Khujand.Хуҷанд

See also in Google Earth

I will start by quoting an email my friend Michael sent me:

You are...bound for the northernmost Persian-speaking metropolis in the world. You also can now drop things in conversation like, "Yeah, I was living in a city near the crossroads of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan. You know, the four squiggly corners."

Stats:

• Latitude: 40 deg 17' (compare to New Haven, 41 deg 18'; closer to Pittsburg, 40 deg 28')
• Elevation: 1,000 ft
• Population: 165,000 
• The city formerly known as Leninabad (along with many others in the former USSR). 
• Home to the tallest statue of Lenin in Central Asia (removed last year from his place of honor and relegated to a lower pedestal away from Lenin St; in his place is a large statue of Ismoil Somoni).
• Ancient history: Alexander the Great established a base here in 329 BCE. In the local museum there is a room filled entirely with Grecian-style mosaics telling Alexander's life story.
• Geography: at the mouth of the Fergana Valley, which extends north into Uzbekistan. 
• Capital of Sughd region of the country. Sughd is the most fertile and prosperous part of the country. The biggest crop is cotton, which is all picked by hand. People are beginning the 'cotton campaign' now to pick it; that usually includes students being yanked from classes for several weeks-two months to take part.
• Travel from Dushanbe: about a 6-hour drive through a Tunnel of Death and then the Shahristan Pass (ie Pass of Death). A new tunnel (built by a Chinese company) is due to be completed at the end of this month (a year late). It should make the drive about 5 hours. There are also daily flights, which is the safer option in the winter when the roads are bad.
• My home for the next ten months. I live near the center of town so we can walk almost anywhere we need to go. Outside our window we have walnut and sycamore-like trees blowing in the wind, as well as some cedars.