Tajikistan is not the easiest place to reach. After a couple of false starts, including a not very sensible plan to go overland through Afghanistan, I finally find a flight from Kabul on an ancient Russian turboprop. The cabin reeks and my seat sags as I sit down but I soon forget all this, staring out of the window as the snow cones of the Hindu Kush give way to an eerie desert reminiscent of Mars. In a couple of hours, I will be in Dushanbe.
In the capital, leafy boulevards and trundling trolleybuses wend their way past down-at-heel apartment blocks and the colonnaded headquarters of departed communists. Women in tight jeans and high-heeled boots stride the streets confidently, but in my hotel the tap water is brown. The dusty bleakness of Kabul still fresh in my mind, I feel as if I am in some forgotten and none too prosperous corner of Europe.
Once straddling the Silk Road, Tajikistan was left high and dry by the break-up of the Soviet Union, stranded among Afghanistan, China, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. More than 90 per cent of the country is mountainous and ruggedly beautiful but plagued by avalanches and landslides. Add to that a national airline that the locals will tell you - not without a hint of perverse pride - is the worst in the world, and it takes determination to get here.
Documenting cultural-preservation projects sponsored by the US government in Central and South Asia, I am determined. I have already visited Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Pakistan and Afghanistan, flying in long, frustrating loops to cover what was once the world's superhighway. In each country, expert custodians guided me round dazzling cultural treasures set in surreal landscapes then charmed me over boozy, carnivorous feasts. Tajikistan is my last stab at the Silk Road and I don't want to miss it.
A few hours into my visit I am at the State Antiquities Museum photographing a seventh-century, 14-metre clay Buddha. Since the Taleban's destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas it has been the largest such statue in Central Asia. As the reclining guru slips serenely into Nirvana he seems to mock my need to fit Tajikistan into any neat category. The rest of the museum's exquisite collection proves the point. There are delicate Hellenistic ivory carvings from the Bactrian period and a Hindu statue from the Sogdian city of Panjikent. The Persians, Greeks, Macedonians, Chinese, Indians and, finally, Russians have all put their two cents' worth into Tajik culture.
Over dinner, my embassy contact, Abdul Malik, tells me about his country. We are sitting in what is loosely known as a tea house, scoffing borscht, salad, chicken shashlik and beer. Downstairs, a wedding party is growing raucous.