The Tajikistani portion of the Ferghana Valley is in the extreme north of the country. The whole valley, both this part and the parts in other countries, is on the main route of the old Silk Road route between Kashgar and Samarkand. Tajikistan has the westernmost part, nearest Samarkand.

Cities

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

Other destinations

• 1 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.

Understand

The Ferghana Valley was the main route of the historic Silk Road between Kashgar and Samarkand. It is a relatively fertile, populous and prosperous area though much of the surrounding country is mountains, steppe or desert. The region has a long and tumultuous history. Alexander the Great took part of it in the 4th century BCE and a Graeco-Bactrian kingdom ruled the area for a few centuries after that; the Syr Darya, then known as the Jaxartes, was the northern border of their territory. Alexander founded Alexandria Eschate (furthest Alexandria) in the region to protect his border; the city still exists as Khujand.

For much of its history, the region was part of various Persian Empires. Genghis Khan conquered it in the 13th century and his descendant Tamerlane ruled an empire that included it in the late 14th. Babur — who founded the Mughal dynasty that ruled much of the Indian subcontinent for centuries — was the son of the valley's ruler, and a great-great grandson of Tamerlane. In the 19th and 20th centuries the region was part of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union.

Today the valley is split between Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.

Get in

Khujand airport has many flights from other cities in Tajikistan and from Russia.

See

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.

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Ferghana Valley