Tajikistan - Nuts and Bolts

Electricity is 220V/50Hz of the two-pin European type. The language is officially Tajik, written in the Arabic script, Uzbek, and about a third of the people speak Russian. The moola is the Tajik ruble (100 kopeks to the ruble and about 400 rubles to the U.S. dollar). You can leave home without your American Express because Tajikistan is a cash-only economy. International banking services are not available and if there was a decent bank it would be knocked off within five minutes of opening. The phones are funky (the country code is 7 and Dushanbe is 3772) and the general infrastructure non-existent outside the major cities. The Tajik ruble is good for toilet paper, blowing your nose or souvenirs when you leave the country. The average income of Tajiks is around $2.50 a month so they don't see any rubles or dollars.

Since most of Tajikistan is above 3,000 meters, Tajikistan is frigid in the winter and hot and arid in the summer. The best times for masochists to visit would be between October and May to experience the blizzards or between June and October to be sandblasted in the heat by the dust storms. Well at least there's a breeze. March and May bring the most rain, the heat in June to August will fuse your Airwalks to the pavement with temperatures reaching well over 100oF. Only 7 percent of the land is arable and the rest is comprised of alpine hidey-holes for gun-toting mountain folk. For what it matters, American soap operas and trash TV are big during those long winter nights. Number one is Santa Barbara, a show with a plot about as convoluted and strange as the political situation in Tajikistan. The hotels usually don't serve food. You can stay in funky dachas or the upscale (for Tajikistan) tourist hotels along with the embassy staff and pilots. The only other major town is Khorog where you can risk your life to see the town's one tourist attraction: a bunch of faded, badly stuffed animals and a collection of Lenin photos.

Tajikistan is dangerous, mountainous, earthquake-prone and an ideal place to start DP's pick for the new Central Asian extreme sport: Helicopter gunship skiing, where contestants try to ski past machine-gunning Russian border guards and Hind-D gunships carrying five keys of opium gum on their back. Too whacko? Well how about Yeti hunting?

Embassy Locations

The U.S. embassy in Dushanbe is providing only emergency consular services. The Canadian embassy is in Moscow and Almaty, Kazakstan. Tel.: [7} (3272) 50-11-51, FAX: 581-1493.

U.S. Embassy (Dushanbe)

Oktyabrskaya Hotel (October Hotel)

105A Pospekt Rudaki

Dushanbe, 734001, Tajikistan

Tel.: [7] (3712) 21-03-56, no fax

Russian Embassy (US)

Consular Division

1825 Phelps Plaza NW

Washington, DC. 20008

Tel.: (202) 939-8918

There are Russian consulates in New York, San Francisco and Seattle.

Russian Embassy (Canada)

285 Charlotte Street

Ottawa, Ontario K1M 8L8

Tel.: (613) 235-4341

Fax: (613) 236-6342

Web/E-mail Users

http://www.soros.org/tajik/tajkinte.html

The Embassy of the United States

irage@usis.td.silk.glas.apc.org

Tajikistan Update

www.angelfire.com/sd/tajikistanupdate/

Tajik Banks

http://www.soros.org/tajik/tajkbnks.html

Soros Foundation

http://www.soros.org/