What a visitor's money does in Tajikistan: every guide rated from very cheap to very expensive, cheapest first, then the things that cost travellers money without buying anything — the ATM, the taxi, the SIM.
Tajikistani Somoni (TJS) · 1 EUR = 10.6 TJS · 1 USD = 9.2 TJS
Somoni. Banks and the exchange booths in Dushanbe change dollars and euros at a fair posted rate; in the Pamirs there is nowhere to change and nowhere to withdraw. Take the whole trip’s cash from Dushanbe, in small notes.
Avoid: most machines outside Dushanbe, which refuse foreign cards
Use: Amonatbank, Orienbank, Eskhata
Beyond Khorog there is one machine that may be empty. Cash from Dushanbe for the whole trip, in small notes, and a second card.
A short ride in Pamir Highway: 10–25 somoni across town — very cheap
From the airport: From the airport to the centre 30–50 somoni on the app; the kerb asks for dollars
Cheaper, and it removes the argument. Outside the capital there is no app and the shared 4x4 is the taxi.
Qurutob — bread soaked in yoghurt sauce with onion and herbs — is the national dish and eaten by hand from a shared board. Plov, shashlik and osh in the chaikhanas; the bazaars for dried mulberries and the flat bread. A meal is 40 somoni.
Homestays feed you: bread, tea, potatoes, rice, apricots dried on the roofs, and yak in the high villages. Take snacks for the road — the distances between villages are hours. Water from the springs, filtered.
The cost rating is this site's own, for a visitor, from the guides' authors and the corrections readers send in. The general rules — the conversion prompt, shoulder season, the airport taxi — are in budget travel tips.
Pamir HighwayTajikistanThe second-highest road in the world, along the Afghan border and over a 4,655-metre pass, from Khorog to Murghab in a 4x4 that stops at every homestay
DushanbeTajikistanA tree-lined capital with the tallest flagpole in Asia, a bazaar under a green dome, and the mountains that make up ninety per cent of the country an hour away