Ferghana Valley (Tajikistan)

• 🌍 Isfara — one of the most prosperous and beautiful cities of the region, in the basin of the colorful mountain ranges of Turkestan
• 🌍 Istaravshan — one of central Asia's oldest towns of commerce and crafts, dating back to 500 BCE
• 🌍 Khujand — a hub for tourists heading to the Zeravshan valley, Dushanbe or Uzbekistan, with a variety of sights in the city
• 🌍 Konibodom — the third largest city in the region

• 🌍 Kayrakkum Reservoir (Обанбори Қайроққум, also called "the Tajik Sea") is an artificial lake 15 km east of Khujand. It is 56 km long, 15 km wide, and 25 m deep.

The Ferghana Valley sits on one of the two main branches of the historic Silk Route (the other traverses the Pamirs and the Tajik-Afghan border). Major important cities along the route such as Khujand (Tajikistan), Kokand (Uzbekistan), and Osh (Kyrgyzstan) popped up at strategic points to tax and control this vital trade route.

The earliest peoples in the valley in recorded history were Persian-speaking peoples and other, related Indo-Iranians like the Scythians (Saka). The fortress-city of Cyropolis was one of the Achaemenid Empire's regional capitals, and it was because of this that Alexander the Great conquered the valley's mouth in the 4th century BCE, founding the city of Alexandria Eschate. Also during the Achaemenid period, rebellious Greeks from the problematic Ionian provinces were resettled. In the aftermath of Alexander's empire, a Greco-Bactrian kingdom ruled up to the Syr Darya (the historic Jaxartes).

After the Greco-Bactrian kingdoms fell, the valley alternated between being part of more "formal" Persian empires and retaining relative autonomy as a collection of Sogdian city states. In the 13th century the valley was conquered by the rapidly-expanding Mongols under Chinggis Khan, and Turkic peoples (specifically Uzbeks and Kyrgyz) began migrating into the region and settling. Tamerlane (Timur) ruled over the valley as part of his greater Timurid state in the 14th century, but with his death the valley fragmented into local khanates. Babur, the founder of South Asia's Mughal dynasty, was the son of the ruler of Andijan (now Uzbekistan), and he swept through the region on his way south.

From 1709-1876, most of the valley was included in the Khanate of Kokand, before its annexation by the Russian Empire. In 1916, the Basmachi Revolt started in Kokand before quickly spreading throughout Russian Turkestan (now all of Central Asia) - originally an anti-Tsarist colonial uprising, it quickly became anti-Soviet, before its brutal suppression in 1934. As "punishment" for the revolt, the valley was divided into three (originally two) separate Soviet Socialist Republics (SSRs), which worked fine until they all became independent nations in the 1990s. Today, the valley is as ethnically diverse as ever, but hard borders create major headaches for both residents and travelers. Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan even went to war in 2021 over a border dispute in the valley.

It is pretty easy to get around the Tajik portion of the valley. Marshrutkas go to every major village from Khujand, and shared taxis will gladly take you anywhere if the price is right. Your best bet to pick either up is to go to one of the stations in Khujand (Avtovokzal, Avtostantsiya, or Abreshim), or call a taxi company.

Maxim Taxi is a local (Khujand and surroundings) taxi company that has its own app à la Uber or Yandex that you can use to get between Khujand and most of the surrounding villages.

20 km south of Isfara, in the village of Chorku, the Hazrati Shoh Mausoleum is carved from wood, partly dating back to the 8th century, a structure that is unique in Central Asia.

The Mug-Teppa settlement in Istaravshan is a unique monument of the Achaemenid period with a peculiar architectural and material culture from the 12th-4th centuries BCE. 

The Kayrakkum Reservoir has been identified as an Important Bird Area (IBA) by BirdLife International because it supports various bird species, either as residents, or as overwintering, breeding or passage migrants. These include mallards, pygmy cormorants, saker falcons, cinereous vultures, great bustards, houbara bustards, common cranes, pale-backed pigeons, pallid scops-owls, Egyptian nightjars, European rollers, white-winged woodpeckers, great tits, desert larks, streaked scrub-warblers, Sykes's warblers, Asian desert warblers, saxaul sparrows and desert finches.

The Ferghana valley is an incredibly safe part of Tajikistan in terms of crime. The greater dangers come from the weather and from border disputes.

The fighting between Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan has died down, but the border is still in dispute. Part of the road between Khujand and Isfara/Konibodom is the disputed border (especially the area south of Khistevarz). The road is perfectly safe itself (aside from major potholes), but refrain from stopping on the road for any reason other than a true emergency.

The Tajik portion of the valley is mostly high desert. It can quickly get very dusty if the winds pick up, and it is usually very sunny. Take precautions to avoid heat- and sunstroke; drink plenty of water and know your limits. In the winter some of the cities can become rather smoggy, as many people still burn coal for fuel and heating.