#134: Dushanbe

It was the my first time in Dushanbe and felt like it was between my hometown of Osh and Bishkek, which is my home now. Because I was there on a short work-related trip, I did not have much time to see the town. Here is my story of the trip in pictures:

This is the view from a plane flying over Kyrgyz (Alatoo) and Tajik (Pamir) mountains.
As we approached the city, we made a big circle above it and I got some understanding of how Dushanbe looked like.
Because of the 1-hour time difference, I woke up at 6 am to this view from my hotel room. Unfortunately, I did not ask the people of the name of this mosque.
I was also very surprised to see banana palms. Apparently, the warm season was long enough for bananas to blossom, but too short for them to reap.
I took a sneak picture of what Tajiks claim to be the biggest sleeping Buddha in the world.
It is 13 meters long. It is probably of the same origin as the Bamiyan Buddhas, destroyed in 2005 by the Taleban in Afghanistan.
Apart from this, I did not see much. Dushanbe is another Soviet city in Central Asia, although their sidewalks on the main Rudaki Street were wide. Plus, they banned all marshrutkas (chaotic system of vans imitating public transportation) from Rudaki. I also bought an Afghan hat, which you can see on my profile picture.

Although people in former-Soviet Union and abroad always laugh at the Tajik Air, as you can see from cartoonist Ted Rall's depiction below, I did not have a bad experience with it. On the way back, I flew a faster Kyrgyz carrier.
On the road back from the airport to Bishkek, I saw this sign. Just thought that I would share it with you. Just an off-the-topic picture.