Istararavshan

---

May 19, 2012
Hotel: Hotel Sugd; Khujand, Tajikistan; $75.50/dbl
After the long day on the road yesterday it was nice to again have two nights in a place. There aren't a huge number of sights to see in Khujand itself. We started with an early breakfast at the hotel, it was decent enough with eggs, bread, cheese and watery dumplings. We caught a marshrutka (shared taxi) minibus to the Panjshanbe Bazaar (Thursday market) and the mosque/mausoleum of Sheikh Muslihiddin. The mosque was the first major example we had seen of Central Asian/Persian style with a tan brick minaret and curved domes. The area in front of the mosque was filled with pigeons and some children playing among them. The huge square between the mosque and the bazaar was filled with people this morning and very colorful. The women here seemed to dress more traditionally, we saw more headcoverings here than we had seen the whole trip so far. The bazaar itself is described by the Lonely Planet as Stalin meets 1001 Nights, a huge arched/domed entrance decorated in green/pink/blue tiles. People here were very friendly, waving at us and wanting their picture taken. Unibrows are fashionable in Tajikistan, many of the women here have them and will even use herbs to draw them in. The interior of the market is occupied by butchers and bread sellers. The bread here in Tajikistan was still the round style with raised edge.

From the market we headed over to the Citadel, the original site of Alexander the Great's settlement. The walls have been recreated and the museum is located in the southeast corner. We wandered along the walls and met a group of girls that stopped to talk with us. Their English was excellent as well.. so far we had met more English speakers in Tajikistan than anywhere else. The Khujand area is the most prosperous area of Tajikistan, most of the agriculture is here since the remainder of the country is mostly mountainous. It was traditionally an Uzbek area but was added to Tajikistan when the Tajik SSR was created. We walked up to the river where there was a monument showing the different empires that had controlled Tajikistan.. Persian, Greek, Islam, etc. The museum was excellent, showing the history of the region. They had several models of sculpture from Persepolis (in Iran) in one of the downstairs rooms and a large map of the ancient world on the floor.

The mosque, bazaar and citadel were pretty much the only tourist sights in Khujand. The LP had mentioned the town of Istararavshan as being one of the best preserved old Tajik towns in the area, about an hour taxi ride away. We caught a taxi to the bus station and arranged a share taxi for 80 TJS ($16.82) to go the 75 kms. It was good to get out of Khujand and see some more of the countryside. We passed field after field, with people out working. Not sure what they were growing here though. The trip took about 75 minutes. Istararavshan is located in the thin neck of Tajikistan between Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, cut off from the bulk of southern Tajikistan by mountain ranges. On the way into town we noticed a large hill that had once been the site of a Sogdian fortress that was destroyed by Alexander the Great. The taxi dropped us off near the Hazrat-i-Shah mosque. The mosque was a great example of Central Asian style, with an elaborately decorated portico, almost looking like a Chinese temple. Behind the mosque, the old town stretched out for many blocks. We started walking down some of the alleyways, lined with adobe buildings and the ubiquitous Soviet style plumbing. We hadn't wandered far before we attracted attention... local kids started coming up to us and following us. The word spread fast that we were the days entertainment.. at one point a dozen kids come running down one of the alleys towards us! One of the older kids guides us through the maze of alleys to another mosque and medrassa (Abdullatif Sultan). One of the medrassa teachers invited us in for a few minutes for tea and fresh mulberries!

The skies now looked like they were about to start pouring rain. From the mosque we wandered back through the scenic alleys to the main road and the bazaar to look for a place to eat and taxi back to Khujand. We couldn't find one of the places listed in the LP and the chaikhana was closed, but luckily it looked like the rain was going to miss the town. We eventually found a row of cheap kebab places ($0.50 each!) and had a quick snack before catching a taxi (60 TJS this time) back to Khujand. We walked the 1.5km from the bus station back into town before finding a restaurant right across from the Citadel. This turned out to be a great place, delicious food and still very reasonably priced. The restaurant was right next to the Grand Hotel. As we are sitting there eating dinner, a huge group (20+) of European tourists start pulling up in minivans... these were the first tourists we had seen the whole trip and were obviously on some package tour.

After dinner we headed to the Internet cafe again where I was finally able to upload my photos.

---