Bradt Tajikistan Guidebook
Tajikistan travel guide. Travel tips and tourist information including Dushanbe highlights, hotels, restaurants, homestays, trekking and ancient sites. Also covers the Wakhan Corridor, Silk Road, Pamir Highway and Trail, Sarazm and the Tajik National Park UNESCO World Heritage Sites, Garm Chashma bathing springs, buzkashi, culture and Lake Sarez.
Size: 135 X 216 mm
Edition: 4
Number of pages: 264
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Bradt Tajikistan Guide
The latest edition of the most wide-ranging guide to Tajikistan.
About this guide to Tajikistan
This new, thoroughly updated fourth edition of Bradt’s Tajikistan remains the most practical and widest-ranging guide dedicated exclusively to Central Asia’s smallest country. Tajikistan offers travellers unforgettable experiences: epic mountain trekking routes, crystal-clear lakes, the world’s biggest teahouse and fabulous wildlife watching (think snow leopard and the extraordinary Marco Polo sheep) alongside ancient Buddhist sites, Silk Road trading posts, medieval shrines and planned Soviet cities.
Locals call Tajikistan Bam-i-Dunya (‘the roof of the world’), and travelling the world’s second-highest road, the Pamir Highway – or hiking the 1,310km-long Pamir Trail, which was completed in 2024 and features in this new edition – you can understand why. With peaks nearly as high as those in the Himalayas and a complex culture drawing its diverse heritage from Persia, China, Afghanistan and Russia, Tajikistan is the least familiar of the ’Stans and many areas remain untouched, making the country ideal for curious travellers keen to explore off the beaten path.
Bradt’s guidebook covers every corner of Tajikistan, from the Wakhan Valley to the Fann Mountains and Garm Chashma springs, Dushanbe to the UNESCO World Heritage sites of Sarazm and Tajik National Park. With first-hand descriptions of everything from Sogdian ruins to the traditional sport of buzkashi (polo with a livestock carcass), trekking on the Murghab Plateau and eating shashlik in garden tea houses, the writing team (Sophie Ibbotson – Central Asian expert, experienced travel writer and chair of the Royal Society for Asian Affairs – plus inveterate traveller and guidebook-updater Nancy Chuang) bring the country alive.
As well as the Pamir Trail, new elements of this edition reflect the recent investment in tourism by the Tajik government and multilateral development banks. The new women-led Gulzar Village cultural centre in Dushanbe is designed like a rural community where visitors can experience traditional crafts and foods. The Pamirs, meanwhile, now have 150 village homestays, further opening up the region for mountain-lovers. Whether you’re interested in culture, trekking, historical sites, nature, archaeology and architecture, seeing majestic mountainscapes or are fascinated by Silk Road heritage, and whether visiting independently or on an organised tour, Bradt’s Tajikistan is your ideal travel companion.
Contents
PART ONE GENERAL INFORMATION
1 Background Information
2Â Practical Information
PART TWO THE GUIDE
3 Dushanbe and environs
4 Fann and Zarafshon Mountains
5 Khujand and Northern Sughd
6 Khatlon
7 Karotegin (Rasht) Valley
8 West-Central Gorno-Badakhshan
9 Murgob Plateau
Appendices: Language; Glossary, Further information
Index
Index of Advertisers
About the author and updater
Sophie Ibbotson (maximumexposure.co) read Oriental Studies at Clare College, Cambridge, and has a particular interest in Central Asia, where she has worked since 2008 when her auto-rickshaw got snowed in en route from India to London. Overwintering unexpectedly, she fell in love with the region, living and working in the ‘Stans for the following five years – and returning several times a year since. She has developed the national tourism development strategy for the Kyrgyz Republic, has led numerous expeditions in the region and is an experienced travel writer whose six Bradt guides include three to Central Asia (Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Karakalpakstan), alongside writing for The Financial Times, Newsweek, The Economist and The Telegraph. Ibbotson founded Maximum Exposure Ltd (which provides tourism and culture consultancy, and PR services) and the travel journal Panorama, is a World Bank consultant and chairs the Royal Society for Asian Affairs.
Photographer, designer and artist Nancy Chuang (nancychuang.com) has travelled extensively around Latin America, Africa and Asia, including stopping for several years on the Thai–Myanmar border to run a social enterprise, creating handicrafts with migrant artisans. A lover of creaky old trains and travelling in the back of trucks, a seeker of high-reward low-effort mountain views, and a connoisseur of all manner of street foods (consumed on a stomach of steel), her fondest travel memories always involve the warmth and generosity of strangers. Having updated three Bradt guidebooks already (Ghana, Georgia and Sri Lanka), exploring Central Asia has been a long-held dream, and now Chuang is thrilled to encourage others to fall in love with Tajikistan as well, via updating Bradt’s guide to that former Soviet Republic.