c u on top - satyabrata dam

14th July, day 2 in Dushanbe: when the day dawned it hadn’t looked any more or less exciting than day 1 and I was eager to discover if I could discover some more fine corners of this city without corners and even more dazzling girls than before and if familiarity would indeed rob my senses the much coveted hint of adventure. I didn’t have much as an agenda. But then the morning rolled and things started to happen of their own accord. Gulja called and said she wanted to meet up over lunch to discuss more about her India trip that she was now considering seriously. Considering that she wanted to visit Armenia and Iran before India, and to a country that actually doesn’t officially exist, with a trip in between to Berlin to drop her stuff there and then perhaps dip into West Africa somewhere, was making her all stressed and dizzy so she wanted my help to sort it out. Gulja’s confusion and distress was well justified though not necessarily well defined and as I specialize on such travel ...

I have few days in Dushanbe before I head off into the Pamirs and Afghanistan Hindu Kush, and generally during the evenings, I have nothing more to do than twiddle my sore thumb so thought of writing a series of posts, on my everyday adventure in this ancient city that has been labeled by LP as the most scenic capital city of Central Asia, which comprises of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan. And if Dushanbe is the prettiest and cleanest of all the capitals in Central Asia, then I tremble in fear what the other capitals look like. Well I don’t tremble in ignorance rather in knowledge since I have been to all of them earlier. And well, LP has been wrong on at least this count or marginally offset. Anyway this is about my first day (not night) out in Dushanbe and not a LP bashing platform so I will get on with my self-imposed rather tough task. First for those non-initiates, I am in Dushanbe since I wish to go to Afghanistan. Now if this sounds rather roun...