Asia Tour 2026 - Day 12/25 - 21st August - Khujand, Tajikistan - City 8/15 - Country 5/9
Updated: 1 day ago
Our first "full day" of Khujand and I could barely eat. I was still suffering from "Dushanbelly". I tried my best balancing hydration with butt clenching for the rest of the day.
We visited a wonderful museum and met a friendly German lady. The museum had many artefacts dating back 2400 years. What I really liked were the Zoroastrian statues and sculptures.
The gift shop was nice and I got Hugo my colleague a nice traditional hat. I got myself a nice decorated cup and saucer and a coloured and decorated dish. I even got a book with sayings in Russian, Farsi, Tajik and English. Of course we bought postcards too!
Next stop, yet another museum that looked a lot like a mosque to me but was very beautiful. We stopped in the museum and had Tajik tea (choy) which was flavoured with oranges and was really nice especially as I am not a tea drinker. We wrote out our postcards while savouring the tea before going to the gift shop next door.
Postcards in hand we went to look for the post-office, and looking like lost tourists a nice guy dressed in a soviet style uniform brought us all the way to the post-office, he looked cool but didn't want to be photographed. The ladies were very nice as we spoke a mix of Serbian and Tajik and they were very happy probably because we were not loud arrogant English speakers.
We returned to the hotel to rest and shower, before heading out to see the Lenin monument. Nobody seemed to know or care where it was, and the young taxi driver followed my instructions to a semi-derelict part of the city where a guy came out of a disused bus covered in Tajik flags. The Stalin statue was surrounded by PVC pipes which were obviously being used for some kind of construction which made the statue look even more absurd. The man from the bus chatted with me for a while much to the disapproval of our young Bolt driver!
On the way back to the hotel which wasn't so far, we exchanged chats via google translate and an agreed to 300 TJS to driver us to the Kazakh border. We exchanged our numbers and we were satisfied.
Later in the evening we returned to the same restaurant as the night before, they recognised us and were extra attentive. Stanislav got watermelon and salad, and I had roast veggies and roast potatoes, I didn't have any beer as I was still recovering and hadn't eaten anything, or should I say, I hadn't retained the food. I had about a litre of water, and it stayed, so I concluded the Tajik tea was a good cure.
After the meal we went to the "Beer House" which had a terrace but we went inside. We noticed a few Dutch tourists there too. I had a nice local beer then on the way home I picked up a sickly sweet Tajik Merlot and drank half of it before abandoning it. The local yak beer was much nicer though!
Comments