Dushanbe Overview (for posts July 9-14)

After spending more than a month in Bishkek with few "touristic" opportunities (and frankly not all that much workload), I am now taking a 1-week "vacation" to the capital of Tajikistan, Dushanbe.

While in Dushanbe, my internet access/time will be limited, but I'll be living la vida tourist, so expect lots of photos, and blogs based more on itinerary and quick description than intense, pseudo-scholastic data and editorial drudgery. It's a return to the style of on-my-own travel for which this blog (and the iconic "lamb" by which is has become personified) was created.

Since I'll (hopefully) be doing quite a lot, but (probably) will not be updating this as I go, please forgive my use of the "backdated" blog, whereby I'll post events/items for the days on which they occurred, not necessarily the day on which they're written. Expect considerable errors in tense/foreknowledge.

"Little Did He Know..." and all that.

Thanks for your patience - I'm very excited.

(one "scholastic" note: the reason I'm so hyped about seeing Dushanbe is that while it shares so much of the Soviet history and legacies of the other Central Asian Republics - especially Kyrgyzstan - it's pre-Soviet history was quite different, and it's persian-based language/culture not only sets it apart linguistically from the rest of CA, but culturally the Tajiks see themselves as the legacy of Samarkand and the great Persian Islamic empires, not the Mongol/Turkish lineage. Taken even further, I've heard Tajik described as "the closest thing to Iran outside Iran," and given my US citizenship, and the recent events in Iran, that's about as close as I'm going to get for awhile. It should also be said that while the other CIS states were carving up the Soviet 'goods,' Tajik descended into a bloody civil war, just ended in 1997 in a bizarre, benevolent kleptocratic autocracy. It's a smorgasborg of interest. You might even consider doing a quick wiki-view).