An unfolded mystery: Tajikistan

Good evening hardcore followers!

As you are starting to read this blog post right now, you know that we have survived our trip from China to Tajikistan. It was quite a tough ride but we are happy that we got into the capital of Tajikistan without too much problems. This may sound to have been not much of a challenge but actually, it was. The day before yesterday was the day we posted our last blog during our train trip to Tajikistan. The day after, we had to travel another full day to get from the eastern border of Tajikistan to Dushanbe, located in the western part of Tajikistan.

During the way too long bus trip, there were two major elements that we will never forget. In the first place, the nature. We were travelling through an enormous chain of mountains. Some mountains had peeks of over 7000 meters height, belonging to the largest mountains on earth. During that trip, we have seen some of the most breathtaking panorama’s that we will see in our whole life. There was also a negative aspect during the trip, poverty. As the trip went by, we crossed some enormously poor villages. You can actually hardly call them villages. Just some huts and wooden houses together. The people there had not much clothes and they looked far from attractive. Our bus driver told us an important fact about Tajikistan: it’s the poorest country of the whole Asian district.

Before we entered this country, we knew practically nothing about the country Tajikistan. The only thing that came up in our minds when hearing the name was Tzatziki, the famous Greek dish. So this morning, we were quite motivated to explore this country and the city of Dushanbe, more specifically.

During today’s forenoon, we decided to visit the Jewish Dushanbe Synagogue. Tajikistan is actually a country that strongly believes in the Islam but there are also still a few Synagogues in the country. The Jewish society in Tajikistan is far from large so one synagogue per city is enough. The strange thing about this synagogue that it was built twice, once in the 19^th century and once two years ago. In the past, the Jewish society was way larger than now but after the civil war in the nineties everything changed. The new leader wanted a complete reformation of the country and the Jewish society was not part of that. After years of much national and international protest, the building was finally demolished begin 2008. Though, the Jewish communities over the whole world didn’t give up and one year after the demolishing of the building, there was an agreement to rebuild it. Unforeseen, there was a mass about to begin when we arrived and we decided to attend it. That was a quite nice experience since the methodology of a mass is completely different as in our Christian masses.

In the afternoon, we didn’t really know where to go but finally we decided to visit the Dushanbe government building. About our visit itself, we can be very briefly as we got hardly anything to see. When we arrived, we were only allowed to view some parts of the domain and all that was under strong, armed surveillance. Though we have gathered some nice facts about the Tajikistan Government. To get straight to the point, the Tajikistan government is as corrupt as it can get. This country should be led by a traditional republic but actually, the ruling authority gets re-elected all the time and that’s not a coincidence. The main reason of the corruption is to be found in the country’s large drug-traffic industry. To give you some facts, Drug trafficking delivers some people of the government a lot of revenues as they are part of it. Also, Tajikistan is the #1 country when it comes to producing and transporting heroin. The situation may improve in the next decades as the economy is growing quite quickly again after the civil war. If the legal economy keeps growing, there is a chance that the drug trafficking will decrease or disappear completely. Let’s hope for it!

So that was short description about how we have experienced our second day in Tajikistan. We do not plan to stay here for a long time because our main impression of this country is not quite good due to the poverty and the scarcity of cultural elements. We already know what our next destination will be but we won’t reveal it yet. The chance that we will post another blog about some adventures in Tajikistan is rather small so we hope to write again in a few days!