I should have been in Tajikistan
This spring I have travelled exclusively a) to Stockholm b) within the USA (Washington*2, New Mexico/Texas, Indianapolis, Los Angeles – Denver on Friday).
The unique exception of a trip to another country is Mexico – where I’ve been twice, but only a couple of hours per visit…in a bordertown. So it hardly counts.
As you all know, I want to do _fieldwork_ and not sit in New York all the time.
What a luxury problem.
Well, luckily, New York is a constant around-the-world-trip in itself – and I have friends who travel and fill me in with little reports from where they are, not to mention friends who _live_ in places such as Rio de Janeiro, Ulaanbaatar, Paris, Shanghai, and Höör.
I just had an e-mail from my friend N, who is making a quick stop in Almaty/Kazakhstan on her way to Dusjanbe/Tajikistan. Here are her first impressions of Almaty:
“it is very funny here, from what i can tell in my jetlagged haze from just the walk over. russia
meets china meets the alps or something. the chinese influence is much more than
i expected, esp. the people! they all look chinese, ethnically speaking. guess
what, all the beggars are from tajikistan—that is the only way most kazakhs
know about tajiks. anyway, i am on my way to dushanbe in about ten
hours….about to mail my parents and then do some sightseeing (not sure what
there is to see, but hope to see it). it really reminds me, aesthetically (the
shops, street layout etc.) of kosovo, not surprisingly. not quite as ‘third
world’ as i had been lead to believe. (at least not compared to places like
india or indonesia).”
You may not think it’s exciting with Central Asian cities looking like they were in Kosovo…but I do! And I look forward to more reports from N. She will be in Tajikistan over the summer.
I was once invited to come hang out with her – but she realized, probably wisely, that it may not be a good idea to have a nosey journalist around.
But she will do PhD fieldwork and research in Tajikistan for years to come, so she can’t stop me from coming in the future! 
/Gunilla
