from tashkent, uzbekistan i took a one-day impromptu trip to
tajikistan. after much confusion thanks to there being two places in tashkent
with the same name, by about noon i finally found the correct place to get the
1.5 hour ride south to the border. uzbekistan and tajikistan unfortunately haven’t
got along particularly well, so the border crossings between the two are
periodically closed for indefinite periods of time. it was open for me though,
and went rather smoothly as there weren’t the crowds as at the other crossings.
there appeared to be a sniper looking out from the top of a guard tower, but it
ended up being just a mannequin. tajikistan is a small, oddly shaped country.
the part i crossed into is in the ferghana valley, one of the most densely
populated areas in central asia and also one of the most complicated, populated
by kyrgyz, uzbek, tajik and russian ethnicities. if you look at a political map
of the region, the borders are extremely convoluted. for example, there are
dozens of enclaves of uzbekistan within kyrgyzstan, all in an area that looks like it is being hugged by one of tajikistan's arms. despite all this, many
people in the ferghana valley live in a country where they are an ethnic
minority, which is kindling for ethnic violence. i went to the city of khujand,
which is one of the most russian cities in the region. only in this part of the
world would you find situations where the most famous cities in uzbekistan are
predominantly ethnic tajik and one of the biggest cities in tajikistan is
predominantly ethnic russian.
the biggest sector of tajikistan’s economy today is unfortunately the
smuggling of opiates, thanks to tajikistans’ long, mountainous border with
northern afghanistan. indeed, even the uzbek border guard on my way out asked
me: “you carry any guns, drugs, opiates?” most tourists who go to tajikistan go
to trek in the remote pamir mountain range in the eastern half of the country,
a semi-autonomous area called the gorno-badakhstan autonomous region (gbao),
for which a special permit is required.
there was really nothing to see in khujand. i was looking for the
market but forgot the name, and not a single person spoke a word of english and
my phone was dead, so i ended up not being able to find it. so ended up just
wandering around for a few hours and then heading back to tashkent before it
got dark. the adventure was worth it though!
read part 3 here
read part 3 here
