Tajikistan: The Places Between the Places

Human trade and culture have traveled through Central Asia for thousands of years. Throughout antiquity, traders, treasures, and tragedies threaded their way through the mountains and across the seas of the region in successive waves, mixing traditions and beliefs from East to West and back again. The modern country of Tajikistan sits high along the northern crest of the Himalayas, and its peaks and valleys have witnessed the rise and fall of religions and empires, from Zoroastrianism and Buddhism to the Mongols and the Soviets. Around each mountain pass is a story, through each tunnel, a tale. It isn’t the cities and settlements of Tajikistan that hold the secrets of time, it’s the places between the places where the whispers shout loudest.

Dushanbe (DYU), Tajikistan’s capital city and principal air hub, is served thrice weekly from Istanbul by Turkish Airlines, with onward connections to the United States.