Dushanbe, Days 1 to 4

Since I haven’t posted for a while, this will be a long post covering four days.
(exchange rate: US$ 1 = 3.43 Tajik somonis; TJS 1 = PHP 14)

Day 1

Arrived in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, last Saturday. My initial impression of Dushanbe was not good. The international airport was, how do I put this, decrepit. The provincial airport in General Santos City is much better than the Dushanbe international airport. After going through consular affairs and passport control, my airport pickup was a Zhiguly, an old Soviet car infamous for being the sourest of lemons. They tried to sell it in Finland under the name Lada—apparently Zhiguly has a bad connotation in Finnish—but it didn’t sell too well despite the name makeover.

While people in Bishkek look either Mongol or Russian, people in Dushanbe look more like Turkish or Persian. You find a few Russians, Kyrgyz, and Koreans in the fray (Koreans were forcibly relocated to Central Asia during Stalin’s time), but most of the people are of Turkic origin. You’ll also see many women walking around in their national dress, which looks like the ubiquitous duster in Manila (floral or plain print) but with material ranging from luxurious silk and velvet to the truly duster-like cotton.

My hotel in Dushanbe is called Hotel Sino. To help you picture it, it’s not exactly what I would call a gostinitsa (building/hotel); rather, it’s closer to an inn. It’s clean and fairly secure, but the staff doesn’t speak English and it doesn’t provide the usual amenities you’ll find in a hotel (they have excellent satellite TV, although only few channels in English). As for the name, given the lacquered furniture, oriental bed sheets, and the made-in-China shampoos and combs, I think Hotel Sino is their idea of a typical Chinese hotel room.

After a few hours of rest, I was picked up by my colleague in Dushanbe driving a Volga—another one of those infamous Soviet cars. The ride to their office was very short, passing by wide tree-lined boulevards. In Dushanbe, everything important from the Presidential Palace and Parliament to TV stations and markazi savdo (stores) is around one major road called Rudaki Street (formerly Lenin Street). Like Bishkek, buildings in Dushanbe are mostly Soviet-era apartments and government buildings. But unlike Bishkek, there are more new buildings in Dushanbe and the old apartments seem to be better maintained (or at least nicely painted). Dushanbe is also less congested, giving it a more laid-back feel. However, like Bishkek, roads are terrible in Dushanbe even by Manila standards.

Despite the initial car ride, everything in Dushanbe is within walking distance; i.e., within a 30-minute walk. Dushanbe is a walker-friendly city with wide tree-lined sidewalks. It seems that walking is the main form of transportation in this city, although there are also public buses, minibuses and cabs. If you’re staying in a hotel in the city centre (which I am), almost everything you’ll want to visit in the city is within walking distance. My hosts also tell me that it’s safe to walk around Dushanbe even at night; the biggest threat is actually the militsia (police) who can stop you and ask for a bribe.

My colleague strongly advised me not to drink tap water. Actually it was stronger than that—under no circumstance should I put tap water in my mouth lest I risk contracting typhus. I can bathe with the water and I can use it to wash my clothes, but I should not ingest it in any way. I should only use bottled water, even for brushing my teeth. I immediately bought seven 1.5 litres of bottled mineral water, costing a total of 10.5 somonis (or 1 somoni per litre—not a bad deal). I also bought some Russian-made chocolate bar (brandy and hazelnut flavour) for 5 somonis.

My first real meal in Dushanbe was at Choyhonnai Rokhat, literally meaning “place of rokhat”, the house specialty. Rokhat is basically an oval-shaped meatball made of beef and herbs, steamed (I think), then fried with lots of onions. I also had a soup of rice, beef, potatoes, and herbs, and a salad of sliced tomatoes, cucumbers, parsley, and radish. Of course, there’s the omnipresent bread, non in Tajik. [I thought that non is from the Indian naan bread, but I was corrected by my hosts. Indian naan is actually from the Farsi non. Persians and Central Asians conquered India during the Mughal Empire (of Shah Jahan and Taj Mahal fame) and introduced naan bread to India.] Dinner at Choyhonnai Rokhat for the three of us cost 36 somoni, tip included, and it is considered one of the pricier places in the city. By the way, restaurants in Bishkek and Dushanbe already include tip in the bill, so no need to leave a tip.

Day 2

This day, Sunday, my hosts took me to the outskirts of Dushanbe, particularly the historic region of Hisor. Hisor was one of the important centres of the old Tajik Bukhara Empire, which spanned present-day Tajikistan and parts of Uzbekistan and Afghanistan before it was overrun by the Russians. I saw the ruins of an old castle and a madrassa, which now serves as a museum of Tajik history. It’s good that my hosts are an historian and an anthropologist—they really make an effort to show me the culture and history of Tajikistan.

Tajikistan literally means “land of Tajiks”; “Tajik”, in turn, means “people who wear a crown”, thus the crown (taj) seen in their flag. King Somoni (yes, like the currency) is credited as being the father of the Tajik people, and has a monument in the centre of Dushanbe.

For dinner, my hosts served me manty (meat dumplings common in Central Asia), spiced yoghurt, salad, and the omnipresent non. Tajiks, I see, are very generous and hospitable. My colleague, the anthropologist, says that it’s because the Tajiks are a mountain-dwelling nation, so visitors are treated like kings because they are few and far between.

Day 3

Met two US Embassy employees in my hotel today. Although I’m not exactly a fan of US foreign policy (and those who carry them out), it was nice to talk with people who spoke fluent English.

Had dinner at the famous Sirius Restaurant, which serves mostly Russian cuisine in an Egyptian-themed ambience. I had winter salad, Kiev cutlets, and rice. Salad in Russia and Central Asia, mind you, is serious business and can occupy up to half the menu (none of that flavourless chef’s salad crap we get in Manila). Kiev cutlets are like the chicken ala Kiev we get in Chocolate Kiss in UP, but much bigger and better. I spent a total of 18 somonis for my dinner—not bad considering this is the “in” resto for fashionistas and expats in Dushanbe. I then spent 2 somonis on apricot-flavoured ice cream sundae which I bought from a street hawker (like the Magnolia/Selecta carts in Manila).

Day 4

This day started off interestingly. I often walk to my colleague’s office, so I expected the day to be like any other day. It just so happened that today Pres. Imomali Rakhmon (formerly Rakhmonov) was speaking at the Tajikistan Technical University which was along my route, so I committed the crime of walking past an area where he was. Presidential security, thinking I was a threat, stopped me and sternly asked for my dokumenti. Much to my chagrin, my passport and Tajik visa were with ADB; fortunately, I had a photocopy of those documents which I presented them. They yelled something in Russian or Tajik (couldn’t tell which language), to which I answered, “Ya nye panemayu Russkiy yazik (I don’t understand Russian),” and, “Rabotayu Aziatskiy Banke Razvitsiya (I work in ADB).” I think it was enough to convince the president’s bodyguards that I wasn’t a terrorist or assassin and they let me go, telling me in Russian or Tajik to get lost. I followed their instruction and indeed got lost, somehow finding myself in front of the Kazakhstan Embassy in Dushanbe. There I called my colleague and he fetched me. Bolshoi spasiba (many thanks) to Kazakh Embassy security for letting me loiter in front of their gates.

Back in the office, we had lunch of non, salad, and plov, a rice dish common in Central Asia but Tajik plov is famed for being very good—a fact I learned from my Kyrgyz colleagues. The plov I had here was basically like paella but cooked with beef, carrots, chickpeas, and spices (including carroway seeds). It’s served with a side dish of julienned radish and cucumber. It’s very good, I should say, even for a rice eater like me. [From plov we get the common rice pilaf dish in the West, which I say is a lame version of the original.] Meals in Tajikistan are often washed down with green tea and some sour milk drink (think of liquid cottage cheese) which I don’t really like.

This afternoon, my hosts brought me to the National Museum and gave me an excellent tour—imagine an historian and an anthropologist being your tour guides. The museum exhibits Tajikistan’s long and proud history from the paleolithic period and Buddhist kings to Alexander the Great and the Bukhara Empire. The museum also boasts of a very large statue of a reclining Buddha—a legacy of its pre-Islamic history. Afghanistan and Tajikistan share these treasures of gigantic Buddhas carved from stone; however, the Taliban destroyed their statues in Afghanistan so now only Tajikistan maintains this legacy.

My hosts again prepared dinner for me, this time consisting of meat fritters, bulgur wheat, fussili pasta, salad, and non. They also served me copious amounts of Tajik vodka—much smoother than Absolut and tastes more like sweet water, attributed to the crystal-clean water from Tajikistan’s mountains.
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Sorry, cyberlaundry, still no pics. Btw, my hotel is a three-minute walk from the Komitet Gossudartsvennoi Bezopastnosti office in Dushanbe. It still serves its original purpose and carries the same name to this day (albeit working for Tajikistan rather than the Soviet Union).