A Market in Chudshand, Tajikistan

First I will admit that I had never heard of Chudshand, Tajikistan even though I am fairly competent with geography!  After a night rocking and rolling on our 22 inch wide train beds we added a new country to our count!  And started the day at one of my favorite parts of any city!  The Market!!! I love markets, especially authentic non-tourist ones.  This one definitely qualified! 

It was obvious that this is where the locals shop.   

To be totally honest not a lot of tourists come to Chudshand so we were the only non-locals there.  And yep, we stood out like sore thumbs but the people seemed to love posing for us! 

I bought some delicious bananas from this very nice lady. 

I didn't buy any of this...whatever it is!  Cream cheese, butter, goat cheese......I never figured it out.  Maybe I should have used my finger to take a taste, although that would have messed up their very precise design!!!! 

I thought about buying a piece of cake!

Or maybe I should buy one of these ever so popular brooms! 

Love the photo of this interesting saleswoman! 

Not so thrilled with the meat section.

Again I don't know exactly what all this is, but then I don't think I want to know and I certainly don't want to eat any of it! 

As I was surreptitiously snapping away in the butcher department, I heard a cry of "English, English" and looked up to see this guy posing for me.  This may be one of my favorite photos of the trip!

The many, many candy stands could explain the gold teeth on lots of older adults in this part of the world. 

 Our guides told us that older people just consider it very beautiful to have a mouthful of gold and they work towards getting enough money to get gold crowns.   

This enterprising woman was the mobile bag saleswoman! 

And George found the dairy department.  Any available bottle can become the 'milk bottle' even a coke bottle!
 Interesting morning exploring this authentic taste of life in Tajikistan.