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Published: April 8th 2009
(There are two parts to this first part is for avid readers and people considering travelling here. The second is if you are in a hurry.)
PART 1 -
So I’m on the TV show the Amazing Race and the challenge is to get through the ex-soviets red tape before Navrus (New Year). These are my instructions - and this is what happened:
First up you have to arrive at the airport without a VISA and hope the information you received is correct and you can get your VISA at the airport.
Once at the airport you will need to convince the consular that 14 days is not enough and you need the full one month in case things with permits and registration go wrong.
Go to the cheapest hotel remembering when crossing the road that it’s not Iran anymore so the cars don’t treat you like an obstacle course. The hotel will need you to pay for them to register you (25somalis) with the OVIR. This is to tell the registerer that you have arrived and are staying at the hotel you already told them at the VISA application the previous day.
Once that has happened you
want to go either skiing, travel north or go east to the Pamir’s (long shot.) To do that you need some local information and this is where it gets tricky. Your Tajik is nothing even though you should have picked up something from Iran a relative tongue, your Russian is shithouse and it’s bloody hard to find an English speaker. All info in your guidebook is useless as most places are now either closed/moved or in a place that is impossible to find like the one across the massive sewage pipe or is now a construction site.
Because you can’t find anything and no one can understand you. You go to the Internet café (written Cyrillic like Ntertphet) and look at websites that are terribly out of date. You send emails in hope of a response that is not forthcoming. In desperation you log onto Lonely Planets thorntree site for the first time in 4 Journeys hoping that someone can help. Instead all you can find are people in the same situation as you.
When you go wondering up and down the main street Radaki and to the streets branched off from it you’ll stumble across tajikintourservice office,
which is down the road of that now construction site. There you’ll be informed that they can process the GBOA permit ($us35) in 2 days, which enables you to go to the Pamir’s. A place cut off to the world until recently for 100 years. And a place you gave up on travelling to 6 months earlier.
Also at this point they will inform you that you will need to re-register with the OVIR because the hotel stuffed up by 3 days. Whilst all this is happening corrupt police will try and bribe you for money. If you can get out of it, get out of it. Snatch the passport out of the policeman’s hand and whistle for a taxi and get the hell out of there. Best done drunk (4 beers - weak drunk now) and outside a Tajiki nightclub.
Because Kyrgyzstan is your next stop you will need a VISA in advance to exit the Pamir’s north and enter the Kyrgyz south to Osh. You will be provided a map and address in your guidebook as a reference. As a trick the embassy has since moved to a road near the Port Said nightclub. By the
time you realise this change you will be at Studentcheskiy st talking to people in your shitty Russian and in return they will look at you like an idiot.
Just prior to asking the helpful Indian embassy you will reach a ‘road block’ in the form of a dog. The dog will start barking at your unpleasant murmurs under your breath and will start chasing you down the road till you reach the Indian embassy. The helpful Indian Embassy will give you ‘your next clue’, which is a sketchy map that’s good enough. Once finding the embassy you will fill out a form and forget what your passport # is (pointed out by the consular).
You now need to pay $us80!! ‘With only a small amount left for this part of the race’ it is important to realise that that is a complete rip off!! The Orienbank is where you’ll need to pay. That is under construction at the moment and there are no distinct signage. You will than walk up, down and around the bank until you find the tiny entrance near the shithouse concrete path that was done earlier in the week. When you get past the
guard you will need to find the only English speaker who will ask you how much you need to pay.
Get her to call up the embassy so you can negotiate a price. Speak to the charming consular and say: “My book says $35.” He will than go through some crap like ‘but you need it in 3 days. If you wanted it in 4-20 days it would be $35.’ Call his bluff and say, “Now day 4 is Navrus. Are you just saying that because I said I was leaving on the 22nd (Day 5)?” He will say ‘that’s the regulations,’ in which you say. “I feel like the government is trying to take my money here. Permits here, Registration there, Visa’s. 3 days is a long time.” “Okay, okay make it 40.”
The passport is with the embassy and you now only have a photocopy of your passport, visa and pieces of paper for your receipts, permit to Pamir’s, and hotel registration with OVIR (which is a stamp on a post-it note with a bit of writing.) This makes you feel kind of restricted in the Tajikistan capital Dushanbe. A 2-day visit city extended to a
10-day stayer.
PART 2 -
When I first arrived here I really liked the place. A few cars strolled by and for a while the streets were quiet. I felt like I was in a country town but I wasn’t. As I walked through the brilliant leafless tree lined street of Radaki I arrived to my dodgy ex-soviet style hotel. I felt relaxed and excited for my 3rd variant for JP4 had begun. But than I realised the difficulties of travelling in Tajikistan, especially when waiting around for Buzkashi.
The first conversation I had was with a young kid who said
“You are travelling on your own? Lucky you are travelling now. 7 years ago you would have been shot.” I replied, “Your English is good” “I lived in NY for 4 years my dads a diplomat.” And he left.
I was staying at Dushanbe Hotel a dirty hotel to say the least but it was cheap. The toilet was communal and the toilet paper was easily the worst my arse had to scrape with. Vomit/strawberry flavoured toilet paper with the feel of paper mache. The shower was in a bathtub and for some reason
there was a communal toothbrush hanging off the tiled wall with its suction on the end.
My lazy effort in Russian was soon regrettable as my inability to communicate became really frustrating. To fill in the time I thought maybe I’ll do a week learning Russian at a school but couldn’t find any. The thing is Tajikistan has no real tourist office and pre-organising takes too much preplanning plus I wasn’t sure when I was going to arrive.
Struggling to occupy my time I found terrible Tajiki TV amusing for half a day. The signs for important places funny like the ‘Agency of state financial control and struggle with corruption.’ Just telling it like it is.
Also interesting were the women wearing these dresses of various colours made out of various materials. Some are immaculately embroidered with cheap studs that glow in a rainbow like shine. There were silks and velvet. VELVET - they drape themselves in velvet. The dresses really do look better served as a curtain or cushion cover. Some were good enough for pyjamas. Still I got use to it after a while and enjoyed it after the drab colours of Iran’s black. The
slippers were a nice touch too. Looking like Alice in Wonderland.
The national Museum has some interesting sights including an ivory image of Alexander the Great about the size of a finger-nail, Central Asia’s biggest Buddha 13m and reclining. There was also a lot of bead necklaces there which look a lot like what the hippies are still producing. These are from the 8th century. They haven’t really progressed in their making the hippies have they?
At the nightclub I watched a guy completely engulfing the space with his shoulders and his prostitute casually dancing in front of him (all nightclubs here are soviet style meaning prostitutes.) I am thinking what is this prostitute thinking? “Oh no do I have to have sex with this guy? God look at him! Is the money really worth it? Oh shit he’s looking at me better start looking interested.”
Because I was here for so long I got lazy and didn’t want to do anything - And with so much time to go through your own thoughts - The mind can do cruel things like saying “You are waiting 10 days to see this event Buzkashi. What happens if
it rains and it gets called off?”
My sanity was saved however when I ran into a Sydney guy working in Dushanbe at an Internet café. I had a beer with him on Navrus eve and had an early night. At the hotel the beer went through me pretty quickly so I went to the communal toilet. Walking down the corridor I saw one of the old Russian guys drunkenly stumbling along the other end. Realising we were at a speed which would meet at the entrance to the toilet I picked my pace up (his mate entered moments earlier.) With two toilets occupied I started relieving myself when I thought oh shit he might go in the shower. Soon, the sound of a liquid hitting the porcelain bathtub. What a brilliant idea!! Why hold on when you can dilute your unrine in the shower. That’s right the guy was considerate enough to turn the shower on so it would flow all over the bathtub.
With the toilet… ah sorry shower now with extra character I decided to hold out on the shower for 2 days in hope the cleaners did their job. When I gave it a
Wedding
Look at the velvet!go I attempted to shower outside the shower, which is a tough task when my hair needed a wash. This story was a great story to tell a Scottish guy 5 days later who stayed in the same hotel after me. Another feature was when random drunks would knock on the door of my room, have a look around and say “bye!”
In a weird way Dushanbe started to feel like a home. An unpleasant home, which is unfair to judge it like that. English is not here so looking up a dictionary to find the word “Where” does get frustrating. And to make it clear about the beginning all the red tape did not happen in a day. Ovir took two days (it was still wrong - in Murgab was told it wasn’t done so $15us + 26 somanis) Pamir’s permit 2 days and Kyrgyz VISA 3 days. There’s no public transport and its so mountainous it takes a day to get anywhere useful, when car is full. So pretty much felt stuck - well boredom, bad weather when I got motivated to do something. On my last day I found out that the ski field is open
sometimes on weekends the electricity gets put on when the rich go there.
When I finished the Dushanbe leg I think I would have had the host of Amazing Race greet me by saying “Drew… Because of the OVIR stuff up twice and not going up north or ski during the 10 days - You are the last to arrive. Fortunately though this is not an elimination round and you are still in the race.”
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Martin
non-member comment
com'on its not dat bad in TJK
com'on dude, its not that bad in tjk..u exaggerate everything...of course the airport control sucks..but dude, its so cheap in Tajakistan...so.. i mean u can bribe a cop for couple bucks, and here we go, no visa , or any sorta ID is needed...damn it, have u visited port-said nite club? its really cool in there...and tadjik chicks are so hot!!! so its fun to spend a day or so in Dushanbe, guys u should go for it!!!