Taking the waters: how to kick back at a Soviet-era health spa in Tajikistan

The drive from Dushanbe, the Tajik capital, is tear-inducingly spectacular. The road slices through dramatic mountain scenery on either side, blighted only by the garish dachas that are dotted along the way, showpieces for Dushanbe’s well-heeled. Most conspicuous is the palatial dacha-complex that belongs to President Emomali Rahmon, which runs along the side of the road in Varzob in plain view both of the drivers zipping past and the shepherds tending their flocks. Located on a rock fault, Khoja Obi Garm, a little further up from Varzob, is known for its curative, radon-filled waters, which draw visitors from across Tajikistan looking for respite and relaxation. For the equivalent of £13 a night, guests receive full room and board as well as use of the resort’s facilities. It’s more Butlins than Champneys but in a country where, according to the ILO, the average wage in 2012 was $2,700 a year, £13 is not an insignificant sum.

Once settled into my room, which unlike the rest of the sanatorium had undergone a recent makeover, I headed straight to the doctor for a therapeutic programme tailored to my needs. A man in a white coat and a fez-shaped hat proceeded to do a routine check-up. “Do you have a husband?” he asked while taking my blood pressure, in what I assumed was idle chitchat. After a week in Tajikistan I had grown accustomed to this question, which was among the top three asked even before clearly insignificant details such as my name. When I replied that I was single this was usually followed by a look of pity; when I revealed my age, pity would turn to horror, occasionally accompanied by the statement that most Tajik women were married by the age of 20.

The question of leisure preoccupied Soviet thinkers, who considered it as important in shaping Homo Sovieticus as work. Free time and work were not separate but interrelated, with the former viewed as purposeful, the ultimate aim being to increase productivity. The spirit of this annual sojourn was pithily captured in 1966 by S Antonov, a metal fitter and model of socialist labour, who told a newspaper: “I receive my vacation once a year and I try not to waste a single day of it in idleness.”

Building on, but in theory democratising, the legacy of the Russian aristocrats who would take the air at alpine resorts in Switzerland or France or the waters in Crimea, Soviet workers were sent to sanatoriums so that they could return refreshed and ready for work. Workers in the toughest industries, such as mining, were prioritised over others, travelling without their families, although this was to change later in response to popular demand. In reality, however, it was those with connections to people in high places who were sent to the best sanatoriums along the Black Sea coast, in summer rather than winter.

In her book, Club Red: Vacation Travel and the Soviet Dream, Diane Koenker notes the paradox that lies both at the heart of the annual sanatorium trip as well as Soviet ideology: an authoritarian state that championed individual autonomy and selfhood. As Alexei Yurchak writes in Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More: “The Soviet citizen was called upon to submit completely to party leadership, to cultivate a collectivist ethic, and repress individualism while at the same time becoming an enlightened and independent-minded individual who pursues knowledge and is inquisitive and creative.”

As a result, sanatoriums as well as tourism more generally were considered an opportunity for self-development as well as rest. Stays had a strong medical component to them, as did many activities during the Soviet Union such as sunbathing, which was usually monitored by a health professional. In addition to bathing in thermal waters and undergoing therapeutic mud treatments, sanatorium guests would engage in physical exercise and stick to a “nutritious” diet. What’s more, writes Koenker, with many away from their spouses, a “hookup culture” emerged at many of these places. “The vacation was kind of this space of freedom to engage in things that one didn’t usually,” says Koenker so that “what happened in Sochi stayed in Sochi”.

Although it is highly doubtful that this “hookup culture” has persisted in Tajikistan, a predominantly Muslim country, the attitude towards food certainly seems to have remained the same: the fatter you are when you leave the sanatorium, the better you rested. This much was clear from the menu on offer at Khoja Obi Garm, which consisted of little more than stodgy carbs served with meat and the occasional limp vegetable for breakfast, lunch and dinner. One particular breakfast item, firni, a salty rice pudding, was served with a humongous slab of melting butter.