The Bikepacker: Day 1 in Dushanbe

Against the odds, after a long day getting to Dushanbe and not great sleep, K1 and I both woke up at about 9:00. We're four hours ahead of the UK now, by the way.

Neither of us were hungry but we went to the hotel's breakfast room anyway. The food on display was largely unappealing. We're aiming to be careful with food and water and so anything washed in water is likely to be avoided. I don't eat meat in general but K1 is planning to avoid meat here too.

We both had a couple of small slices of bread. That's all we wanted anyway.

The general idea for today was to get various chores done so we could have tomorrow free to be tourists.

This included:

1. Get cash, which for me meant collect the Western Union transfer I'd initiated last week. We didn't know what it meant for K1 at this stage!

2. Get me a SIM card for the megafon network. Apparently this is best for the eastern Pamir region where we're headed.

3. Visit a supermarket and get some provisions for the road and for today.

4. Buy petrol for our stoves.

5. Check the bikes after yesterday's hasty reassembly outside the airport.

We started by focusing on cash. The Pamir is cash based. We don't expect to be able to use cards once we're on the road. So obtaining enough cash for our journey is critical.

K1's problems with Western Union continued. None of the cards he used to transfer money were accepted and no reason was given. K1 used his bank's system to send money to my bank account so I could try using my Western Union account. But I had the same problems. Evidently the issue was something to do with us being in Tajikistan. A quick Google search indicated that our scenario which involves initiating a transfer from a UK bank account whilst physically outside of the UK looks suspicious to Western Union so they reject the attempt with a vague message, presumably not wanting to give useful information to naughty hackers.

K1 requested help from Western Union support. They were useless.

This all took place at the hotel where we have WiFi. We gave up eventually and walked to a bank that the Western Union app indicated would be able to process my transfer and allow me to receive the money I'd sent myself from the UK.

It was an 8km walk and took about 30 minutes. It was already feeling pretty hot, apparently in the mid-thirties Celsius.

Walking allowed us to see part of the city. The streets in general. The construction work going on. Small tea shops and bakeries. A festival of Korean culture which included music and street food. An impressive theatre/opera house that was scheduled to host a K Pop concert! A cool, shady park with animal statues and other art in it. It was a good introduction to "real Dushanbe".

We entered the bank and by chance the young man I first approached spoke excellent English. Apparently he'd taken extra classes at school :-)

He listened to what I needed and walked me to another small bureau belonging to the bank via the street. He then stayed to help translate to the man working behind the glass. It all seemed to be going fine until I was asked to provide proof of the address I was staying at. I tried to show our booking.com reservation details on my phone but without access to the mobile network, couldn't easily. The clerk tried to set up a WiFi hotspot on his iPhone for me to use but it didn't work. The two bank staff really tried! But in the end, I couldn't satisfy the bank's rules which seemingly insist on some kind of printed statement that indicates the address of your hotel.

The helpful young man suggested a different bank that he thought didn't need the paper-based proof of address.

We left and I was feeling frustrated. Everything depended on being able to fund our journey. No cash, no trip.

We visited a supermarket close to the hotel and I bought oatmeal, stock cubes, sweets and coffee. I shall not starve. K1 paid using a card which here in modern Dushanbe is an option although we found the supermarket allowed Visa payment cards but didn't support MasterCard which is my preferred card when travelling.

Back at the hotel I found that the man currently working on reception spoke English! This was good news as it's not that common to find English speakers apparently. I explained what I needed and he was able to help. He created official looking letters on hotel paper for both K1 and myself indicating we were guests and stating the address.

K1 revisited his Western Union situation while we had WiFi but nothing has changed.

We looked for the other bank on a map and found it was only about 1 km away and so walked to it. Except that it didn't exist. It's shown on the map but nobody we asked knew for sure where it was. It may be a corporate office was on an upper floor rather than a retail branch outlet.

So that left one option. We walked all the way to the first bank again, me with my proof of address hoping to collect my Western Union transfer and K1 hoping to use an ATM with one of his cards.

I was successful! It's a big relief to have both local currency (Somoni) and some extra US dollars which can be useful and in particular might come in handy when we first cross into Kyrgyzstan.

K1 however was not. He'd forgotten his PIN and with no mobile internet access couldn't use his bank's system to find its value.

M1 decided to try one of his cards and was able to withdraw a maximum of 2000 Somoni which is roughly £200. This was handed straight to K1 who finally had some local currency!

After returning to the hotel, K1 sorted out his PIN and was able to obtain another 2000 Somoni from another ATM. And (drum roll) we went out again in the evening and got another 2000 each from yet another ATM. So K1 now has 8000 Somoni and is getting close to what we think is needed for six weeks on the Pamir Highway. We'll obtain the rest tomorrow.

This all took forever. We walked about 20 km, got very hot and sticky and there are still items on our To-do list. We'll have to get them done tomorrow.

This evening we're enjoying the air conditioning of our hotel room and eating salty snacks to make up for all the salts lost through sweating. I've been stricken with nasty cramping this afternoon probably because of dehydration and salt loss so that big bag of crisps is officially medicine :-)