Exploring the mountains of Tajikistan.

We left you last in Kyrgyzstan...

We crossed into Tajikistan on a bad road through bleak mountainous desert in an old Russian 4x4 minibus. Our driver had boxes of tomatoes and cucumbers which he used to bribe his way through the Kyrgyz and Tajik borders - his wife and kids seemed to be missing some of their travel documents. We thought that cucumbers and tomatoes made unusual bribes, but later - after spending weeks in the mountains eating potatoes, potatoes and potatoes - we realised the genius of the man.

Our transport to from Kyrgyzstan to Tajikistan

When we arrived at the Tajikistan border post we were really surprised how different the Tajiks looked from the Kyrgyz - two nations living side by side. The Tajiks look like Iranians or Spaniards and in fact their ancestors came from Persia many hundreds of years ago. There is little evidence of the Mongolian or Turkish conquests in their faces although blonde hair and blue eyes is not uncommon - supposedly evidence of Alexander the Great's (s)exploits.

We stopped for two nights in the village alongside the mountainous lake of Karakul, 4000m above sea level. We were travelling with our Slovenian friends and we hoped to try an unusual route of entering the remote Bartang valley from the top and then spending two weeks walking down. There was lots of contradictory information as to the condition of the roads: a few days previously, unusually hot weather had caused the glaciers to melt more than usual causing floods that might have closed access to the Bartang valley and many other parts of Tajikistan. 

We managed to find a 4x4 driver who claimed that he could get us to Bartang and we set off through the desert in his old Soviet-era UAZ 4x4 jeep. We passed through magnificent high altitude desert landscapes and crossed flooded, glacial streams until we reached the summit of the Bartang valley where the Tajik goat herders told us that the road down was completely blocked. The river had risen so much that the entire valley was completely submerged and inaccessible to both vehicles and people on foot. Disappointed we returned to Karakul and headed down to Murgab with a plan to try enter the Bartang valley from the bottom.        

This part of Tajikistan is dominated by the mighty Pamir mountains that connect China, Kyrgyzstan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Tajikistan. These forbidding desert mountains have for millennia kept major civilisations apart and forced the silk road traders who crossed them to take their lives in their hands. When Russia completed its conquering of Central Asia in the early 1900's it completed the Pamir Highway which crosses this remote area and it is this highway which is now one of the main reasons why travellers visit Tajikistan.

Salty landscape in the Pamir mountains

We spent two days driving by 4x4 down the Pamir Highway. Our days were spent staring at mind-blowing, Martian landscapes that transformed in colour and shape at every turn. We over-nighted in a homestay in a remote, stark Tajik village called Bulunkul alongside another high altitude lake. 

After some hair-raising driving along bad dirt roads we finally descended into the Wakhan valley where the Panj river separates Tajikistan from the Afghan villages across the water. Here we said goodbye to our Slovenian travel buddies and began walking down the Wakhan with Tajikistan on our right and Afghanistan 100m to our left. 

To explain why the Wakhan is the way it is, another brief history lesson is necessary :)

Walking along the Wakhan valley (Afghanistan across the river on the left)

---------- the Great Game and the Wakhan: a brief history ---------------- 

During the 18th and 19th centuries it was believed that Russia might be planning to take over the entire world. While that theory now may seem ridiculous, few people ever look at the map and wonder why Russia extends from Europe in the West all the way to North Korea in the East. How is it that Vladivostok in the east of Russia is populated by white Europeans in an area where the indigenous people all look Korean? Why is Russia by far the biggest country on Earth? 

During the era of colonial expansion, the fear was that if one imperial nation didn't expand to incorporate weak nations then their imperial competitors would just take over those nations instead. So the race was on to invade nations or sign treaties and to incorporate them within one or other of the major military powers of the time. This was the time of the Berlin Conference that disgracefully divided Africa among the major European powers and this was also the time for major power plays in Asia.

Tajik kids in Langar, Wakhan valley

The British fear was that Russia planned to move south and conquer Istanbul/Constantinople and thus control the Mediterranean as well as to conquer Central Asia then Afghanistan and finally India. It was felt that if Russia succeeded in this goal, it would become so large and rich it would become unstoppable and ultimately the world would consist of just one country: Russia. While there is some evidence of Russian Tzars having this as a stated goal, other historians claim this was merely paranoia. That said, the Russians steadily expanded their borders over the 18th and 19th centuries and were at one stage at the gates of Constantinople...

Another theory on why Russia constantly expanded during this era was that the Russian psyche had been indelibly scarred by the hundreds of years they were surrounded and brutalised by Genghis Khan's Mongol Hordes in the middle ages. Ever since then the Russians have been obsessed with ensuring that their neighbours are compliant and friendly. This has been postulated as a reason for the current conflicts in Ukraine and Georgia. Russia will not accept unfriendly neighbours on its borders ever again.

Whatever the reason, Russia steadily and stealthfully expanded its borders into Central Asia, conquering one nation after another, to the growing alarm of the Afghan kings and the British in India. Treaties would be signed whereby Russia promised not to expand any further only to be broken immediately with another nation absorbed into mother Russia. Finally Russia conquered the whole of Central Asia - a land mass larger than Europe - and it began creeping into Afghanistan. It seemed war between Britain and Afghanistan on the one side and Russia on the other was inevitable - and it was only prevented by the fact that Russia's economy was in a bad state due to wars in East Asia and its fear that is might lose the war and all the territories it had already conquered. Both the British and the Russians were also growing concerned at the rise of Germany during this period and they would eventually join forces and fight Germany in the first and second world wars.

Wakhan valley

A peace deal was signed that sought to ensure that at no point should the Russia empire border British India, so that the future annexation of India would not become a threat. The difficult region was the Pamirs as the two countries were effectively only separated by these incredibly inhospitable mountains. The solution: to allocate a sliver of land along the Wakhan valley to Afghanistan which would keep the two imperial nations apart. Russia would thus first have to declare war on Afghanistan in order to cross the Wakhan valley if they ever wanted to invade India. Much later, the Soviets/Russia abandoned Central Asia and Pakistan separated from India - so the modern map now sees Tajikistan separated from Pakistan by a long sliver of Afghanistan. And so we have this strange narrow strip of Afghan land along the head waters of the Amu Darya/Oxus river which is inhabited by Pamiri people who have some of their families on just the other side of the river but who may as well be living in another world... 

Tajikistan's recent history has been quite different from that of Kyrgyzstan. When the Soviets abandoned the country, it soon descended into a civil war between the people of the Pamir region against the rest. The current president ended the war and in the last decade it has been peaceful - with just an occasional flaring of violence in the main Pamir town of Khorog every few years. The political psyche of Tajikistan is no doubt affected by the worst-case-scenario which has unfolded in its larger neighbour, Afghanistan. As a result there is a huge fear of Islamic extremism developing inside Tajikistan and as a result the country is practically autocratic and strictly secular - despite the fact that the president and everyone else is Muslim. It is quite common for men with beards to be hauled off the street and shaved against their will! The Hijab and going on the Hajj is also restricted. 

 Economically, Tajikistan was recorded as having a GDP per capita half of that of Kyrgyzstan (just $1,300 per person per year, South Africa is $10,000) at the beginning of this century but it has enjoyed rapid economic growth since the civil war which has brought it level with Kyrgyzstan today. One of the major sources of income for Tajikistan is smuggling heroine from Afghanistan into Russia - it is claimed that this makes up as much as half of its GDP. Most of this heroine is smuggled across the river we walked along in the Wakhan though this is not evident to the ordinary traveller: there are not lots of drug addicts lying around nor does one see any obviously suspicious activity going on. The other major source of income for the country is money sent home by millions of its young people who work in Russia.  

----------- end of history lesson -----------------


We began walking from Langar, the village at the top of the Wakhan valley, and spent the next week wandering down the valley with our backpacks. We walked 15 to 25km per day and slept in homestays in villages along the way. The walking was pretty easy as the valley is flat - no crazy mountain passes this time! This is a good thing as the food was very, very basic and we would have probably lacked the strength to get up the hills. The glacial-melt floods which had blocked our access to the Bartang Valley had also washed away part of the road out of the Pamir region. As a result, supplies of everything were in short supply. With potatoes and wheat being the main crop at the time, our meals consisted of potatoes, bread and black chai ("choy") for most of the week. We also had to learn to eat everything with just a spoon, even spreading butter, jam or cutting up any food has to be done with a spoon as this is the only cutlery we ever seemed to get. Occasionally there was yoghurt - known locally as "eiraan". And always, as in Kyrgyzstan, there was a plate of sweets... for breakfast, lunch and supper! As a result, Tajiks also have mouths filled with golden teeth.

Wakhan valley homestay owner

The Wakhan valley has huge, bare, stony mountains on either side with the Panj river running through the center. The valley is quite wide and we were walking along the river's northern bank which is Tajikistan while the southern bank is Afghanistan. The villages we stayed in were located mostly on streams leading into the main Panj river and were beautiful and green with lots of fruit trees hung with unripe apricots and apples. The Pamiri houses we stayed in were very interestingly designed. From the outside they looked like rather plain, rectangular mud and stone brown buildings. But once you entered they were decorated with bright carpets in loud floral and geometric local designs on the floors and walls with beautifully carved wooden pillars and beams. In the centre of the main room is a skylight window framed by four levels of wooden roof beams with each level representing one of the basic elements of earth, air, fire and water. The main room has a raised platform floor on three sides with lovely carpets on the floor and walls. In a corner is a large stack of mattresses and blankets normally enough for ten weary travellers. This is typical in all Pamiri homes - not just those acting as homestays - and must surely be evidence of the many hundreds of years that Pamiri families have hosted travellers along the silk road. The main roof beams are supported by five thick wooden pillars, and between two of the pillars hangs a plaque with the year that the house was built. Next to the plaque stands a framed photograph of the Agha Khan: the spiritual leader of the Pamiri people who are all Ismaili Muslims.

Inside an Ismaeli homestay, Walhan valley.

The Ismailis are an offshoot of Shia Islam which is found mainly in Iran and Iraq. The Shia's are distinct from Sunni Muslims who make up almost 90% of Muslims around the world. The differences between Sunni and Shia are quite complicated but in simple terms the Sunni's regard themselves as orthodox/traditionalist Muslims who follow the literal teachings in the Quran while Shia's chose to follow Ali (Muhammad's cousin and son-in-law) and Ali's descendants who are seen as divinely chosen. Shia's believe that their contemporary religious leaders (imams) can re-interpret the Quran in order to make it more relevant to current realities.

The Ismailis were initially part of the general Shia family but then split away over a conflict as to who was the true successor of Imam Ja'far al-Sadiq who died in 743. While they consider themselves Muslims, they have also incorporated other traditional beliefs into their religion and as a result are considered by many Sunni's as not "true" Muslims. 

A typical homestay meal - always with sweets!

The Ismailis these days number 15 million people mostly in Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and Tajikistan but also in East Africa, Europe and North America. The current Agha Khan, the 49th Imam, was born in Geneva and grew up in Kenya. He is a wealthy businessman in Europe and his foundation spends $600 million per year to uplift Ismailis in poverty in 18 countries. One of the things that makes the Agha Khan unusual is that he is regarded internationally as a king, yet he controls no territory as his followers are scattered around the world. As the 49th Imam, he also gets to make concessions and new religious rules: one new rule we were told is that Ismailis only need to pray twice a day (morning and evening) so as to allow them to more easily balance the pressures of modern life. The Agha Khan also emphasises the equality of women, the importance of education and the dangers of taking drugs and stoking civil war.

Travelling through the Pamirs it is remarkable to see how the Agha Khan Foundation seems to have touched the lives of almost every family we met: children attending the free university started by the Agha Khan, students on international scholarships, homes with donated solar power systems, clinics, schools, bridges, etc. The work done to improve the status of women is remarkable and particularly important considering that over a million Ismailis live in Afghanistan.    

Most of the villages we walked through would have a mazar shrine, decorated with horns from Ibex and Marco Polo sheep, commemorating ancient spiritual leaders. Every village would also have a neatly-built, stone bus stop - in a region where there are no buses, and very few other vehicles to hitch a lift with! One of the villages we over-nighted in was home to the Bibi Fotima hot-springs where we bathed and observed girls performing prayer rituals in the hot water which are supposed to improve their fertility...

Mazar shrine, Langar

As we headed down the valley, the temperature increased as did the ripeness of the hanging fruits. We feasted on apricots that we picked off the trees in our homestays and along the paths and streets.

But as much as walking down the Wakhan is beautiful and interesting with lots of friendly people constantly inviting you in to have tea with them... it is a strange feeling to look to your left and see Afghan women watering their goats just 100m away. Afghanistan's Taliban are mainly drawn from the Sunni Pashtun tribes and they have been slowly creeping north and are in places almost at the border. The USA/NATO are in negotiations with the Taliban and the Afghan government to end the war there, but you can't help sharing the terror that local Ismailis feel that once again the Taliban will take over Afghanistan and impose their extremist ideology on their families across the river: girls not allowed to attend school, women not allowed to visit the doctor, music and sports are illegal, full burka is required for all women, etc. To have Ismaili women on the Tajik side of the river having all the freedoms and opportunities we would want for own daughters and sisters while just 100m away all their female family members would suffer horrific oppression just seems crazy. As we walked along the river, Afghan women would call "hello" - and we could shout "hi" back to them. 

Aghar Khan picture in every Wakhan home

One thing the Agha Khan foundation has done is to build a lot of bridges across the river in order to build closer relations between families on either side. One hopes that this will in some way protect the families on the Afghan side... but either way, we will be paying much closer attention to the current peace negotiations and hoping that the experts who claim that the Taliban will inevitably return to power are wrong. 

At the end of our week in the Wakhan we hitched a ride to the province's capital city of Khorog. Back in "modern civilization" we enjoyed showers EVERY DAY (!) and ate almost every night at the delicious Indian restaurant which had a whole range of vegetables other than potatoes. Our hotel room even had a non-working jacuzzi! As mentioned earlier, the people of this region are of Persian origin and look like Iranians or Spaniards - very attractive. If anyone wants to know what Iran would look like if no-one was wearing scarfs - just come to Khorog.

 Central Asian towns and cities have a surprising lack of commercial branding. In Khorog there were no supermarkets - just small corner grocery stores. These stores would have just a simple picture of generic groceries on the outside - but no branding of any sort. In fact the only branding one sees in Central Asia is for mobile phone networks and even with these, there are few of the giant billboards that pollute the skyline in so many cities around the world. Perhaps this aesthetic is a hangover from the communist era. Tajikistan compensates for its lack of corporate branding by plastering giant posters of their bushy-eyebrowed president everywhere, often in a Lenin-like pose showing the way to the future. Although he has an autocratic past, he seems genuinely popular these days with everyone we asked saying "good president!" But there is concern about who will succeed him as no obvious candidate is being groomed - the mistake of so many personality-cult presidents it seems.

From Khorog we decided to try and tackle the Bartang valley again - this time from the bottom. The information we had was vague but it seemed that at least a part of the road was open but that we would have to walk quite a bit too. Luckily we were able to leave unnecessary heavy stuff at our hotel in Khorog so our bags were a few kilograms lighter than they had been in the Wakhan.

 We managed to get a ride into the very bottom of the Bartang valley where we crossed a rickety suspension bridge and then hiked up a steep path for a few hours towards the tiny village of Jizev. Parts of the path had been destroyed by the recent glacial melt floods so some of the path involved precarious walking along steep scree slopes of jagged stones. The valley was breath-takingly beautiful with steep, barren mountains on either side and a tree-lined gushing river threading through the centre. Amazingly, the water in this river was actually blue - not blue from reflecting the sky, but actually blue-coloured water. The best reason we could find as to the cause of this was that there might be dissolved lime in the water. 



 We followed the river higher into the valley, occasionally stumbling upon cherry trees laden with ripe, red cherries which we feasted on. We eventually arrived at Jizev - a small community of perhaps 100 people spread over three separate villages - and found a beautiful homestay in the furthest village.

 This entire valley - an off-shoot of the Bartang valley - has no road connecting it to the outside world. The 7km walking path is the ONLY way for villagers to get to and from their village - there is no way at all for any vehicle, of any type, to get in. As a result this community is incredibly self-sufficient. There is a small forest where they harvest timber and fashion the logs into planks using only axes. While we stayed there we watched as a young guy built a beautiful Tap Chan (a raised, shaded platform for drinking chai) from raw timber expertly chopped, chiseled and sanded with just basic tools.




 This community had also channeled some of the glacial water into a large pipe that then feeds a micro-hydro generator which supplies everyone with electricity. A very effective and powerful setup but which only works in the warmer months when the ice melts. There was also a small, neat solar system to provide power at other times.



We spent three days here doing day-walks up to the beautiful blue lakes overlooked by imposing jagged snow peaks which were skirted by multi-coloured, barren scree slopes tumbling down the valley sides.   

 Our homestay was run by a very friendly girl who was on her summer holiday from the Agha Khan's Central Asian University where she was studying to become a doctor. The food was tasty: rice porridge for breakfast, potatoes with chives for dinner and fresh bread and home-made jam for snacks. 


We walked down again from Jizev and began hitching and hiking up the main Bartang valley towards the small town of Basid. By the early afternoon we reached the end of the drivable road where a flood had washed away the bridge. We tried to cross the river on foot - but this proved too dangerous. Later a bulldozer arrived and we joined about 10 other people in hanging off the sides and back of the bulldozer with our backpacks lifted high above in the front scoop and then bull-dozed our way across the river to the other side. Crazy fun :)

Then we had a series of confusing negotiations which culminated in eight of us in Dave's-new-favourite-vehicle: a UAZ 4x4 minibus. These vehicles date from the Soviet era and are notoriously rugged vehicles designed to be easy to fix and to be able to handle temperatures as low as -50 C. They look a bit like the old 1960's VW passion wagons although in Russia they were likened to and named "bukhanka": a bread "loaf". These cars even have a hole in the front where you can stick in a steel rod and start the engine by turning the rod by hand - 1930's style! Who needs a starter motor?!


Our UAZ had its issues though and would occasionally cut out at the worst moment - like while you were driving in the river. It also had a technical problem whereby when the petrol ran out, the engine would stop working. This latter problem was particularly problematic in that we were driving in a remote valley where there are certainly no petrol stations. By some miracle we ran out of fuel half way into our journey just one kilometer from a village which also had a UAZ and so, after much discussion, petrol was siphoned from the other UAZ and put into ours and after much push-starting and general confusion we were on our way again.



The Bartang valley is an incredible place. Unlike the Wakhan, this valley is very narrow with just 200m separating the steep cliff-slopes on the left from the slopes on the right. Most of the bottom of the valley is filled by a raging river hurtling down the valley over monster rapids. Along the side of the river there is a narrow strip of stones that are loosely regarded as a road that runs about one metre above the water level. This "road" however vanishes under water when the weather has been hot and thus melted the glaciers causing the river to rise in flood. 



Our UAZ crawled its way in the dark up the valley driving on the "road" most of the time but occasionally driving through the river when the road was submerged, finally arriving in Basid late at night. We found a homestay and rested there for two days enjoying the abundance of plums and apricots that hung in orchards throughout the village. The villages in Bartang are very scenic: stark, barren, brown and grey slopes tower above villages bursting with tall Poplar and fruit trees dotted with traditional Pamiri houses nestled among flower gardens and veggie fields. Each village also has a good school, a doctor and micro-hydro-electricity.



Due to the state of the road all supplies were scarce - so potatoes, potatoes, potatoes it was for lunch and dinner. And of course plates of sweets at all meals. Our homestay and all the surrounding village shops also ran out of toilet paper, which was a bit of a first. Our handful of tissues were thus very strictly rationed! 


Next we walked to where the road had completely washed away, leaving only a narrow path along which everyone was forced to walk, and continued on to the next village of Bardara. Part of this village had been destroyed by a horrific mud-slide a few weeks before that had washed away a few houses, luckily with no-one being injured. Here we stayed in another homestay which made delicious meals which included polony and bread soaked in milk. 



An interesting thing here was watching the mother of the house feed the cat: she would masticate bread in her mouth for a  minute and then feed this to the cat. Apparently this is quite a normal way of feeding cats in Central Asia. We stayed a couple of days in Bardara exploring the area. One day we forgot to take water with us, but we knew that it was inevitable that in the tiny village we were heading to, we would be invited for chai. Sure enough, as soon as a family saw us walking into this village of eight families, we were hailed for "choy" and enjoyed the famous Central Asian hospitality. Whenever we were walking in any small village every few hundred meters we would be invited for "choy" without fail. If we accepted this would inevitably grow into offers of meals and adamant insistence that we should spend the night. We had downloaded some nice photos of village life at home in Bulungula so that was always a source of much interest for the families who hosted us. Our photo's of our mud hut home, Nqileni village and our Bulungula wedding have no doubt given Central Asians a bit of an unusual perspective on life in South Africa...!


 From Bardara we walked back down the valley to a very remote village called Devlokh. This village had no homestays but we were of course welcomed by a friendly family to spend the night. We were given the main room to sleep in and wondered where everyone else was going to sleep and were a little concerned when we saw the whole family climbing on to the roof with their mattresses. We thought this was taking the whole hospitality thing a bit far but were then told that during the summer, most people preferred to sleep outside as the winter was such a claustrophobic time, huddled in doors to keep warm.

 The lifestyle of Pamiris is totally regulated by the seasons: in summer, all the kids have an extended school/university holiday and help their families farm veggies and grass.  Grass and veggies are grown in fields surrounding the houses which are irrigated by expertly built furrows that take water from the river and diverts it into an intricate network of channels that are opened and closed depending on which field they want to water. The grass is cut and dried to feed the animals over the long winter. The goats, cows and sheep are taken by shepherds high into the mountains to graze for 4 months. There the shepherds spend most of their time chasing away wolves who prey on the animals - some of them take wolves as pets but apparently the tame wolves can't resist killing the sheep once they grow up so wolf-pets are not encouraged.  Fruit is harvested and dried or made into fruit preserves. Cow dung is collected, dried and stored for burning in winter. New houses are built and old ones repaired with mud and stones. As winter arrives, the animals are brought down from the mountains to sleep in large mud and stone rooms which are attached to the Pamiri houses. The animals are fed the dried grass that was collected during the summer and are allowed to wander around in the snow in the veggie and grass fields that are now buried in snow. It is very cold.

 
From Devlokh we headed back to Basid to catch a ride with a helicopter that was rumoured to be bringing supplies into the region, including some toilet paper, we mused. As we'd expected, there was no helicopter so we jumped into a UAZ and headed back down the valley. This UAZ was much more mechanically reliable although unfortunately the driver believed that he should only use 5 liters of fuel at a time, so we had to stop every half hour and spend a few minutes getting fuel out of a jerry can and into the fuel tank. This was much appreciated by the other passengers who felt that driving more than 30 minutes without stopping was inhumane and who would demand that the driver stop in virtually every village so that we could waltz into some random families house and have choy or pick fruit from an orchard or just chill out for a while. Thus our journey of about 150km took ten hours. The bridge of the river that we bulldozed across previously was almost fully repaired and so after just half an hour of rock packing we managed to get our UAZ across and continue our journey. The last leg of the journey was done in a taxi with a deaf driver. This proved quite exciting as he liked to drive on both sides of the road without looking in his side mirrors. We of course could hear the cars behind him freaking out on their hooters - but he was oblivious. Only when it seemed we might die would we point out that there was a car next to him with an apoplectic driver staring wide-eyed at us. As the sun set we made it back to Khorog city after an incredible 9 days in the Bartang valley.

Khorog town

 From Khorog, like most of Tajikistan, there are no buses so we found a shared vehicle that makes trip to the capital Dushanbe every other day and headed out from the Pamirs where we had spent the past three weeks.

Dushanbe central square

The poorly maintained road hugged the river which formed the border with Afghanistan. Again we had the surreal view of women in full burka on the one side of the river in full view of Tajik women on the other side who dress and live more or less like women in any average, secular society. Our driver would stop every 50km or so and rush into a little police office and then jump into the car and drive on. When we asked why he did this, he explained that the police are very poorly paid in Tajikistan (R600 or $50 per month) and so most drivers were happy to make a small contribution (half a dollar at each stop) to "top up" their salaries. While this seems similar to corruption one can see in many developing countries, what made it interesting here was that the driver stopped of his own accord. No-one asked him to stop and he could have driven on with no consequences, but as he explained, the whole system of policing would collapse if everyone didn't pay as the policemen can't survive on $50 per month...



After a long drive we finally reached the capital of Dushanbe in the dark. There are a surprising lack of hotels in this city, so we ended up a little way out of town in an old soviet hotel which had rooms with en-suite bathrooms! After roughing it in the Pamirs, it seems overly fussy to mention that the toilet didn't have a seat.



We were surprised and overjoyed to find that Dushanbe is a rather handsome city. We had been expecting something similar to run-down Bishkek but instead found a modern city that seems to be experiencing a minor boom. Numerous beautiful parks, endless fountains that perform with lights and music in the evenings, relaxed Tap Chan restaurants with dirt-cheap draught beer and choy overlooking lakes or parks, yummy Shaslyk (shish kebabs) and super cheap chocolate milkshakes! Paradise. We spent four days there enjoying the sights including The World's Highest Flag Pole (very high) and The World's Largest Tea House (ridiculously large) and mos

tly just chilled in the cheap Tap Chan restaurants. We also got some much needed logistical items sorted prior to entering the overly-complicated country that is Uzbekistan... 



... which we'll tell you about in our next blog :)    

Dushanbe market