Nurek Introduction

Nurek is in Tadjikistan, Central Asia, some 70 km from Dushanbe, capital city of Tajikistan. Nurek is a town with about 40000 population is surrounded by mountains and is famous with a hydropower station build there during Soviets. The dam of the station is of the highest in the world (300m)... Vakhsh river divides the city into to parts... Nurek is a nice place to visit for couple days... there are nice restaurants and very friendly and nice people... taxi to Nurek from Dushanbe would cost you about .

Nurek Weather

Lowland Tajikistan veers between extrememly hot summers with July days of 42°C (108°F) and extremely chilly winters with an average minimum of -12°C (10°F) in January. From October through May, fierce snowstorms rage in the mountains and the temperature can drop to a demolishing -45°C (-49°F), making getting around almost impossible. On the plains, strong duststorms can be expected from June through October.

Nurek Attractions

Nurek Dam: a large hydro-electric power station that gives electricity to all of Tajikistan. Due to this, the town is very active and without electricity problems

Nurek History

Historically, after the breakup of the Indo-European family, the Aryan branch subdivided so that the Medes and the Pars migrated to the Iranian plateau where they created the Median and Persian Empires respectively; the Sughd and the Hind migrated to the Aral Sea region. Subsequently, the Hind migrated southeast and occupied the northwestern regions of the Indian subcontinent.

Early history:

Much, if not all, of what is today Tajikistan was part of ancient Persia's Achaemenid Empire (sixth to fourth centuries B.C.), which was subdued by Alexander the Great in the fourth century B.C. and then became part of the Greco-Bactrian kingdom, one of the successor states to Alexander's empire.

The northern part of what is now Tajikistan was part of Soghdiana, a distinct region that intermittently existed as a combination of separate oasis states and sometimes was subject to other states. Sughdiana, settled between 1,000 and 500 BC by Iranian tribes, passed into the hands of the Achaemenians who lost it to Alexander the Great in the 4th century BC.Two important cities in what is now northern Tajikistan, Khujand (formerly Leninobod; Russian spelling Leninabad) and Panjakent, as well as Bukhoro (Bukhara) and Samarqand (Samarkand) in contemporary Uzbekistan, were Soghdian in antiquity. As intermediaries on the Silk Route between China and markets to the west and south, the Soghdians imparted religions such as Buddhism, Nestorian Christianity, Zoroastrianism, and Manichaeism , as well as their own alphabet and other knowledge, to peoples along the trade routes.

The Arabs conquered Sughdiana in the early 600s. Under Muslim rule, especially with Samanid support, Sughdiana grew to encompass Maymurgh, Qabodian, Kushaniyya, Bukhara, Kish, Nasaf, Samarqand, and Panjekent, each a virtual kingdom .