Dushanbe bicycle rental

[steven]

Questions and reports on bicycle rental in Dushanbe are welcome below.

We summarize all info at the Dushanbe transport guide.

[sakara]

just stepping in for bike rentals in Dushanbe:
rentabike.tj
they rent good bikes ( mountainbikes, city bikes and even children's, bought new from kazakhstan and well maintained).
Prices are really ok (35-50somoni/day on weekdays, 45-70 on weekends).
The founders are a pamiri and a kazakh software engineer(both with travel experience) who run the company after their real jobs trying to promote cycling in Tajikistan.
They are pretty active on fb, too.
https://m.facebook.com/Rent-a-Bike-852051754871407/
To be transparent: I m friends with the two of them - but I would recommend them anyway.

[Solsticio]

Sorry, I read the replies only now.

Almaty: I rented a bicycle with lock in a shop called Экстремал. They have several shops around the city. I was very straight-forward and cost me about 5€ for half a day. I doubt whether they will speak English. Very good experience, even though you will have to be more careful than at home, as car drivers are not used to it. I got quite some looks from Kazakhs and a group of Thai women wanted to take all individual pictures with me

Astana: They have a public city bike system as part of their (according to many Kazakhs ridiculous) programme to promote Kazakhstan as energy-conscious. It's called Velobike and it has its own app. You sign up with your Kazakh phone number (maybe foreign ones work as well). I paid one time 500 tenge to register and than 100 tenge per hour (if I remember it correctly). If you cycle under 30 minutes until the next station, nothing is charged though. There are a lot of bicycle stations throughout the city and since hardly anyone uses the bicycles, they are mostly full. Sometimes so full that you cannot check in your bicycle. All in all I paid for all day less than 2€. It's very practical as sights can be a bit far from each other in Astana.

Dushanbe: I also rented a bicycle from above-mentioned rentabike. It was a bit difficult to find (no sign) and people in the street mostly have no clue about a bicycle rental place. When I arrived no one was there, but when I called the number, they agreed to come to the shop in an hour. It cost me also about 5€ for the day. I agreed on a time to return the bicycle and didn't have to wait long. In Summer it might be open all day, as October was apparently already much out of season, even though it was 25+ degrees.

The quality of the bicycles was good enough. They could have been a tad larger, but Central Asian are smaller than Europeans, so this is logical.

Any questions? Just shoot..