Tadjikistan: On The Edge of The Map

Part 1: the mountains

source: personal archives, tadjikistan 2023

Tajikistan.

Winding mountain roads, pink dust clinging to the sides of the car, sharp peaks revealing themselves with every turn.

Dropped a few hundred meters from the Tadjik border, I follow the road, barbed wire running alongside, to the customs post. A handful of us wait patiently for a sleepy guard to finish his nap and let us through. Curious glances from behind the windows as my passport is leafed through. I just hope they don’t inspect my bag too closely.

On the other side of this no man’s land, a few taxi drivers await, ready for their next fare. I have probably overpaid for the ride to Penjakent, but I haven’t quite mastered the art of effortless bargaining yet. And after a full day on the road, all I can think about is the moment I’ll kick off my shoes and collapse into fresh sheets.

Penjakent offers the quiet views of a provincial town. A main street lined with shops, stalls, banks, and bazaars, where I stock up for the two-day stopover. A kilo of tomatoes, some cucumbers, peppers, cheese—we’ll make a salad of it somehow. Beyond the road, peaceful alleys, men smoking and chatting on doorsteps, children running and yelling in the dust. After all, everyday life doesn’t change much from village to village, country to country. Only faces differ. And south, at the edge of town, still stands—draped in gold—one of the countless Lenin statues the USSR once scattered across its lands.

I stay at a small guesthouse in the center. Two dorm rooms, a modest kitchen opening onto a shady courtyard, and a brand new wooden arbor where I sit to write and eat. I share the room with two German cyclists on a two-year journey, and a Polish hiker just back from the peaks, heading toward Uzbekistan. First European faces I’ve seen since I set out—apart from a few touristic days in Samarkand. The names are gone, but their faces still linger in the corners of my mind.

Each person tells a sliver of their story, just for an evening, before the road pulls us apart as if we had never met. Encounters on the road are fleeting, but often leave a lasting mark. And truth be told, there’s something comforting about finding, for the first time, the familiar presence of people who share some of your landmarks—and a common language.

I head into the Fann Mountains for a week of solo trekking. The route is set, looping through shepherd villages and the few marked refuges on the map. I read somewhere that trekking is just beginning to take off in the region. Still, not a soul in sight as I wind my way higher to the summits.

As always in the mountains, vegetation thins as cold creeps in and the wind picks up. What is more unsettling? The dense forest you couldn’t escape if you got lost, or the vast, bare stone where distances vanish? I somehow always think of wolves, bears, snow leopards. Of all that wild nature I so rarely come close to. But the real danger lies elsewhere: a fall, a twisted ankle, a lack of breath… and suddenly, one is gone. It is a strange mix of peace and unease. Ears alert to every sound. Eyes sometimes misting at the shifting beautyof it all.

One evening, on the way back, by a lake, a knock on my tent. A man stands before me, ageless —long black beard, sharp gaze, sly smile, turban on his head and a staff in hand. Before long, he invites me to share tea with his group. Saïd and the others aren’t from Tadjikistan, but somewhere between India and Pakistan. I can hardly understand how they ended up here, or why. The conversation, scattered, soon gives way to silence, and we drink our tea quietly, not out of awkwardness, but as if the silence itself were the only language we all understood.

In the morning, I find, curled in the sun at the foot of my tent, a massive sheepdog, still as a stone. He doesn’t stir when I light the stove to boil water. And soon a stream of indifferent sheep appears, heading toward the valley pastures, unconcerned as they break the morning quiet with each of their steps. Further down, at a bend in the track, I pass a long line of donkeys climbing uphill, their backs bowing under sacks of rice. They move slowly, hooves slipping between the stones, one eye always on the herdsman behind them, his whip in hand.

One last night in a mountain shelter before a long journey back down to the plains, then the capital. In the common room, a group of Tadjiks—probably in from a nearby town for the weekend—celebrates noisily. From my room upstairs, their voices float in and out, as my mind slips away. I think for a moment of the days just passed, and the strange way faces appear along our path—at times and in places we never quite understand.

This land has a kind of fractured beauty, like a broken face that wears its dignity with a force that will forever haunt you. I want to return—but when? It feels as if these remote roads, these deserts of ice and stone, are holding another part of my life.

To be continued…