Dushanbe and Kaltuch

Today we started the day by visiting the main Dushanbe market. The old outdoor Green Market has been closed about 7 years ago, and instead, a clean big indoor market has been built - in my view, taking away the magic authenticity of the central Asian bazar. We then spent a couple of hours asking old people in the market and the streets about the “communal apartment building of the shoe factory”, which is the only “address” that I remember from when we lived in Dushanbe in early 1980s. We didn’t find the exact building, but got somewhat close to the general area, before giving up the search. We then hired a car with the driver that took us to Kaltuch - the nearby village with the sanatorium where we lived for a year in 1979. It was a very fruitful trip - we saw the sanatorium, which is still functional, albeit extremely rundown, and I remembered many spots both from my memory and from the old photos I had. A very powerful and meaningful experience!Read more