Gold teeth, bad taxidermy, and an insanely lavish building

Last time you heard from me we were in the Samarkand region of Uzbekistan and now we would be moving on to meet more incredible people and see some other areas of this beautiful country, before hopping back on the train to spend a day in Dushanbe, Tajikistan.

Wednesday, April 16, 2025
We left the hotel and were leaving Samarkand on the train at 8:00am, bound for the small town of Qamashi, Uzbekistan where, after lunch in the in the train’s restaurant cabin, we would disembark and drive up into the mountains in the Qashqadaryo Region:

Qashqadaryo Region is one of the regions of Uzbekistan, located in the south-eastern part of the country in the basin of the river Qashqadaryo and on the western slopes of the Pamir-Alay mountains. It borders with Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Samarqand Region, Bukhara Region and Surxondaryo Region. It covers an area of 28,570 km². The population is an estimated 3,408,345 (2022), with 57% living in rural areas. The regional capital is Qarshi (278,300 inhabitants).

This wouldn’t be like our trek up the snow-capped peaks in Kazakhstan at the beginning of our journey, this time it would be t-shirt weather for all of us. Here we would be treated to some local hospitality by a regional family and witness a traditional wedding and dance performance at their home, but for us the wedding aspect wouldn’t be the focal point. Actually, I’m not sure it even was a real wedding, more just a reenactment as part of the performance. We were seated at a table with some bread and local snacks, a band kicked in, and then the party began with the mother of the bride leading the way, dancing down the aisle in her robes. Next we were presented with the bride and groom where the bride was unveiled, a baby placed in a local crib, and then the real celebrations began! The band took it up another notch and the whole family danced up and down the driveway, some with their resplendent gold teeth on display, and also a young boy dressed in a suit and an afro wig that made him look like he had crossed over from an alternate dimension where he was in a 70s disco, dancing like he did this on a daily basis.
Naturally our guide, Rustam, as well as Anna and some of the other group members just couldn’t help themselves and joined in on the festivities, but I don’t dance so I just sat back at the table and took some photos, although Anna bailed when she realised I was filming her:

The festivities were over and we were back in the van for an hour to Shahrisabz, a 2,700-year old city and the birthplace of Timur, the national hero that you may recall from our time in Samarkand:

Shahrisabz, “Green City” in Persian, is a district-level city in Qashqadaryo Region in southern Uzbekistan. The Economic Cooperation Organization(ECO) has selected Shakhrisabz as its tourism capital for 2024.

It is located approximately 80 km south of Samarkand, at an elevation of 622 m. Its population is 140,500 as of 2021. Historically known as Kesh or Kish, Shahrisabz was once a major city of Central Asia and was an important urban center of Sogdiana, a province of the Achaemenid Empire of Persia. It is primarily known today as the birthplace of 14th-century Turco-Mongol conqueror Timur.

The next leg would be by bus and it almost seemed that our little buddy, the notorious Ms. P, was trying to find new and unique ways to piss off the entire tour group. Today’s method would be to loudly watch Chinese dramas without headphones both on the bus and later on buggies taking us around the ruins of Shahrisabz. Not only was the screeching in Mandarin emanating from her phone irritating, but Rustam was giving us a lot of information about where we were visiting for the duration of the drive, but Ms. P was more engrossed in her series and when she had realised that she may have missed a salient point she would ask Rustam to repeat it, a pattern that would continue for the entire ride and then on the tour around the grounds of the ancient city.
We entered the walled city, constantly avoiding a man with teeth like Aimee Lou Wood who kept trying to sell us flowers, and due to the size of the place we were taken to the various sites by buggy, all of us trying to avoid boarding the same one as our annoying travel companion. We were taken to different sites such as the remains of Timur’s Ak-Saray Palace, the city’s various mosques, one of which we couldn’t tell if it was playing a prayer or Coldplay, then some madrasas, and preserved areas of the original tiled streets, but it was the mausoleum built for Timur’s son that had a great air of mystery about it:

Behind the Hazrat-i Imam Emsemble is a bunker with a door leading to an underground chamber, discovered by archaeologists in 1943. The room is nearly filled with a single stone casket, on which inscriptions indicate that it was intended for Timur. However, the conqueror was buried in Samarkand, not at Shahrisabz, and mysteriously, his tomb in Shahrisabz contained two unidentified corpses.

Stop offs on our buggy rides around some of the still standing buildings in Shahrisabz, sans the background wailing and sound effects of a Chinese TV series:

Our train had already driven from Qamashi to Schahrisabz so we took the bus back to the train and had an outdoor dinner with an Uzbek wine tasting on the platform. Ms. P sat at our table and for someone who says she doesn’t drink she could sure put away some free wine, as well as plenty of plates of food from the buffet, but things were to take a turn. After several trips for food, upon her return to the table she stormed off back to the train, believing that people were judging her and wasn’t heard from again. It was then that some travel companions informed us that Ms. P was sharing a room with a German couple and they had offered to pay several thousand dollars to be able to have a different cabin, because apparently she doesn’t really sleep much, she is just up repacking and generally moving around the cabin most of the night, but unfortunately for them there were no more cabins available. They had shelled out for the trip of a lifetime only to have to share it with her in very close quarters.
Dinner was done and we were back on the train, bound for Dushanbe, Tajikistan, but curiosity was getting the better of us and, although we didn’t miss her, we were a little worried that we may have left Ms. P behind with her passport still on the train (something I wouldn’t wish upon anyone), because nobody had heard from her for a few hours. Our mild concerns were later laid to rest when Rustam came to tell us she had just accidentally locked herself in a toilet on the train.

Thursday, April 17, 2025
We were awoken bright and early once more for border formalities, because today we would be crossing into Tajikistan, spending the entire day in the nation’s capital, Dushanbe:

Dushanbe is the capital and largest city of Tajikistan. As of March 2024, Dushanbe had a population of 1,564,700, with this population being largely Tajik. Until 1929, the city was known in Russian as Dyushambe, and from 1929 to 1961 as Stalinabad, after Joseph Stalin. Dushanbe is located in the Gissar Valley, bounded by the Gissar Range in the north and east and the Babatag, Aktau, Rangontau and Karatau mountains in the south, and has an elevation of 750–930 m. The city is divided into four districts: Ismail Samani, Avicenna, Ferdowsi, and Shah Mansur.

Part of the reason we had inadvertently overpacked for our little rail adventure was for this portion of the trip. In the weeks leading up to our getaway we had been constantly checking the weather in the places that we would be visiting and there seemed to be one glaring outlier: Dushanbe. Despite the moderate temperatures everywhere else in Central Asia, it looked like it was going to be absolutely freezing on this leg, as seen a few days before our departure (right) and several weeks earlier it had been getting down to -27°C (-16.6°F). Although it didn’t appear it would get that low while we were there, it would still be a little chilly so we packed a ton of warm clothing, not knowing exactly how long we would be in Dushanbe, but we could’ve used that extra luggage space more liberally, because:

1. We would only be there for the day, and
2. It appeared we were receiving the temperature reading from up in the mountains of the nearby Gissar Range, not the city’s actual location in the Gissar Valley.

In reality we would just be getting around in t-shirts again on this pleasant Autumn day. We arrived once more at another Soviet-era train station, boarded the bus, drove past a construction site that didn’t seem to adhere to many occupational health and safety laws, and eventually arrived at the National Museum of Tajikistan. It seemed to us like it would be similar to many of the others we had been to in the region thus far and wouldn’t particularly pique our interests when compared to exploring the city so we told Rustam we would skip this one, something he completely understood, and we stepped out to wander around Dushanbe.
Again, this was a city full of beautiful parks and gardens, statues and sculptures, as well as some more impressive buildings, many with the image of the country’s president for more than the past 30 years, Emomali Rahmon, emblazoned on them. We also obviously dropped into a supermarket to have a look as we tend to do, before returning to the museum 90 minutes later. The rest of the group were still looking at the displays inside so we entered to have a quick browse, passing the standard fare you would expect to see, but it was all worth it when we got down to the basement level. This was the location of the natural history section and home to some taxidermy that was so terrible it was impossible not to burst out laughing. Once we were finished at the museum we were whisked away to a restaurant for lunch, us still laughing at the stuffed animals while some traditional dancers came out and did their thing.
Walking around Dushanbe, some really bad taxidermy in the museum, traditional dancers at lunch, and a medical centre with a questionable name:

We had one more stop in Dushanbe before we left Tajikistan and it it would be the most ostentatious, decadent building I have ever seen in my life, a tea house by the name of Kokhi Navruz:

Kokhi Navruz complex was built in Dushanbe in 2014 according to the national architectural style. The complex consists of 5 floors and about 40 thousand m2 are the handiwork of Tajik craftsmen.
Moreover, summer terraces, colorful fountains and music add splendor to the building. 11 halls of the complex are decorated with Tajik national handicrafts, such as plaster, mosaic of colored glass, painted ceilings, woodwork, and stone carving.

Kokhi Navruz consists of 4 halls:

• Didor hall — the entrance to the hall is decorated with “kundal” motifs. This is a banquet hall, the walls of which are colorful gypsum, crystalline masterpiece, which reflects the national motifs. The ceiling is painted colorfully in a beautiful way. The wooden stairs on both sides are decorated with carvings. The area of the hall is 1100 sq meters.
• Arzhang hall — the hall is made of 29 types of semi-precious gems sourced from Tajikistan (also called Stone hall). On the wall there is a mosaic based on paintings by Kamoliddin Behzod. The area of the hall is 1000 sq meters.
• Guliston hall — the hall (also known as the Carving hall) represents a proud display of Tajik carving. More than 6000 sq meters of wood carvings were made in this hall under the guidance of master Burhon. It has 16 columns. The biggest chandelier is 3 tons and it is crystal. The area of the hall is 1650 sq meters.
• Zarandud hall is the tallest hall in the building. The biggest chandelier weighs 6.7 tons and has 1600 lights. On each part of the wall you can see the symbol of the golden crown with seven stars. The columns (16) and top of them are decorated with delicate gold ornaments (hence also called Golden hall). The walls of the hall are decorated with gypsum and crystalline. All the work was done under the guidance of the master Anvarsho Rizvonov.

Add to all of this that the complex also has seven lifts including a panoramic elevator, a bowling alley, billiard room, 3D movie theatre, a night club, shops, and an art gallery, I think the term “tea house” is used a little loosely, even if there is one inside. We spent about an hour walking around, each room more breathtaking, albeit gaudy, than the next.
Here are a few shots I got of the entrance, followed by some of each room:

Didor hall:

Arzhang hall:

Guliston hall:

Zarandud hall:

Our time in Tajikistan was done and we would now be back on the train for the night, eating in the dining car and sleeping in our little cabins. Stick around for my next post about this journey when we return to Uzbekistan to spend a couple of nights in the beautiful, but fun small town of Bakhara.