Under Armour Insulated Water Bottle
About Tursunzoda
This industrial city lies west of Dushanbe, close to the border with Uzbekistan, in the valley leading toward the Hissar Range. Formerly called Regar, it was renamed in 1978 for the poet Mirzo Tursunzoda and is best known for its large aluminum plant, one of Tajikistan’s major industrial sites.
THE INTERNATIONAL REVIEW
A stainless steel insulated bottle from Under Armour, built as a double-walled vacuum flask.
The vacuum is the mechanism.
Two walls with the air drawn out from between them leave heat almost no path in or out, because conduction needs material to travel through and there is none.
Ice put in at breakfast survives a hot afternoon in a bag instead of collapsing by the second set, and the outside of the bottle does not sweat — which matters when it lives next to grips, a phone and a spare shirt.
Stainless steel also does not hold flavour or odour the way plastic does, so yesterday’s electrolyte mix is not in today’s water.
The rest is built for a court bag: a secure, leak-resistant lid, a mouth wide enough to take real ice cubes rather than crushed slush, and an exterior finish that survives being set down on concrete.
Tursunzoda sits low in the Gissar valley in western Tajikistan, where the summer runs long and very hot and shade on an open court is scarce. Ice that is still ice at four o’clock is a functional requirement there rather than a luxury.
Specifications
| Material | Stainless steel |
|---|---|
| Construction | Double-walled vacuum insulated |
| Exterior | Non-sweating, durable finish |
| Lid | Secure and leak resistant |
| Opening | Wide mouth, takes ice cubes |
| Flavour and odour retention | None |
| Use | Court, training, everyday carry |
A vacuum flask holds heat as readily as it holds cold, so the same bottle serves a winter session in a cold hall as well as a July afternoon on an open court.
LET Under Armour Insulated Water Bottle SHOW YOU Tursunzoda
Bottle: Under Armor Insulated Water Bottle: Every city is a recipe, and this one begins with a smelter poured into an empty valley. They broke ground in the mid-1960s at what was then Regar, poured the first aluminium in March 1975, and it grew into the largest smelter in Central Asia, fed on hydroelectric power off Tajikistan's mountain rivers. Workers arrived from across the USSR; apartment blocks, parks and canteens arrived with them, and the town was renamed for the poet Mirzo Tursunzoda. After independence it became the young republic's chief asset and principal exporter. Reduction is reduction — I do it with stock, they do it with ore.
Bottle: Under Armor Insulated Water Bottle: I'll put the jokes down for this one. Victory Park opened in 1975 as the memorial ground of the town then called Regar, in honour of the Soviet victory over Germany in the Great Patriotic War. Tens of thousands of men from the Tajik republic served at the front and many never came home. Each 9 May the monument is the centre of the Victory Day ceremonies, flowers carried now by schoolchildren and officials where veterans once walked. The rest of the year the poplar alleys are the town's evening promenade, the walk families take after supper.
Bottle: Under Armor Insulated Water Bottle: A company town feeds itself twice, and this is the second sitting. TALCO Arena is home to Regar-TadAZ — the old town name welded onto the smelter's Soviet initials, which is the naming instinct of a man who puts everything in one pot. The club is among the most successful in Tajik football, a repeated national champion through the 2000s, and it took the AFC President's Cup, Asia's competition for developing football nations, three times that decade. Match days gather the plant's whole workforce and their families, and those trophies count for exactly as much civic pride as the production records.
Bottle: Under Armor Insulated Water Bottle: This one I would travel for, and not only for the bread on the plain below. Hisor Fortress sits east along the same Gissar valley, fortified over many centuries, and under the Emirate of Bukhara it was the seat of the bek who governed the whole valley. Caravans running between Bukhara, Samarkand and the mountain passes paid their tolls beneath those walls. The reserve keeps a seventeenth-century madrasa, a later one, a caravanserai site and old mausoleums, and the great arched gate with its paired towers has been rebuilt as a national symbol. A caravanserai is only an inn with better catering.
Jackson Phillips here. Owner of TTT. We are working hard every day to bring you the most useful product reviews in the business. Our goal is putting the right product in every hand. If you have time, shoot me an email at jacksonphillips@thetennistactician.com and tell me exactly what you think of your purchase. The more feedback we get, the better we can serve. Thank you for your patronage. And Burn, Laugh, and Learn.