When me and my new Australian friends reached Dushanbe, the car we were driving was almost falling apart. We had spent two days driving the last part of the Pamir Highway from Khorogh to Dushanbe where the 1st, 2nd, reverse and 5th gear had stopped working, the car had been over hearing the whole time and was completely full of dust.
At a local café I found a swallow who was tame enough to eat from my mouth!
At green house hostel where we stayed there were lots of people about to start their trip through the Pamirs, and although it had been an incredible drive we told them that we also were glad to be out of the mountains and back on solid tarmac roads.
Dushanbe was a very pleasant city, having everything available from good coffee to microbrewed beer. I met a german cyclist who had cycled all the way from Germany and kindly offered me to borrow his bike. It was the perfect way to explore this flat city and in a few hours I had covered all the of the main sights.
Dushanbe feels young and modern with its newly built attractions: a huge statue of their folk legend, Somoni, a gigantic National Museum.. And.. You guessed it.. Another “Central Asia’s biggest flag”!!! (I had heard the same in Bishkek and Osh).
The parks were pleasant and spacious and and there were lots of nice cafés around making it a good place to stay while trying to get my Afghan visa which the embassy wouldnt give me. I decided to go to the Tajikistani capital Tashkent instead to try again there.
