Taskent to Khojand, Tajikistan 31 May 2011

Tashkent – Oybek – Khojand, Tajikistan

Easy road with 3 other Uzbeks in the car laughing out loud all the way to Oybek. They stopped to offer us a bowl of ayran each. Like most Uzbek, they could not understand why I have only one son and child. They were proud to mention that they have 4 or 5 children each. We walked easily through both the passport and customs control on the two Uzbek and Tajik sides. Once on the Tajik side we managed to negotiate the taxi fare in the Uzbek som left. The land looked desolate, abandoned with no one on the road. Good quality roads compared to the rest of Uzbekistan.

Khojand, Tajikistan

No hotel booked, we walked in Hotel Vadath and were proposed a huge suite with 2 bedrooms.

Khojand is a city the size of Port Louis in terms of population, planned soviet style with a large avenue lined with trees leading to the theatre, main city feature. Next to it is the ancient X^th century fortress walls, built by Alexander the Great, sacked by Genghis Khan as usual and rebuilt awkwardly in 1997.

We were surprised to receive the late visit of an architect of Buston (village next door) who had already been informed by the President of the Tajikistan Union of Architects that we were in town. He drove 200 km to meet us and we could not refuse to have some chay with him. Unfortunately communication was minimal, language being a major problem.