Day 83 to Dushanbe, Tajikistan,  7131km to date.

I have been sick for a few days, normal travellers gut problems - I’ll spare you the somewhat entertaining graphic details..  The following is a bit out of order and a collection of notes from the last few days:

I am now in Dushanbe, the Capital of Tajikistan a large international city, beautiful buildings and old tree lined streets

Going back a few days:  I was confused as to the economy, what I saw was subsistence farming, very small plots of land, just enough for the family.  That and tending a couple head of livestock - every morning we see one or two cattle being lead off to pasture.  Yet, I see a fair bit of new building and cars, the money has to come from selling something, maybe remittence money.  Could be some drug money?  I also note there are a fair number of police checkpoints and military watch buildings (looking to Afghanistan) so there is some federal money coming in, also in Khorog there is the University of Central Asia so again some fed money.  I talked to our local support guy, Jovid - most of the money income is remittence, i.e. one or more of the kids are now educated and working away, typically in Russia and sending money home.  This also explains why some small household building projects are partially done with no-one working - waiting for the next package of remittence money.  Also, Russia is wanting to maintain effective control on the country, so a fair bit of funds flow into Tajikistan for their armed forces, in particular along the Afghan border.

Saw a couple of “do not enter, mined area” signs today at the start of trails that led up into the Tajik mountains.

Interesting views over to Afghanistan (see pics below) some nice looking small villages, occasional new building complex (military??) and some classic buildings that look to either be a very tight village or (a drug lord’s?) estate.  I’m impressed with their tenacity to build a “road/trail” into the vertical rock faces on the Afghan side of the Panji river.  I expect there were mule trails there for centuries, however the tracks I am seeing have been built in the last few (30-50) years.

There is little difference in the settlements on the two sides of the river  - anywhere there is a water source coming down the mountain, things are green, people are living there and crops and animals are family farmed.  The Tajik side has a bit easier (relatively speaking) time of building a road, so the road on this side is better than the Afghan side - I expect the Russian support also shows.

One of the riders saw a trio women in Burka’s on the Afghan side following men,  I have heard some interesting arguments supporting the Islamic “protection of women”, I’ll expand in a future blog entry.

The road has been extremely rough for cycling, part of the reason is that there are constant slides, this is also an earthquake area, they are continuously needing to rebuild the washed out and/or slided out sections.  In fact we had some 5km detour around a village where a major slide wiped out the one side.

Camped underneath date trees, also saw pomegranate trees (like orange trees).  Also, seeing the sheets/netting underneath the Mulberry trees to catch the dropping fruit.  We were given a large plate of Mulberry fruit the other night - very good.

It is always fun going thru a small village, all the young kids come out yelling “Hello Hello”, and I need to “hi-five” each one as I ride past.  I also make a point of either waving (kids or young adults), or at least doing a head nod (to elders, male and female) - always returned with a smile.

Some pics:

A common sight, the rugs have been washed and are drying.  One always takes their shoes off before entering any house or Yurt:

There was a wedding going on next door to our camp, so I wandered over.  There had been food, music and dancing, then a special piece of music played and everyone started clapping in unison and the bridal party then started to exit:

This is the radiant bride.  I gather the totally covered up attire is traditional back to the arranged marriages - I guess the new husband gets to "open" the package, sort of like a Christmas present to see what he got...

 I believe the parents:

For several days we have cycled down the Tajik side of the Panji river with Afghanistan on the far side:

 This was wonderful to stand under on a very hot day!