Look Kids! There's Big Ben!

The travel guide, she waxes unethusiastic on Tajikistan:

With a cool backdrop of mountains, lazy tree-lined avenues and pale, oriental-fringed buildings, Dushanbe [the capital] may be a good-looking city but personality-wise it's a dead loss, an historically isolated backwater that's boring by day and dangerous at night. The large, covered Barakat market is what passes for the centre of activity in Dushanbe, though it's not particularly interesting; the city has many other makeshift bazars, but they're harrowing affairs composed of lines of people trying to sell whatever they can find at home - a pair of old shoes, coverless books, a dismantled washing machine motor, anything that somebody might conceivably trade a little cash for.

Oh, ha ha. Those jokesters. Now seriously. Where's the chapter on Day Spas?

Still, I hope I get a chance to see the Pamirs; the "roof of the world." It's the fantastic range of mountains from which the Himalayas and the Hindu Kush radiate out. Although, again The Lonely Planet with the harshing of my buzz:

Much of what would be prime hiking territory is prowled by men with weapons - get local advice on where to steer clear in the Pamir.

Okay fine. I'll find something else to do.