Feel a bit cheated spending all morning to get here but at least it didn't cost a lot of money and the local Tajiks are very happy to see foreign tourists visit - not that many will actually pass the border crossing from the guard's astonishment to see one.

So I did this from Samarkand which is only 1h by car. Get to the local minibus station called Kaftarxona and you'll find a bus leaving very soon, most people just going to the east of the country not actually to the border. It only costs $2 and don't let the driver fool you it's expensive. You can then walk across the border, usually it's fast, and after 10 minutes you can find a taxi at the Tajikistan side. It should be max $10 to drive you to the site and wait to drive you back. It's too far to walk. On your way back you'll get through the customs again, find a minibus going to Samarkand (may also go to Registan if you are lucky) and the entire thing could be done in 4 hours.

Main reason I say this is because the site is very small and there's not much to see. The dig sites give an impression how the building interiors looked before, take a picture and move on - there's a museum at the end which set me back $3 (lady took Uzbek money) and you see some shards and tools. Overall this isn't impressive and one has to keep in mind that the society was somehow ahead of it's time or something but you don't really feel that from the small displays. I wonder if lots of stuff is not shown. There are also not enough info panels to give a better impression so I'll have to go away disappointed and this all felt like a "country hack" to get Tajikistan on my seen list plus another site of course too. I guess I'm happy not to do this from Dushanbe in the future.