Day 25 - Soviet Mosaics and an Evening Flight (Dushanbe to Khujand)

Khujand, Tajikistan

Today was another travel day as we’d be going from Dushanbe up north 300km to the city of Khujand.

The drive to get from point A to point B takes about 6 hours.

But there’s another way…

A 45 minute flight at 7pm in the evening!

Yes, please! Sign me up!

Not only would we avoid another tumultuous extended drive but we now had a few morning and afternoon here in Dushanbe.

Let’s see what exciting things we got up to…

A western breakfast

Despite waking up at 7am, I didn’t actually physically pull myself out until 9:30 when Nathan came by and pointed at his tummy.

Guess it’s breakfast time…

Now, we could have just tried to snag another free breakfast buffet at the hotel downtown again but we decided to be law abiding citizens today.

This time I actually punched in “breakfast” in Google Maps and, wouldn’t you know it, a few places popped up.

We picked the one that had a picture of a western style breakfast accompanying it.

You know – eggs, meat, sausage – that kind of thing.

After yet another adventurous taxi experience, we arrived at our location, Tartin.

And we knew we were in the right place because they even had a sign board on the sidewalk saying “breakfast 8:00-23:00”.

It was, in the most literal sense, a “good sign”.

There were quite a few breakfast choices including hearty breakfast, chef’s breakfast, English breakfast and others.

However, there were no descriptions or photos of what was on those plates.

Unbelievably, our waiter spoke English and was able to describe the dishes to us.

Oh my God, I’m in heaven!

I ended up getting the chef’s breakfast which was scrambled eggs, 2 kinds of sausage, roast beef, cherry tomatoes, corn, broccoli, and a little salad.

Okay, the broccoli was a little weird but, man, that breakfast was top notch.

And their berry lemonade? The best drink I’ve had no far on this trip!

Soviet Mosaic Hunting

There was really only one plan today and that was to search out some of the old Soviet mosaics on buildings on the western side of Dushanbe.

Someone on Reddit had posted a link with all the map markers of the mosaics so, naturally, I had copied them onto my own map.

And, with my map in hand, off we went…

Obviously we wouldn’t be seeing them all as they are pretty spread apart through the city and, honestly, even if I wanted to – I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be able to navigate multiple taxi rides to get to them.

So, I picked an area that had a cluster of them in an hour’s walking distance.

I wasn’t going to make the mistake I made yesterday of overexerting myself so I figured limiting the walk to an hour in the 30c temperatures was the smart move.

What I didn’t realize was that some of those Soviet mosaics would also be attached to old Soviet style buildings.

And, for me, those were even cooler to look at than the actual mosaics themselves.

After our mosaic hunting was complete, our next adventure awaited…

Taxis! Argh!!!

Yup, the old adventure of finding a taxi ride back to the hostel.

I can’t stress enough how crazy the juxtaposition of dozens of taxis on the road but none of them stopping for us is.

I’m not even exaggerating when I say every second car in this city is a green roofed Jura taxi.

I’m also not exaggerating when I say it took us a good 15 minutes of trying to hail the dozens of cars that passed by us.

For a literal 3 minute drive straight down the road.

Finally, as I had given up hope and was checking to see how long the 3km walk would be, one of the stopped for us.

And, 3 minutes later, we were back at our hostel.

A lazy afternoon

Our flight wasn’t until 7pm which meant we didn’t have to leave for the airport until 4:30 which was a full 4 hours away.

In another universe on another trip, I would have headed back out in the afternoon to see even more mosaics or at least grab some lunch.

In another universe…

For this universe though knowing how much of a hassle it was just to get to and from the hostel, I was content just to hang around the hostel for 4 hours and watch shows on my laptop.

And that’s exactly what I did.

Sorry, I know it’s not that exciting but, honestly, we’re on the last stretch of this trip and I’m tired.

The heat is a killer and this whole taxi debacle takes a little bit of my soul each time.

So, we hung out in the hostel til 4:30…

An evening flight

One last hailing of a taxi for us remained here in Dushanbe and thankfully saying “airport” was enough of a landmark for him to know where we were going.

We arrived at the Khujand International Airport at just before 5pm.

My heart skipped a beat for a second when I saw “International” in the name since our flight was most definately a domestic one.

However, a quick google search of “how many airports are there in Dushanbe” put me at ease with the answer of one.

We entered the terminal building and, again, my heart skipped – we couldn’t find our flight on the board.

Perhaps we were in the international terminal and needed to seek out the domestic one.

Sure enough, I asked a counter person and they directed outside to a neighboring building.

This building was a bit rundown with any signage that was there long taken down.

And the door…

The door had a lock on it.

There were people milling around outside and they confirmed that we were in the right place and that the door would open at 5pm.

You see, there aren’t that many domestic flights in Tajikistan.

In fact, this is the only route that happens and there’s only one flight a day or, depending on the season, only one a week.

So, it makes sense that it originates out of the old terminal building and that it remains locked until a couple of hours before departure.

They eventually removed the lock and let us in.

First a bag xray in the tiniest airport xray I’ve seen where our bags got stuck.

And then over to the counter to checkin for our flight.

This one had a weight limit of 7kg for a carryon bag but luckily they didn’t weigh mine cause I’m way over at probably 11kg by now.

Next it was past the unmanned passport control booth to a guard sitting at a desk checking passports and stamping our boarding passes.

And then round the corner was the gate.

A large room with just chairs and bathrooms to the side.

No food. No water. No anything.

Again, not unexpected since it’s just a tiny little no-frills terminal.

I was able to ask the guard using Google Translate if I could exit to buy water and re-enter past the xray machine and he nodded yes.

Well, at least we wouldn’t be dehydrated for the next couple of hours.

Finally, at 6:30 we boarded our Somon Air flight heading for Khujand.

The flight was only 45 minutes long so we were pretty much in descent mode right away.

And then at just after 8pm we had arrived in Khujand.

Welcome to Khujand

We exited the airport into the usual taxi touts offering rides into the city 16km away.

I had read to just walk past them through the parking lot to find rides at half the price which my hostel assured me shouldn’t be more than 60tjs ($9).

Past the touts into the parking lot and the first price I was quoted was 150tjs ($22).

I just laughed in his face.

C’mon bro.

Show me a little respect.

As I started to walk away he immediately came down to 100tjs ($15).

I countered with the price I was expecting to pay and now it was his turn to laugh at me.

No problem. I just walked away.

This was a buyer’s market and there were plenty of taxi drivers offering rides.

I finally found one who would do it for 80tjs ($12) and figured that was good enough to get us the hell out of there.

The driver spoke good English and offered up his WhatsApp number if we wanted to use him to get to the border in a couple of days which we’ll probably do.

Our hostel is right inside the Khujand Fortress which is pretty cool indeed and the main reason I selected it.

The guy at the front desk was so indifferent like we were imposing on him by checking in and we barely got a tour of the place as he led us to our room.

The toilet is down the hall which I’ve definately seen over my travels through the years but the fact there is only one toilet is kinda brutal.

Oh and it has a broken toilet seat.

And no toilet paper.

And the bathroom stinks.

But, other than that – great hostel.

After a quick checkin, we headed right back out as it was now after 9pm and we hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast.

We went to the #1 rated place on TripAdvisor which just happened to be just right down the street.

And, well, TripAdvisor can go suck a big one.

They were out of half the menu because “the chef wasn’t there” and the server, like our hostel host, just seemed totally indifferent.

Gotta stop listening to TripAdvisor.

I ended up settling for a beef kebab, potatoes, and some sort of Russian chicken salad.

The food was actually decent but not at all what I had wanted to eat.