In a country where tourism has not yet reached, finding a place to bunk down at night was not always easy. Our guidebook had already warned us that accommodation was not the best or easiest to find in our last Central Asian country. Creature comforts were not a part of Tajik accommodation and we experienced walking on ice paths just to get to our outhouse at night. Hot water (or any water at all) was a luxury which we thoroughly enjoyed when available.
Our first night was spent in a bizarre unfinished apartment building slash hotel with strange empty rooms and no water most of the day. On to Dushanbe the capital, where we stayed at a guesthouse which could be so much more if only some TLC was put into it. In our attempt to find a cheaper nicer place to stay we also checked out an old school post Soviet hotel (Hotel Poytaht, former Hotel Dushanbe) which seemed to have not changed since the fall of the USSR. It came complete with Russian floor ladies who were in charge of room keys, tea and laundry when they are not too busy sitting around looking bored.
In the Pamirs, our homes were lodges or guesthouses with beautiful mountain backdrops in small villages in the middle of nowhere. Here in the Pamir, wherever you stay you become part of the family sharing their bathroom and kitchen and evenings are spent having tea and bread together around a fireplace. As there were not a lot of places available, prices were quite high at an average of EUR 17.80 per night.
In addition to these nights, one of our nights was spent in a jeep on our epic 22 hours trip from Dushanbe to Khorog (621 km). Our last night in Central Asia was spent in Sary Tash (Kyrgyzstan) arriving late across the border from Tajikistan in transit to Kashgar in China.
These were our homes in Tajikistan:
Khojand – Eksaun Hotel
Dushanbe – Adventurer’s Inn (first couple of nights)
Dushanbe – Adventurer’s Inn (last night after our failed attempt to go to Khorog)
Khorog – Pamir Lodge
Murgab – Suhrab’s Guesthouse
In transit – Kyrgyzstan – Sary Tash – Tatina’s Hotel
