from tashkent, uzbekistan i took a one-day impromptu trip to tajikistan. after much confusion thanks to there being two places in tashkent with the same name, by about noon i finally found the correct place to get the 1.5 hour ride south to the border. uzbekistan and tajikistan unfortunately haven’t got along particularly well, so the border crossings between the two are periodically closed for indefinite periods of time. it was open for me though, and went rather smoothly as there weren’t the crowds as at the other crossings. there appeared to be a sniper looking out from the top of a guard tower, but it ended up being just a mannequin. tajikistan is a small, oddly shaped country. the part i crossed into is in the ferghana valley, one of the most densely populated areas in central asia and also one of the most complicated, populated by kyrgyz, uzbek, tajik and russian ethnicities. if you look at a political map of the region, the borders are extremely convoluted. for example, there are dozens of enclaves of uzbekistan within kyrgyzstan, all in an area that looks like it is being hugged by one of tajikistan’s arms. despite all this, many people in the ferghana valley live in a country where they are an ethnic minority, which is kindling for ethnic violence. i went to the city of khujand, which is one of the most russian cities in the region. only in this part of the world: the most famous cities in uzbekistan are predominantly ethnic tajik and one of the biggest cities in tajikistan is predominantly ethnic russian.
the biggest sector of tajikistan’s economy today is unfortunately the smuggling of opiates, thanks to tajikistan’s long, mountainous border with northern afghanistan. indeed, even the uzbek border guard on my way out asked me: “you carry any guns, drugs, opiates?” most tourists who go to tajikistan go to trek in the remote pamir mountain range in the eastern half of the country, a semi-autonomous area called the gorno-badakhstan autonomous region (gbao), for which a special permit is required.
there was really nothing of note to see in khujand. i was looking for the market but forgot the name, and not a single person spoke a word of english and my phone was dead, so i ended up not being able to find it. so ended up just wandering around for a few hours and then heading back to tashkent before it got dark. the adventure was worth it though!