Dushanbe. Day 18

 Well we'd been in Uzbekistan for quite a long time and this is meant to be a trip to the 'Five Stans'. So I expect you were wondering when we'd move on. The answer would have been 'today'. Admittedly this is a short excursion, only 3-4 days, so the implication is that there is less to see in Tajikistan, or at least that it has fewer tourist facilities..

That means today was a transit day. However we also spent time sightseeing. I thought those things were generally separate, and today I found out why. Doing both is too much. We left the hotel at 8am and went to the airport, which wasn't far and wasn't too big. All the usual hassles of international travel - multiple checks and scans, but we were pretty much through by 9am and our flight wasn't until 11.10, so there was a fair bit of sitting around and waiting, which is now comfortable in its familiarity. They have some decent shops in the airport, including one that sold a carry-on bag which was also an electric scooter, but nothing we needed.

There were at least a couple of air bridges, but none in use and everyone was bussed out to the plane. It was okay, but cramped and worn. Which was great, as I was in the middle seat and sat with my elbows touching the whole flight. Which was fortunately only an hour. Lynn, in the window seat, reported that there were lots of snow-capped mountains.

That's because (our guide claims) Tajikistan is the second most mountainous country in the world, being 93% mountains and lots of glaciers. Which will hopefully be scenic, if not convenient for the locals. I'm not sure it's a great place to live. Other than the authoritarian government, it was of course yet another Soviet client state with a (stupid) cotton industry and little else and fell into civil war when the USSR broke up. This set things back further and had all the expected harm from which they are still recovering.

Add to that Dushanbe was a village until the Russians. So now it is largely characterless and while the economy is growing quickly (from a very low base) the obvious effect is the rapid building of bland apartment blocks.

Our guide took us for lunch in a restaurant. This followed the Central Asian formula of salad then soup then plov then watermelon. The plov was nice.

On to the Museum of Antiquities. This was actually pretty good. Mostly fragments of stone and pottery from the stone age up through numerous empires to now and captured the silk road cultural mix thing. Apparently Tajikistan now gets over a million visitors a year - but there was only one other guy in the museum. It may be that most of the tourists are russian (as they can't go many places) and they're too nekul'turnyy to go to the museum.

Finally we went to central Dushanbe and walked past the Mahmood Ansari memorial (put up to replace Lenin after independance), the library, the statue of Rumi the poet, and then wound our way to the Flag of Tajikistan park to see the flag (30m by 60m) on the 163m flagpole - now only the 5th tallest flag in the world!

After 5pm we were finally allowed to go to the hotel. At this point we were exhausted from the heat (low 30s), walking and traveling. I now see why transit days should be only that. Everyone was tired and a bit ratty, so didn't cope well with discovering most of us are on the top floor, 16. This may be a late addition as only one small lift goes to this floor and the rooms are all odd sizes. We were initially in a very small room, intended for one (based on the single towel and toothbrush) where the bed was pushed up against a wall so Lynn would have to vault into it. Fortunately Lee-Anne, travelling alone, was happy to swap with us.

The hotel has no bar or dinner restaurant but you can eat your own food in the area used for breakfasts. So we went to the supermarket, got bread and feta and an odd russian beer and had a picnic in the restaurant.

So, here are some photos.

Library

Statue of Rumi being photographed

Very tall flag


Location: Mirzo Tursunzoda Street 10, Dushanbe 734000, Tajikistan

Comments

  1. Dad20 September 2026 at 12:17

    Very Interesting.
    I looked at Dushanbe on the Google map reference you sent. It seems to be set in a river valley and surrounded by mountains. And quite a big place. Bet they have never heard of Adelaide. The amusing things people claim - the fifth tallest flag pole!!!
    Good cycling weather here.
    The Cycling Fool

    ReplyDelete

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