Tajik interlude

Ed and I took off for a long awaited holiday in Tajikistan on Wednesday 31 August – the first day we made it as far as Kunduz, a small city near the Amu-Darya (Oxus) river. The next day we travelled to Dushanbe and were reunited with many dear friends. On Saturday morning before dawn broke we were most unusually vertical, and on our way to the long haul taxi rank. We found a man eager to take us to Penjikent in no time, but it was only sometime later that we actually set off, after locating our other two travelling companions, and having a breakfast of fried eggs and tea. The journey up and over the mountains into the Zerafshan valley, were Penjikent is, was really spectacular, so much so that I didn’t mind the bumps and curves in the road, and the choking dust.

After stopping in a roadside restaurant for a quick bowl of grimly familiar mutton fat soup, we continued our journey, arriving in the town of Penjikent in the middle of the afternoon. We surprised our driver by asking to be dropped off at the Museum, where I fell into rapt admiration of the beautiful susani collection lining the walls of one room. The susani is an embroidered wall hanging traditionally made by women in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Afghanistan, to form part of dowry chests. I took lots of photos of them.