Khujand. Day 20

Today was another transit day. So pretty straightforward, which is good. I suppose.
As we left Dushanbe we were taken to the Navruz Palace. This is a new building and not an actual palace. But it’s very fancy, in an over-the-top kind of way (that we might be coming to appreciate). It’s used for weddings and big meetings and they’re very proud of it.
Then we headed north, through several ranges of mountains. Our eventual destination was Khujand. All of these are significant historical places on the silk route. But on the way we stopped a couple of times to take in the view, some restaurant in the middle of nowhere for lunch, and Istaravshan to visit the market.
The mountains started off low and rocky. A bit like the Australian landscape it is parched and scrubby. Then it got higher and more rocky with bare rubble-strewn slopes. Eventually we were driving along a deep ravine, sometimes switchbacking up to a tunnel pass. There are also lengths enclosed like a tunnel to protect from snowfall and heavy rains. Then were some open coal mines at points in the mountains. After travelling through three ranges they grandually got smaller again and we were back on the flat, in Fergana Valley which is a long fertile region through 3-4 countries.
As I said we stopped for lunch. Here the soup had fat globules and pieces of stringy, fatty meat. The shashliks were much the same, so Lynn restricted herself to fruit. In Istaravshan we only went to the blacksmith section of the market, where they make knives and various implements but it was a brief stop. It felt like they don’t get many tourists as people would ask where we’re from and say ‘welcome to Tajikistan!’.
It was about 6pm when we got to the hotel. It’s actually pretty good. Though another with no dinner restaurant. So we went one building over to a local restaurant and had a pretty good meal for US$8 a person, communicating with the young staff largely by Google Translate.


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