It is not unusual for Tajikistan to have a hot weather in this period of a year, especially in such places as Dushanbe. In my review of Tajikistan travel blogs I should have mentioned one of the things that all the visitors are complaining about, it is a high air temperature. Rahmon, our new contributor in Russian language Tajikistan blog is giving a comprehensive description of the situation in Dushanbe, which is experiencing an extremely hot weather.

In the capital of overwhelmingly sunny Tajikistan the stem of thermometer is showing 45-47 ºC above zero, and it is the temperature in the shadow. In the open space where you have no protection from sun, you will simply be cooked, get a sunstroke or sting, fall fainted etc, because the temperature in the open space reaches +50 – 54 ºC.

Rahmon is reporting that the local meteorologists never report the exact temperature. He is assuming that they are doing it on purpose so not to make the population panic. If it is so, then they forgot that the population can buy thermometers in the nearest markets. The meteorologists in the entire world not always have the correct forecasting. That is a normal thing. Once I even heard that the Metrological Service in London, or somewhere in England received an award something like “The biggest liars”. Taking into consideration that Tajikistan is one of the poorest countries and the equipment that our meteorologists have, which was inherited from Soviet era, is very old now and does not allow them to make the correct forecasting. I don’t think that our meteorologists are doing it on purpose, the main reason for wrong forecasting is the old equipment.

The air temperature at around 9 a.m. reaches 38 ºC . The Hydrometeorological Agency denies that fact. According to the agency, everything is fine in and no reason to panic because the air temperature does exceed +36 ºC. People, mostly the old people and “meteosensitive” people get from the streets to the hospitals with microinfarct or sunstroke, and the meteorologists are still claiming that everything is fine and no reason to worry.

In this period of a year in Dushanbe it is better not to go outside and stay at home with good air-conditioning. Anyway, you can not stay at home all the time, you always need to go somewhere. The main public transportation in the post-Soviet countries is marshrutka (mini-bus). People who visited the post-Soviet countries, especially those in Central Asia, know that type of transportation and I bet they are not happy about that. Rahmon is telling us how hard to travel by this type of transportation in this period.

You are intensely perspiring in marshrutka when you try to go from one point of the city to the other. When you get to the arrival point, you crawl out of marshrutka (there is no other word to use in this situation) and you fill yourself as a pressed lemon (not that fresh), wet and wrinkled, with treaded down feet. You get to workplace, hardly moving you feet, and the sun is cooks you and makes you as an ash in the chargrill.

Usually, water is the only life-saver in the hot countries. Tajikistan is the richest country in Cetral Asia in terms of fresh water but the capital of the country suffers of lack of clean and fresh water. It is the main problem that can not be solved for many years. The old water supply system had no repairs after the collapse of Soviet empire. The water is muddy, and I remember the last time I was visiting my aunt in Dushanbe, she had a special bucket for the mud which comes with water out of the faucet and fills the bath-tube. My aunt used another small scoop to take the mud out of the bath-tube and put it into the bucket and take it out. I was there for a week and never tried to have a shower. The water was the main reason of typhoid which resulted in death of many people in Dushanbe in the previous years. During the Civil War a lot of people were killed and thrown into the Varzob water reservoir which supplies almost the whole city.

The water in the capital of Tajikistan which comes to the apartments from the Varzob water reservoir looks more like a coffee with milk mixed with sand and microorganisms. The reason is that the water supply system is still not fixed. The spent millions of dollars did not help. Even this muddy water comes only in the morning and in the evening for a couple of hours.

Dushanbe is not the hottest area in Tajikistan. There are places where the weather gets hotter for several degrees higher but the situation becomes worse in the city because of the water. Therefore I think, if the water supply system is not fixed there is no reason to live in that city for a long time.