Asia Tour 2026 - Day 10/25 - 19th August - Dushanbe, Tajikistan - City 7/15 - Country 5/9
Updated: 1 day ago
At around 03:00 the sun was coming up and one of the guards knocked on the door and we handed over our passports as we were at the border. Lots of Uzbek guards got on board to ask us questions and finally gave our passports back with the exit stamps.
As we arrived into Dushanbe it looked like a city from India to me, lots of rubbish everywhere and poverty, kids in rags, small semi-derelict houses that were lived in and these gave way to the commie blocks.
When we arrived in the station our train guard made a video of us speaking in Serbian and Tajik and we made pictures together just outside the train.
The passport control was on the platform, and it was there that we "befriended" an Italian from Parma called Paolo. We had the same procedure, x-ray the bags, passport stamp "Conor McGregor" thank you.
When we exited the station there was no "mister mister, taxi taxi" guys and we actually had to search for something, anything. Eventually some polite men approached us and it turned out that these were the "taxi-taxi" men. They helped us change money at the bank, even though Paolo seemed to take a complete disliking to them there were very helpful, they called over the manager so we skipped the queue to change money in a hurry. Our driver got lost and had to ask for directions, but despite being offline I used my phone to navigate the blue dot to the address.
Finally at the address it turned out that the accommodation was fake and didn't exist. The guy wouldn't take our calls and ignored 4 e-mails in 3 languages! No worries, we just checked into the hotel directly across the street. Paolo the Italian got very agitated and insisted on getting one of the guys to call his hotel - it existed. It was a nice but simple hotel, cash only.
After resting up for a bit, we went for a walk in the 40°C heat to see some glorious kitsch monuments and parliament buildings as well as the necessary trip to the post-office. I skipped on the cards as I thought they looked rather crap.
We returned to our hotel and had food and Budweiser beer. I had lentil soup and pizza "quadro formagi" which I could not finish.
Dinner was followed by a siesta after which I decided to visit the so-called "Etno Pub" on Rustaveli street, just on the corner there was a statue of himself with info in Tajik and Georgian so I had to take a selfie. This drew the attention of two older guys and I ended up talking first in Russian then Tajik to them. The statue it turns out was relatively new.
The pub itself looked more like a fancy restaurant than a pub, but I sat at the bar and tried to speak Tajik until the barman started using translate and which point I switched to Serbian and I was able to communicate. I had a few beers and some vodka
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