Tajikistan Pt 1

Pick the odd one out!

1. Wash your eyes with an eye-wash glass full of fine sand.

2. Visit Central Asia in high summer

3. Drink 14 pints of rough cider, then set the alarm for 2 hours after you fall asleep. The moment when you start coming around, put a scratched vinyl record by the Bay City Rollers onto a low-fi sound system, and listen to it cranked up full volume.

4. Vigorously scrape your thighs with a rough grade steel-brush, then apply a good handful of salt and rub it in well. NB. For a more intense experience follow it up with a sprinkling of spirit vinegar and dry with wire-wool.

5. Watch an evenings worth of Coronation Street, East-Enders and Neighbours on the TV.

The answer of course is (5) because it's simply dull as dishwater, and not excruciatingly painful as are the others 4 choices ...

Welcome to No-Man's land ...

A quick stamp into the country, and we'd be on our way to Dushanbe within the hour ... Riding the short distance to the Tajik' border post, we hand our passports over with a flourish and get a nice friendly “Welcome to Tajikistan” from the border guard. After dealing with that surly bastard on the other side, this felt much better. I'm getting a warm feeling about this country before they've even let us in. The map in my tank bag is staring at me, so I do a quick assessment to guesstimate how far we were likely to get before dark. Two minutes later, the border guard comes back and says something in Tajik', then it's repeated in Russian. We still don't understand, but then he says one word in English that we do know “problem”. Confident that everything's in good-order our end say to him, “There's no problem at all. Here ... look at the visa. it says 'Tourist visa' here and 'GBAO permit' here”. He takes it back momentarily, before showing it back to us again, but this time saying “Date no good”. To myself as well as to Bjorn, I start to mumble “What's he on about then?”. Holding it back under his nose to show him the date and say “Look here ... it says 4th of the 8th month, till 2nd of the 9th month, which means we can come into your country as tourists”. He shakes his head and looks at his watch. Now why the hell does he think that time has anything to do with it? And slowly and gradually the penny starts to drop. I look at the date on my watch, then back at the date on the visa. And yup it's only the 2nd of August. The visa doesn't come into force for another 2 days on the 4th. Ever had that sinking feeling? Yup, I looked at Bjorn who was disbelieving himself, then looked back at the Uzbek' border. Nope, we'd been stamped out, so there is no going back there. Besides which wouldn't give much chance of getting sympathy from bully boy, who I'd reckon would sell his Granny for a few Cym. The only way is forward ... Our nice border guard is sympathetic enough to call up his boss for advice or assistance, but all we get is a suggestion to try money. A bribe? What sort of money are we talking here? We start out with an odd five bucks I've got sat in my wallet, which I can tell is treated as a joke and this my first and rather pathetic attempt at 'buying-in' to the well documented central Asian tradition of corruption, quickly petres-out at $20. Even this sum, is still feeble enough to be laughed at too. I sure don't have anything like a couple of hundred bucks spare, which might be given some credence. With resignation kicking-in I leave it with Bjorn to carry on trying to 'talk his way in', and go back along the road a hundred metres or so, to look at our campsite for the next two days.

If you'd have come through the Uzbekistan/Tajikistan border crossing on the 3rd August, this is the sight that would've greeted you ... Note the wind bending the trees. As the day wore on it became a searingly hot-wind. Great for drying your clothes if all you have is two minutes, good for desiccating coconuts etc. etc.

We quickly worked out that 'water' could become a problem. We'd only got a couple of litres and after talking to the guys in the Tajik' side found they had little more than two poorly serviced wooden huts, so they didn't have anything to spare. So it was time to bite the bullet and wander back into the Uzbek' side, to try and blag some drinking water from them. I couldn't believe it when I asked him ... Our bullying border guard thought it was okay for us to take our drinking water from the irrigation ditch adjacent to our campsite. After explaining our predicament he laughed out loud. And the thought passed through my mind that it was, 'good to see the brute's got some sense of humour'. He then pointed back to the caramel coloured liquid running alongside the road that was being used to water the nearby fields. I adjusted my initial thoughts to 'yeah, some bloody warped sense of humour'. But then had to dig deep into my own humour to continue with this in the hope of making some progress. The one and only female border post guard came up and pleaded on our behalf and begrudgingly he pointed to a trailer tank, which if anywhere near full would have thousands of litres in it. Ha! Gotcha ... Give me an inch ... or in this case a few litres. I'd fully intended to raid whatever water I wanted once I'd found the source. And there it was tucked out of the way in a corner of the compound and unlocked.

This is the Uzbek' border post where we came from, and had to try and 'blag' our drinking water ...

The 'water-run' was to turn into some kind of entertainment each time I made it. Whichever guard was on point-duty at the final barrier, he never quite knew what to do each time I walked through and past into their compound. They knew full well of our predicament and that we weren't going to try and get back through. We just wanted some water. And if from that they tried to stop us, were going to have dehydrated western tourists to deal with ... The best of the sport though, was in photographing the Uzbek' border post from the other side. The point-duty guard noticed me taking pictures and motioned me to come closer. Of course I knew that it was just so he could tell me to stop what I was doing, so motioned to him in return to come over to me. Which of course knew he wasn't allowed to do, and so happily brought my camera back up to take another shot. Even from a distance I could see he was furious ... I wonder if he wanted to shoot me?
And this is where were headed to. Tajikistan. It might look flat here, but don't be fooled!

A couple of hours into our enforced refugee status a mini-bus pulled up. A German speaking lady came up with a bag full of supplies. We were amazed to find that we were something of a talking point and our predicament had prompted sympathy within this Deutch touro' group to have a whip-round on our behalf. An assortment of goodies appeared and Bjorn's eyes lit up at the sight of chocolate! I hate to argue nor relished the sight of seeing a grown man cry if I won the toss of a coin, so let him wolf the lot!

Well, we'd well and truly stuffed-up this time. Here we were stuck in between borders, with a prospect of living in no-man's land for a couple of days. At the time I viewed it, our camping spot didn't look so bad. But that didn't account for the fact that the following day was going to get very hot. Very, very hot indeed with little if any shade to provide relief. The first day started out reasonable enough, but as soon as the sun move around from behind a small stand of protective poplars, our campsite was bathed in clear unrelenting sunlight. It got worse too, in that a fierce wind came up that didn't seem to have any refreshing coolness to it. It was a hot-wind and if anything increased the drying effect, so even when sat in the shade it felt as if every bit of moisture was being sucked out of you. A most unpleasant sensation. I'd been 'slack' too in that I'd put my t-shirt on way too late and so had picked up some sun. My stomach was bright red come the afternoon time, but by this time was so uncomfortable in the extreme heat, a touch of sun-burn wasn't high on the personal discomfort list.

Strangely enough our first night there wasn't too bad. The one main reason being, that the guard on the Tajik side was a genuine dyed-in-the-wool nice guy. In realising we were in for a difficult couple of days, came along to ask if we needed anything once we'd pitched tent and started making tea. I laughingly told him that “a bottle of vodka would be good”. But instead of taking it as the joke as it was intended, he said he'd see what he could do. He then went to say that he was a practising Muslim and that he wasn't allowed to drink alcohol, but that he thought it would okay to get some on our behalf. I was amazed at his benevolence. Half an hour later good to his promise he came back with a bag full of tomatoes and some rather cute little cucumbers. He was also clutching what looked like fairly lethal, but happily a proprietary brand of vodka too. Along with some spices and pasta, I was able to rustle up a passable feed with these few items. It was a bit 'tomatoey', as they went into both sauce and salad, but what the hell ... a couple of shots from our bottle of gratis vodka, made it taste like a gourmet meal.

Not much I know, but we liked to call it home ...

There was some light relief that first evening, when I was sat rummaging through the dark recesses of my brain practicing my own unique version of meditational therapy, when a sight pulled me back into some kind alertness. I thought that I was looking at a 60's Mini struggling it's way through the sheep-dip type vehicle-wheel sterilising pit, coming from the Uzbek side. It's low slung frame meant it had to take things slowly, mainly because it was weighed down further by one of those old-style British red phone-boxes. If it had been the end of the 2nd day you could have accused me of going a bit Trop'o' from the heat further cooking my age-addled brain. But this was first evening and had yet to have my brain fried. Nudging Bjorn he too did a double-take and in picking his chin up off the deck asked of me, “Is that a '60's Mini with a red phone-box on the top?”
A Very British Adventure. Participants of the Mongol Rally

It turned out to be a contingent of the Mongolian Rally ... From what I could gather it was a bit of a Gumball styley vehicle-race of sorts, from the UK to Ulan Baatar. These guys had come up with something called 'A Very British Adventure' and through Ben Avery's (get it) website, were angling for funds for their charity. Of course it was also a good chance to compare travel notes, as well as listen to the rather Pythonesque approach of these four likable loonies from Blighty. The two guys had evidently made a pact to wear their DJ's all the way, but the girls were at this stage doing their best to persuade them to put the pledge to one side. It was something to do with the smell apparently ... Englishmen smell? What? Confounded nonsense of course!

It was while we preparing for our 2nd night that we got the call that we could go through. And suddenly instead of settling down for another uncomfortable night in no-man's land, we were scrabbling about in the failing light to get ourselves packed and ready to go on into Tajikistan. It came about after we'd been chatting to some Polish bikers who were on their way through from Uzbekistan. After we'd said our goodbyes to these guys and while they were still being processed on the Tajik side, Bjorn wandered along to both wave them off and ask the border post guards if we could do our paperwork upfront so we could ride straight through first thing in the morning. From that he came sprinting back, to say they were going to let us all through together ... Now! But with the proviso, that if anyone stopped us and asked we should hang back, and let these guys show their papers first. As Polish, most of 'em had passable Russian, and so could blag-it on our behalf.

We were 'in'! And not only that, but we had our own Russian speaking escort. There were three bikes, two of which were ridden by Brothers Macjek and Mateus each of whom had brought their respective girlfriends along with them. Then there was Darek the 'Mr Cool' of their group, on his aging Honda Africa-Twin . Our newly formed gang made their way into this, another new country. It was to become a roller-coaster ride in Tajikistan ... literally!