The Ayni-Penjikent road along the Zerafshan river is a fantastically scenic route. After another three to four hour drive, interrupted at some point by a traffic police officer soliciting “choypuli”, we arrived in Penjikent.

The town has certainly changed since the 1990s. It looks more abandoned now. Driving along the major street that used to be “Lenin Street” and was later renamed to “Rudaki” we do not see many passersby.

“There are not many people left in Penjikent,” said Maysara Holikova, teacher in a secondary school. “Most men are working in Russia. Younger boys study in Dushanbe and Khujand. Some women are also in Russia”.

Although the town was not involved in the civil war, it was hardly hit by its effects. Local plants and factories were closed; schools and hospitals were abandoned by highly skilled employees who left the country for Russia. Being geographically and economically closer to the Uzbek town of Samarkand than to any significant Tajik town, Penjikent was most hardly affected bythe Uzbek authorities’ decision to close and mine the border and introduce visa regime.

“It is a dead place,” said Anvar, taxi driver. “There are no jobs for most people. Factories do not work. There is the Taror Gold Plant and some activity in the tobacco plant. Nothing else”.

Taror Gold Plant is one of the rare enterprises in Tajikistan that has managed to attract foreign investment in the 1990s. Since 1997 when the plant was opened, local staff could earn 100 to 200 US dollars a month here. Many residents of the Penjikent district depend on the plant in terms of income. The bad news is that the volume of gold produced in Taror has been reducing over the last years. There are rumors now that the South-African company owning the plant will soon have to close down the production.

“The town is so isolated that even most relief organizations don’t want to come here,” said Rajab, employee of the NGO Save the Children. “Some international organizations visit the place from time to time, do some work and then disappear. There is no consistency in their relief efforts in the district”.

The hope for Penjikent has recently come – as not so far in the past – from Russia. Russia’s world class energy company RAO EES announced it will build three medium-size hydropower plants in the Zerafshan valley. While the project is still far from implementation, RAO EES’s energetic construction of Sangtuda-1 hydropower plant makes many people feel optimistic about the prospects of power plants on the Zerafshan.

Despite severe economic and social hardships, Penjikent is certainly a place with tremendous development potential. Experts suggest that tourism could become the major source of revenues for the town. Penjikent has much to offer foreign tourists.

Penjikent is one of the most ancient towns in Central Asia. On a high, valley terrace, 1,5 km from the modern town are the ruins of ancient Penjikent or Bunjikath, a major Sogdian town founded in the 5th century and destroyed by Arabs in the 8th century. The foundations of houses, a citadel with a couple of Zoroastrian temples, and the city bazaar are still visible in the excavated ruins. But the best of the frescoes (some of them 15 meters long), sculptures, pottery and manuscripts have been taken off to the Tashkent History Museum and St Petersburg’s Hermitage.

On the other side of the town are the ruins of Sarazm, a town of the Bronze Age. Besides, Penjikent is a birthplace of Rudaki, the founder of Persian poetry. Rudaki’s mausoleum is an interesting piece of modern Central Asian architecture.

“Tourism could have a great impact on Penjikent,” said Ali Odinaev, manager in a small tourist company. “We just need to build better roads and a hotel and advertise the place. People would come to see Bunjikath, Sarazm, Rudaki’s mausoleum and the Seven Lakes”