Dushanbe City & Voru Village

Quick overnight stay in Dushanbe, a large modern city, and we would have liked to stay an extra day there.  The National Museum was super-interesting, though I was sorry to learn how many Tajik archaeological treasures unearthed in the last century have ended up in foreign museums.

Official buildings and parks in the capital are rather opulent, and offer a striking contrast with the simpler levels of shelter and possessions we see elsewhere in the country. Not the only country where such inequity can be seen, however — including Canada, I suppose.

Something we didn’t know until we got here — Tajikistan is culturally and ethnically more similar to Iran than the other countries visited in this trip, and the Tajik language is in the same language family as Persian. We can also see the Persian influence in food, dress styles, and decorative work.

Had a major drive across the Fan Mountains yesterday — spectacular views, although I must admit I kept my eyes firmly on my book for long stretches, as high mountain roads with no guardrails make me really nervous.  Tajikistan is the third most mountainous country in the world, after Nepal and Bhutan. I will post two photos from a rest stop we made; we were there longer than planned as the other minibus for our tour blew its radiator coming up.  When our fellow travellers caught up, they shared the story that passing truckers slowed down and threw bottles of water out to them, and at a certain point they had enough to fill the radiator and continue the journey.  This region is sparsely populated and rather isolated, so I guess you help who you can when you can.  The trucks, by the way, are hauling coal from mines high in the  mountains;  they go up empty at a brisk pace, but come down at a glacial pace — and we can see why, given the heavy loads, dramatic slopes, and sharp curves.

Next stop at Lake Iskandar — Iskandar being the local name for Alexander [the Great], although they do not call him “the Great” here because… well, he was a conqueror and killed a lot of people here in his day.

We are staying in a pretty guest house high in the mountains, but it was quite the ride to get here — after we left the main mountain highway we had another 2+ hours on a very rough road, a real bone-shaker, but my kidneys and my teeth all seem to have stayed intact, thank God.

Morning stop in the village of Voru, even higher in the mountains than our guest house. We were shown around by the village schoolteacher, he teaches French as a second language rather than English as that was what he studied at university (we think that must be rare here), and we stopped in to the smithy before having tea at the teacher’s. The “tea table” was the cloth rectangle in the middle of the seating platform, and our guide asked us to be VERY careful not to let our feet or toes stray from the seating section onto the table section. Major Faux Pas!

Later enjoyed the national dish Plov, related to similar rice/pilaf dishes in Iran and India, followed by local fruits — grapes, plums, apples, and pomegranates. The cuisine in the three countries so far has been interesting. Kyrgyzstan (like China) was heavy on noodles, Kazakhstan (like Russia) more kasha/buckwheat, and Tajikistan (like Iran) more rice.

And today we saw something that even our Tajik guide and driver had never seen before. Livestock is everywhere here — horses, cattle, sheep and goats can be seen in fields and along roadways and streets everywhere. But we couldn’t believe our eyes when we passed this very little car on the highway today. And the cow looked amazingly complacent. What the heck???