Dushanbe

Dushanbe has the reputation of being the prettiest capital city in Central Asia; I can't yet fully verify that claim, but it is prettier than the other capital I have been to - Bishkek in Kyrgyzstan. There are snow capped mountains in the distance, a big river flows through town, and the main part of town has pleasant tree-lined boulevards. There's some of the same post-Soviet era decay that I saw in Kyrgyzstan (the economies of both countries struggle to maintain the infrastructure left behind by the Soviets) but there is still a general pleasantness to the city. There's also more new construction in the city than I was expecting. This includes one building on such an epic scale that I thought it might be a mosque of some sort - it turns out it will be a "tea house," i.e., a place to drink tea and socialize. I suppose that may be  almost a religion of sorts in Central Asia, so perhaps the grandeur is appropriate!

Parallel Blog

My colleague, who is on her manyteenth education consulting trip to Central Asia, is also blogging: http://teacherlikeme.blogspot.com/
She may be more dutiful about it.

Arrival

I'm in Dushanbe, capital of Tajikistan, and just had my first good sleep after consecutive overnight flights (NY - Istanbul, and then Istanbul - Dushanbe).

 

My bag, however, is in Istanbul, so I'm rotating between two t-shirts. We arrived at 3:10 am on Monday, and tried to sort out our bags until about 4:30 pm. I was immediately thrown into the Farsi fire by the presence of Hasan, our driver's nephew had also arrived that night from Moscow where he had finished his military training. We managed to stutter through something of a conversation, although my sleep-deprivedness did not help the situation. We arrived at our abode, the house of the Brit director of the program with which we are working,  just as the sun was rising, and hung out in the garden until he woke at a more normal hour. His house, as is typical of houses in Central Asia, is a walled compound, and inside features the lush garden pictured above. So although my colleague and I were pretty dazed from jet lag, it was still a pleasant enough way to while away some time sitting outside eating cherries just picked from trees overhead.

Back to Central Asia

I'm heading back to Central Asia, this time to Tajikistan from June 18-30, so I'm brushing the dust off ye olde blog. Don't expect my visit to coincide with another government overthrow.