The Road to Dushanbe, bordering Afghanistan

Now, it has been a couple of days without writing anything, so here am I, back on press. Last time I wrote I was kind of stucked in Khorog, waiting for a mean of transportation for Dushanbe, fervently hoping to be able to catch a flight. Well I did not managed to fly, so I took a car and was on the road for 22h, non-stop, with 3 Swiss. This is why I wanted to avoid driving.

To summarize, we started at 8 a.m on Tuesday, and arrived at the Hotel in Dushanbe – capital of Tajikistan – on Wednesday, 6 a.m. Exhausting. Not only it was long, extremely long, but also literally painful. The road was unpaved almost the entire way, so I managed to sleep maybe one hour in total. We crossed numerous rivers, passes, passport check points with crazy Tajik military, etc…

And arriving in Dushanbe I thought I would be able to finally relax, but this was impossible. First of all the sweet babooshka at the  Hotel reception refused to give us a room until 8 o’clock, so we had to sleep on the carpets in the front hall. But then she didn’t wanted us to sleep on the carpets so we had to fight countless times, and in the end we got a room.

But then it was already 8a.m, so I had to go out again and find the damn Uzbek embassy in order to try to get an Uzbek visa. After walking through the whole town I finally found out where the embassy was; only to discover that I needed to renew my Tajik visa before doing the Uzbek one. Welcome back to the visa world. Then I met another Swiss on a bike, coming straight from Afghanistan, who told me that he had been waiting for more than a week for the visa renewal and still no sign of success.

Ah! That’s when I realized that Uzbekistan was not in any part of my destiny, so I decided to get myself a new mission: get to Bangkok as soon as possible! So I walked through the whole town again, this time trying to find a travel agency so I could book a flight out of this  dark visa nest… After some time I found out that there is one street – ONE – where all the travel agent are. So I went there, only to hear that all flight are full so I had to wait until Sunday in Dushanbe. 4 days in Dushanbe, no way!

But after some time my dear travel agent managed to get me the last seat on a plane to Almaty, Kazakhstan, for the following day. Great! And then he found another last seat from Almaty to Bangkok on the 8th (so tomorrow now). Previously I would have to wait until the 13th to get to Bangkok (thus missing Sandra). So finally things start working out !

Of course there was a last impediment to my success: they don’t take credit card in Tajikistan (the guy said “welcome to Tajikistan ha ha ha”), and no ATM has money in it! So I searched the whole town, once again, and in the end managed to find a ATM full of cash, thanks to an American guy learning Tajik in Dushanbe. Never underestimate a lone American.

So, then it was only 6p.m (I had then been awake for 36h) when things got sorted out, and I could go and have a beer with shashlik on the plaza next to the hotel. And that was really, really nice.

Beer and Shashlik in Dushanbe