Further Wanderings

Northern Tajikistan, like the Eastern Pamirs, is almost another world from the rest of the country.
The north is wide, dry, rolling, fertile land, but is separated from Dushanbe by yet another range of mountains, the Fans.

While not the equals of the Pamirs or Hindu Kush in size, the Fan Mountains are more worn and rugged, presenting towering rock spires and jagged snow capped summits right next to the road. I’d hoped to spend some time trekking in the Fans, but the length of time it took to get our visas meant that we just had to admire them from the car as we wound our way though them. There were two mountain passes that must be negotiated in order to reach the plains of the north. The first was negotiated by a tunnel beneath it. And quite a tunnel it was. 8km in length, and positively Hadean in character. Bare rock walls and ceiling, and a road surface little better than dirt. Water sometimes dripping and occasionally pouring from the roof. No ventilation. And the only illumination provided by incandescent bulbs that lit the (many) locations where some poor souls were doing repair work in the middle of all this.

All in all it wasn’t a bad thing that the other tunnel was closed for maintenance. This meant that the journey took a bit longer, but that we got to enjoy the long, twisting climb up and the view from the top of Ayni pass. As it was only a temporary measure, this part of the road wasn’t paved, which left the car covered in a thick layer of dust that the driver stopped to wash off at an improvised car wash station near a chaikhana (tea house) on the far side.

Beyond these two sections, the road was actually the best in the country, as it connected Dushanbe with Tajikistan’s second city, Khujand. We were heading there ourselves, but on that day we turned off a bit early, making our first acquaintance with northern Tajikistan in the city of Istaravshan.

The Fan Mountains from near the top of 3378m Ayni Pass on our way north

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As with our time in Bishkek, it’s really unfair to characterize our visit to Dushanbe as being “purgatorial.” Both capital cities were actually very pleasant places, where we had many great experiences. But I suppose I used the title in Bishkek, and we actually spent even longer in Dushanbe, so I ought to use it for this entry too.

The capital and largest city of Tajikistan, Dushanbe is a curious place. The city was more or less “invented” by the Soviet Union to function as the capital. It is, thus, rather short on splendid ancient monuments, but has lots of well cared for early Soviet era architecture. And though Tajikistan is the poorest of the former Soviet republics, Dushanbe doesn’t reflect this, its wealth raised above the rest of the country by the wealth of drug smugglers bringing opiates through the country from Afghanistan, and the recent influx of foreign NGO, embassy, military and UN workers (serving both Tajikistan itself and Afghanistan.)

While this may not sound like a recipe for a pleasant place to collect visas and to rest up while on the road, that’s exactly what Dushanbe was.

The Rudaki sculpture in the concrete/garden/fountain filled main square in the centre of Dushanbe. Proof that Tajikistan shared the Persian speaking world’s reverence of literature. Where else would the main street in the capital city be named after a poet!?

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Leaving the Wakhan Valley, we headed north, still paralleling the Afghan border, but now in the western parts of the Pamir Range. The western Pamirs are much more like the Wakhan than was the eastern part of the range. ... [Continue reading this entry]

Crossing the Khargush pass was the last time we'd see the high side of 4000m during our trip to the Pamirs, but there were still plenty of mountains left. Indeed, the Wakhan Valley contains some of the biggest peaks ... [Continue reading this entry]

The Pamirs are a vast, remote and wild region of a fairly wild and remote country. Bordered by Kyrgyzstan, China and Afghanistan, the mountains and plateaus of the region contain 45% of Tajikistan's land area, but only 3% of ... [Continue reading this entry]