I didn’t manage to sleep in as much as I’d have liked to as I woke up starving just before 0700 and couldn’t get back to sleep after that.
The hotel breakfast was fine, but they only had instant coffee so I went for a wander and found
Proper coffee 🙂
Now that we’re back on proper roads for the foreseeable future I then spent some time swapping back to road tyres which should make the coming days a little quicker.
From there Michael and I went to take our ‘Tajikistan’ flag photo, trying to get the giant flagpole in the background but our local photographer proved to be a little technically challenged so I don’t think we managed. The flagpole in question was, until recently, the tallest in the world (before being overtaken by a pole in Jeddah) and the flag which flies on it is 30m by 60m and weighs 700kg!
Some more wandering, including a döner for lunch, and a stop at the market, then back to the hotel as much to get out of the heat of the day as anything – it’s been 37ºC and relatively humid here today!
Dushanbe reminds me somewhat of Vegas with all the fountains everywhere, the huge wide streets and the marble buildings – it’s certainly the most up-market place we’ve been since Almaty and though not as western it’s certainly heading in that direction.
As you can probably tell I’ve spent most of this afternoon getting caught up with blog posts – some of them have been pretty sparse on details but it was the only way that I was going to be able to get caught up without going completely mad. I’ll try and fill in the details over time, particularly adding proper captions to the photos to help them make more sense.
Tomorrow we leave Tajikistan for Uzbekistan some 60km to the west of here. Overall I think that I’ve enjoyed Tajikistan the most of the countries we’ve visited so far, it’s certainly been spectacular along the Pamir Highway and I can see why people come to visit, it’s just a shame that it’s so hard to get visas and permits (though maybe it’s not, because it does keep the number of visitors low which mean that for those of us who do come it remains pretty much unchanged by tourism).
The coming week – only four days and a bonus hotel tomorrow night!
