An expat blogger writes about how she spent winter in Dushanbe, the capital of Tajikistan. 

I spent most of the coldest times huddled next to the space heater (pechka), cup of tea in hand. Some mornings everything in the kitchen froze. I once tried to pour hot water into a cold cup and it cracked in half…

On several nights the electricity went out, sometimes for hours…

The story helps understand why Dushanbe was recently ranked the worst city in Asia for expatriates to live in.