Gateway to the Pamirs — the world's quietest capital with the wildest mountains behind it
Dushanbe is the world's most underrated Central Asian capital: wide Soviet-era boulevards lined with apricot trees, a world-class tea house, the Barakat bazaar packed with dried fruits and spices, and the trailhead for the Pamir Highway — the second-highest road on earth. The food is remarkable: kurutob (torn bread in a yogurt-walnut sauce), plov with Fergana-style carrots, and samosas fresh from clay tanur ovens.
Dushanbe means 'Monday' in Persian — it was a weekly Monday market village until the Soviets made it capital of the Tajik Soviet Socialist Republic in 1929 and built wide Stalinist avenues around it. After independence in 1991 and a brutal civil war through the 1990s, Dushanbe has quietly rebuilt into a surprisingly cosmopolitan city and the natural base for Pamir Highway expeditions, one of the world's great overland routes.