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Olim Dodkhokh Complex
On cold Friday lunchtimes, dozens of older men with flowing white beards, turbans, upturned boots and swishing purple/green irridescent joma robes make their way to prayers at this mosque-madrassa complex opposite the bazaar. Though mostly a contemporary rebuild, its origins are 14
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Historical Museum of Sughd Province
Built within the reconstructed southeast bastion of the city wall, this lavish museum has a basement full of Graeco-Roman–style stone reliefs and well-executed murals of prehistoric life. The main hall is dominated by a statue of Timur Malik, the local hero who battled the Mongol o
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Museum of Musical Instruments
The Museum of Musical Instruments is also known as the Gurminj Museum after the owner, Badakhshani actor Gurminj Zavkybekov. There are lots of antique instruments, including a gijak (fiddle), doira (tambourine/drum) and rubab (six-stringed mandolin), plus old photos and memorabilia
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Rudaki Museum
This rather elegant museum does assign a room to Abu Abdullah Rudaki (858–941), the Samanid court father of Persian poetry, whose modern mausoleum is 58km east of Penjikent at Panjrud. However, its more interesting for the displays of local products (wine, textiles, gold) and the e
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National Museum of Antiquities of Tajikistan
Though the interior is dowdy and poorly illuminated, the archaeological collection here is excellent. In many cases what youll see are the originals from which copies were made for the outwardly far grander new National Museum. Notably, the 13m-long sleeping Buddha here is the real
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Fan Mountains
The Fannsky Gory are a favoured place to trek and climb, being only a couple of hours from both Samarkand and Dushanbe. The main M34 between Dushanbe and Khojand winds through the fringes of the range, offering superb views. Iskander-Kul is a gorgeous mountain lake 24km (15mi) off
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Garam Chashma
For local, Garam Chasma is the Pamirs most popular open-air hot spring pool. Photos show a fine cascde of white and coloured mineral overhangs creating a cupped bowl somewhat reminiscent of Pamukkale in Turkey. However, theres only one such formation here and what the tourtit pictu
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Sheikh Massal ad
In striking comparison to the bazaar opposite, this religious complex comprises the 1394 brick mausoleum of Sheikh Massal ad-Din (1133–1223), covered porticoes with carved wooden pillars, a 20th-century mosque with sensitive, if modern, white-stone frontage and a 21m-high brick min
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Namadguti Museum
Facing the eastern knoll of the Khaakha fortress, the most interesting element of visiting this fairly minimal museum is dressing up in a Pamiri chakman (judo-style woolen robe) and hat, or listening to director Odinmammad Mirzayev play one of the musical instruments. He can also d
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Mug Teppe
The citys grassy, flat-topped former fortress hill rises northeast of the centre. Stormed by Alexander the Great in 329 BC and Arabs in 772AD, only minimal mud-wall traces of the original remain. These, however, have been grandly augmented since 2002 by a blue-domed brick entry gat
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Rustom Masain
Though nationally famous as the creator of traditional musical instruments, some with amusingly kitchy quirks (snakes coiled around the stem, eyes and legs to anthropomorphise others), this septugenarianlives in a very simle, traditional Pamiri home in the gorgeously set village of
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National Museum
Opened in 2013, the impressively airy National Museum is especially strong on archaeological exhibits, both real and recreated. The reconstruction of the Ajina-Tepe Buddhist monastery site is particularly successful in conjuring up the feeling of how the 7th-century original might
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Petroglyphs
Rock faces on the steep slopes above Langar are inscribed with over 6000 petroglyphs. Climbing to see them adds further to the great mountain views across the valley junction but it is hard to tell ancient carvings from more recent copy-cat ibexes and more obvious 20th-century gra
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House
Some 500m off the main road in Yamg is the reconstructed house museum of Sufi mystic, astronomer and musician Mubarak Kadam Wakhani (1843–1903). One room contains typical ethnographic artefacts plus books and manuscripts of the master. The other is designed as a classic 19th-centur
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Hulbuk Palace
Between the 9th and 11th centuries, Hulbuk was one of the four biggest cites of Central Asia and seat of te Shah of Khatlon. It guarded a giant salt hill which was of great trading value as well as forming part of the silk routes. Destroyed by the Mongols, the sparse remnants have
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Shahr
The old town is a gently intriguing maze of lanes, with interesting houses often tantalisingly hidden from view behind straw-and-wattle plastered walls. Access is via Krupskoe or Tursunzoda streets heading west from 102 or 98 Lenin respectively, either side of the photogenic Hazrat
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Citadel
The city’s oldest remains are the formless baked-earth walls of the 10th-century citadel, which once boasted seven gates and 6km of fortifications. Earlier this had been the site of Alexander the Great’s original settlement. The fort was the scene of pitched battles in 1997 between
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Jafr Agro
Botanist, poet and collector Mirzosho Akobirov has spent decades planting seeds and saplings of numerous local and exotic fruit trees in his extensive botanical garden. Many trees have curiously grafted several fruit types onto single ruit stocks such that a pistachio tree might si
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Ancient Penjikent
On a terrace above the banks of the Zerafshan River, 1.5km southeast of todays Penjikent, are the ruins of a major Sogdian town, which was briefly (5th to 8th centuries) one of the most cosmopolitan cities on the Silk Road. The palace here was originally decorated with ornate hunti
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Doing business & staying in touch while in Tajikistan
Tajikistan: Doing business & staying in touch
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