Rest day in Dushanbe:

I missed posting this post due to extremely poor web connection, will try again…

Again we are the recipients of local curiosity and generosity.  Twice later yesterday we met a local who was very curious as to our trip and was very quick to offer any help, ‘I’ll drive you to …’.  My “pay it forward” debt is really getting large!

As the Capital of Tajikistan, the city has all the international attractions, the high-end stores, foreign embassies and many nice restaurants.  One very popular with the ex-pats (where does that expression come from?) is called the “Public Pub”, an Irish Pub that could easily be in Ireland - very popular with all the UN people (Northern Afghanistan border commission) and the foreign embassy workers.  Important to me is that the food is very “normal” to my recovering digestive tract.

Have I mentioned before that the women here dress mostly Muslim but some also very modern Western.  The Muslim attire/dresses are very attractive, yes fully covered other than face, but the fabric is very light and blows in the wind easily - so yes both very exotic and erotic.

We are now out of the mountains and into the flats - i.e. it is now getting very hot, 39C (102F) yesterday.  We will be seeing serious 40C+ temperatures, the only question is whether we will see 50C (122F) or not - I suspect we will at least get close.  Bought an extra water bottle for the bike yesterday.

Tomorrow we leave Tajikistan and onto country #7, Uzbekistan.  We think we are prepared for the border crossing (Visia’s inlace etc.,), however two years ago, the border crossing was extremely slow with hours of standing around in the hot sun - hopefully not so this time.  Uzbekistan is home to the next two highlights of the trip, Samarkand and Bukhara, which are way up there on the exotic names list of this trip. 

This is the local fresh goat market - really fresh, as in it was live an hour ago.

Visited one of the local museums yesterday, it held what are probably the oldest things I have every seen, some of the rock tools and human skulls dated back to 2-3,000BC.  Some of the really really old places this trip is going through makes me feel I am touching the roots/nerve endings of mankind.  A common question we have had is “… for how many thousands of years has man grazed livestock in this valley?”.

One of the main streets: