Dushanbe, the Tadjik capital, lies at the confluence of two rivers beneath the snow-capped Hissar mountain range. The word Dushanbe is derived from the Persian for ‘day 2’, which referred to Monday, the day the famous market takes place. Although now a busy city, it was little more than a village a century ago but it grew largely as a result of the arrival of the Red Army and later, in 1929, the railway. Dushanbe is a clean, green city with wide, tree-lined streets and pale, elegant buildings with plenty of cafés in which to enjoy tea and local sweets.

The blue-domed mosque, mausoleum and madrassah complex of Mawlana Yakubi Charki, a fifteenth century Sufi teacher, is an important religious monument and attracts many pilgrims to its lush gardens. The Museum of Archaeology holds what is now the largest surviving Buddha in Central Asia, a 14-meter statue that was found hidden in the basement of the Academy of Sciences.