today i went to pendzhikent for a day trip. pendzhikent is not far from here, but its in tajikistan, probably the most troubled of the central asia c.i.s. republics. after independence, while the others quickly developed various authoritative regimes, tajikistan broke into civil war. the war was settled by an uneasy truce. all of the former factions are currently in the coalition government, pairing mujihadin with secularists in one dysfunctional government.
i read in my guide book that it was possible to go to pendzhikent for the day from samarkand and i was too intrigued to pass it up. the book said that if you use a tourist agency, you don't need to get a formal visa, the agency can arrange a one day visa on the border. yesterday i signed up and today i went.
the mini-bus dropped me off at the edge of the frontier and i had to walk across no-man’s-land into tajikistan. my tajik tour guide met me in no-man’s-land and we stood there, surrounded by heavily armed border guards arguing over the price. he was not willing to budge much. after all, he knew he had me, i was already standing there on the border. what else could i do at that point. the lowest i could get him to go was $40 with no lunch. he asked for the money on the spot and my passport. i handed them to him and he disappeared into the tajik immigration office. he came out two minutes later, tossed my passport at me and led me to a car. as we drove away i flipped through my passport to get a glimpse of the new visa. there was none. the only new stamp was the exit stamp from uzbekistan. he had bribed the guard to let me in. i was an illegal alien.
rather than dodging the i.n.s. or working in some sweatshop, i spent my hours as an illegal touring sogdian ruins in the shadow of the turkistan and zarafshan mountain ranges. tajikistan is really a beautiful country. the ruins were recently excavated and pristine. you could still see the charred wood from when the arab invaders leveled and burned pendzhikent 12 centuries ago.
over lunch (yes, i bargained it away to get to $40 but he gave it to me anyway) i asked my guide whether there were any troubles in pendzhikent during the civil war and he said that area was pretty quiet. the big problem was the economic damage that was caused when the uzbek government closed the border.
i was ferried back across the border by 2:00 p.m. after one more night in samarkand i am going to make my way to the fergana valley tomorrow.
