who was travelling solo across Afghanistan on a motorbike. What we do pales in comparison.

When we first tried to rent a car in Tajikistan, we found out that it's quite complicated. You have to sign, and pay for, a stat dec for some reason. You also can't get proper insurance. If you damage the car, you pay to fix it. It was during negotiations with one company that they told us that, for the same price, we could have driver and there would be no responsibility on us. It was a no-brainer.

Umed turned up to pick us up an hour early on our first day. He was a nice guy and we were pleased to see he was middle-aged so hopefully not an idiot driver like the one who took us across the border from Kazakhstan to Kyrgyzstan. He barely spoke a word of English though which was disappointing as we would have learned so much more if he had. We communicated via translation apps and usually, but certainly not always, understood each other. 

We had read in a guide-book that Tajiks love tell you that Tajikistan is 93% mountains. Ten minutes into the drive, Umed punched that exact info into the translation app for us. We had to hide our amusement. What wasn't so amusing though is that he used the translation app while he was driving for the rest of the week.

He also was perfectly comfortable overtaking into oncoming traffic and on blind corners. This is us overtaking a truck into oncoming traffic.

The first day was a long drive from Dushanbe to Panjakent near the Uzbekistan border. The mountain scenery on the way was spectacular! The hills were incredibly dry and almost devoid of trees. There was evidence of a few landslides, and I felt that it wouldn't be long before the whole range crumbled earthwards. There didn't seem to be anything to keep those steep hillsides in place.

There were some narrow gorges.

The only greenery was in the valleys between the mountains and sometimes it was quite lush.

Coal was mined around there and we found some just lying around. It was surprisingly heavy!

Tajik version of home delivery for coal.

We made a detour to Iskandarkul, supposedly Tajikistan's most spectacular alpine lake. I had read about how stunning the blue colour was but clouds and drizzle had set in. The lake didn't look all that interesting at all. 

The best part was a short walk we did to a waterfall nearby. There was a lookout point that jutted out over the tremendous falls. It only had a grill floor and we could see straight through it to the raging water far below. 

The whole thing was in a poor state of repair. When we first stepped onto it a piece of metal clanged and we jumped. It was very funny! We tentatively peered over the edge into the frothing torrents of water. The river was really powerful. If you fell into that waterfall I doubt you'd get out in one piece. 

Soon other people arrived and some wouldn't step into the platform. It was thrilling and spectacular. 

Umed joining in the fun.

We could have had lunch anywhere, but Umed suggested a place in the next town. We didn't get there till nearly 3 pm. It was a buffet type cafeteria. We didn't realise it until we ordered but everything was cold and once we ordered it was whacked into a microwave until it was luke-warm. Not the most appetising meal especially in a country where we have to be particularly careful about hygiene. We can't even clean our teeth in the water from the taps here.

In an area that had virtually no billboards, the occasional ones with the president on them stood out like sore thumbs. There were also many more flags lining bridges and important places. If people have to be continually told how good the president and their country are, then I think there's something rotten underneath.

We drove past many more dry rugged mountains.

This cool old man was in a town we drove through.

We arrived in Panjakent and were a bit disappointed to see it was like a mini-Dushanbe. High rise towers were being constructed up and down the main street. It only had a population of 46,000 but it felt like a city. 

Panjakent wasn't centrally located for walks, but it was the only place in the area where we could find half-decent accommodation. It's a popular destination for this reason. 

When we checked in, the owner spoke reasonable English and told us there were six other Aussies staying there that night! We met four of them pretty quickly. They were a mixed but interesting lot. 

The hotel was good but the mattress was as hard as a rock. It didn't make for great sleeping.

John had been a bit off colour for a few days so the next day we just saw the sights around Panjakent. It was strange having a driver take us around to different places. He tried hard to tell us about things but his translation app didn't always work very well. 

First up was Sarazm, one of the world's oldest cities. It was in existence in 3500 BC and became a thriving trading centre and eventually the largest metallurgical centre in central Asia. It was only ever built in mud so it's amazing anything survived this long. It was sacked by the Arabs in the 7th century and was never built over so it's an important record of a thriving city of the time. 

There were a few new buildings built in the old style to show us what they looked like. They looked pretty sophisticated for the time to me.

The star of the show was the Sarazm Princess. This unknown woman was found in a circular tomb and was about 20 years old when she died. She was shrouded in a veil that was covered in beads. The veil didn't survive but the beads did. At her feet were a man about 21 years old and a girl about 13. Who were they? What was their relationship? Nobody knows.

Only some parts have been excavated. Low walls have been reconstructed.

A granary, or maybe a temple to the sun god. Both were mentioned on a sign board!

On our way to our next destination, we passed an old Soviet hotel. The Soviets' tourist system was called Intourist.

Next up was Ancient Pankajent. This city was 'only' 1500 years old! There was a small museum onsite. Inside we saw a copy of a 15-metre-long mural that was found there. Sadly, the original is in Russia.

Ancient Panjakent was much more fun to explore. 20 hectares of dirt with ridges in it sat ready for us to scramble round. The ridges seemed to mostly be the tops of dirt walls although it was often hard to tell. A few buildings had been reconstructed but there were no signs so we didn't know what they were. One part was clearly a fort as we could see arrow slots. This is the reconstructed part.

A section of unreconstructed fort wall.

I was wandering over one part by myself and I saw a fox!

The old city directly overlooked the new one. It was such a contrast. 

The walls were only made of mud. There wasn't a real lot left, but I was amazed we could see anything at all after 1500 years!

Umed recommended a shaslik place for lunch. It was interesting sitting in a circular enclosure (I don't know what it's called) getting more food than we realised we had ordered. This was also the first time we saw RC Cola being drunk. Who of you is old enough to remember RC Cola? It's pretty big here.

Umed wanted to show us the Zarafshon River which runs through the town. The bridge over it was built in the 1980s and was in an incredibly bad state. I could hear timbers splintering as cars, motorbikes and small trucks drove carefully over it.  Further down, a man hammered more timber onto the gaps. 

The river rushed underneath us, a torrent of silty grey water. 

Next up was the museum, again adorned with a large photo of the president. The most interesting thing was some info on Tajikistan's glaciers. Over 7% of the country is covered by glaciers. About 14,000 glaciers provide 60 percent of central Asia's fresh water. No wonder those rivers flow so fast. It must be incredible in spring when the glaciers melt. 

We finished the day with a look at the bazaar. As soon as we entered, we could smell delicious spices. Bunches of dill and coriander were everywhere. We had already realised that coriander is used like parsley here. Almost every dish is adorned with it. 

There were heaps of fruit and vegetables. Considering how chaotic the traffic was outside the market it was surpassingly calm and civilised inside.

Tea is drunk all through central Asia and there were so many varieties here!

There are two main types of handmade brooms that we've seen. I never got a close photo of the Witchiepoo brooms but these broom sellers in the bazaar were happy for me to take this. (If the closest lady saw this photo she might not be so happy though!)

Panjakent was pretty rough around the edges and it wasn't our favourite place by a long stretch. This is the view from our room.

We did, however, get to understand a little about Tajikistan. One of the first things we noticed when we arrived in the country was that the people had changed. We had assumed that seeing the people of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan were so similar that the people in Tajikistan would be too. We were wrong. While the Kazakhs and Kyrgyz were largely descended from the Mongols, the Tajiks seemed to be mainly of Persian descent. Fortunately, we soon learned that their version of Islam was as moderate as it had been in the other two countries. No calls to prayer were amplified and women didn't cover their faces, unless they thought they might be photographed which is fair enough.

We certainly weren't enthralled with anything so far, however one of our best days was about to happen.

We didn't think much of our over-cocky hotel owner, however he suggested to us that we should visit Voru, a small village a couple of hours away. It turned out to be the best bit of advice anyone could give us. I did some research and it sounded good, so we told Umed we would like to go there. Umed suggested that his wife could cook us food for a picnic that day. I suggested she was welcome to join us and didn't think anything more of it until he came to pick us up and she was in the car. At first, she didn't say much but she warmed up as the day went on. We stopped along the way to pick up supplies - fresh bread from a hole in the wall bakery, grapes from a street stall and a full watermelon from one of the vendors that line just about every main road in the 'stans at this time of year. 

I tagged along when Umed's wife (we never could remember her name) did the shopping and it was great to see how everything worked. The grape guy spoke a bit of English and gave me a bunch of the sweet, small grapes they have here for free!

The road up to Voru was great. It was rough but perfectly doable and not as bad as many roads we've been on. At one village we stopped, and Umed's wife filled up a container with water from the river. Clearly they thought this was great water. John and I weren't going near that! They explained that both their families were from this area. 

There were some gorgeous mountains in the distance. 

We sometimes shared the road with large mobs of sheep.

We kept seeing donkeys.  Many rural Tajiks live in the mountains or remote areas where there are few, or no, roads. Donkeys are king here. They carry everything up and down those steep hills. After seeing so many horses in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, we saw almost none in Tajikistan as the terrain was so different. 

It seemed that anything was the go for padding on the pack saddle, even an old coat.

As we approached the village, small beautiful green farms lined the road. A river ran through it all. It was all so pretty and such a contrast after Dushanbe and Panjakent!

We passed some people in a paddock and one was ploughing the ground with a donkey and a single furrow plough! He stopped before I could get a photo though. 

We arrived at Voru and Umed asked someone where we could have a picnic. Soon a guy in a cool local hat got in the car with us and directed us a short distance down the road to what was presumably his farm. We set up picnic blankets in the most beautiful spot on lush green grass next to the river. We sat under trees in dappled sunlight. 

Nearby, a few men and boys were cutting tall stalks of corn with scythes. They separated the corn ears out then laid the long stalks out separately. I presume they would load the long stalks onto the donkeys and take them to the village for stock feed. 

Umed's wife produced a banquet. There were over a dozen small fried trout, a separate chicken and potatoes dish for me because Umed knew I don't like fish, a chicken and corn salad plus pirozhki, fried pastries filled with potato. Then there was fresh salad - tomatoes and cucumbers washed in the river! Plus there were three varieties of grapes, the watermelon and a thermos of tea. Everything was delicious! Then the farmer picked us some apples as well, although they were quite sour. We were conscious of not doing the wrong thing. For example, it's rude to put your bread down with the top of the bread facing downwards. I think we did ok, although we couldn't kneel or sit with crossed legs like they could. 

Leftovers were passed on to the farmer guy and the corn workers. It was all so wonderful!

They wouldn't let us help clean up so John and I walked back up to the village. As we entered the village, donkeys were being loaded up with bags of cement. The road stopped here and the donkeys carried the loads along narrow tracks to the houses.

Voru was astonishing. Each mud house had a flat roof and those rooves formed the walking paths and open areas in front of the next house above them. It gave the impression that the houses were stacked on top of each other. 

Blackened eaves made it obvious where the kitchens were.

There were outdoor ovens made of mud too. 

A cooking pot, blackened from years of cooking over a fire, sat drying upside down in the sun.

A community well had washing drying around it.

Houses were made of any combination of mud, stones, mud bricks and timber.

I couldn't help but notice that the houses looked quite similar to the ones in Ancient Panjakent. I think things haven't changed much in this village for many centuries!

Rickety hand-made steps led up to the doorways.

The flat rooves made good footpaths and areas for drying and storing foods.

Donkey poo was formed into rounds (by hand!) and plastered in sunny places to dry for fuel.

The mountain views were stunning!

As we walked around, people seemed thrilled to see us. Little kids would call out hello and older people would answer our salam alaikum with a smile and a hand on their heart. We found one rooftop full of drying apricots and were promptly handed a couple of handfuls of them by a teenage boy. They were sensational! I asked if I could take a photo of the apricots and the boy quickly jumped in the middle of the photo. His sister, however, hid her face. I had realised by now that you can photograph anyone except women. 

One grandma brought her granddaughter to see us. I asked if it was ok to photograph the girl. It was clear that it was fine, but grandma hid in the shadows to make sure I didn't photograph her. Many of the young girls seemed to have very short hair, which is surprising as most teenage and older girls have quite long hair.

We asked some older kids their names. They were almost unpronounceable to us with many guttural sounds. 

This little girl was very confident and approached us on her own.

A woman motioned for us to come into a room. Every tooth that we could see in her big smile was gold. Her long, straggly black hair and dishevelled clothes made her quite wild looking. We entered the hot smoky room and could see something being cooked in a big pot. It was apricot jam! She was very proud to show us. 

The village was truly amazing. I feel like we were given a glimpse of life from centuries ago. We are so fortunate. 

John and I walked back along the beautiful road leading to the village for a bit. We passed donkeys laden with so much grass that all we could see of the donkeys were heads and legs!

A large dog tagged along with these donkeys. We often saw farm dogs like this. They usually just ignored us, thankfully.

Sometimes it was hard to tell where one load finished and the next one started.

Beautiful hand-made gates gave access through stone walls.

We talked to a few locals on the way. One teenage boy gave us half a dozen apples that he had just picked. There were so many fruit trees here!

We reluctantly returned to the car and, for some reason, the owner of the picnic land got in with us. We squeezed into the back seat while he had the front one. We didn't mind at all. His farm had been the perfect place for a picnic.

There were more amazing views along the way. 

After a short time, we turned off the road. We had no internet for translating so Umed told us we would go up the road a bit for a photo, "photo" being a word we could all understand. We weren't arguing with anything. It was all an adventure. 

We soon pulled up at a new building. Out the front was an unfinished deck which was clearly going to be a restaurant. They then showed us through the nearly finished building. John and I had no idea why we were there but just went with the flow. They then showed us through the part of the house they were living in and I spotted two large bowls of something milky. 

I commented on it. Immediately, out came some bowls and the milky liquid was ladled into them. A huge leaf of bread was brought out and thick slices were cut. We were sat at a low table and large bowls were placed in front of us. We were still full from lunch! I suspected the liquid was yoghourt and took a tentative taste. It wasn't yoghourt - it was cream! It was fresh, clotted, unpasteurised and was absolutely delicious! Luckily, I convinced them that John and I didn't need a full bowl each and we shared one. It was truly wonderful and I don't even like cream!

Outside, I saw the woman go to something that was hanging from a tree. A large bag full of milk was shaded by bags hanging around it. Liquid was slowly seeping from the bag. It was cheese in the process of being made! She ladled spoonfuls of it into plastic bags for the wife to take home. We later learned that she milks her own cows.

Next to us, on a rock, rose-hips were drying in the sun in a bag.

It wasn't until we went to leave and the wife and the lady kissed each other goodbye that the penny dropped. The woman was a relative. To my delight, we took some photos together. At last, photos of women!

We finally dropped the farmer off somewhere on the way home and arrived back in Panjakent eight hours after we left. It was such a special day. 

Hooroo!
Heather and John

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