Category: Tajikistan

We are presently in the capital of Tajikistan, Dushanbe, after eight days of fairly rough travel from the last reporting place.  Dushanbe is warm and civilised with smooth pavements, lots of trees, the worlds 3rd largest flagpole and a very nice Hotel Lotus which is where we are.  However, all is not as it should be.  Yesterday we found out that our visas for this country were only valid until today and we are supposed to be here for 2 more nights.  Although the visa says it was for a month which gave us plenty of spare days, the dates do not agree with that, so we have to go.  But to do that we need a visa for the next country, Uzbekistan, and that was the job for the two days planned here. Moderate panic stations were manned and this morning with the very necessary help of the boss of our local tour agents we now have an Uzbek visa but it is for entry tomorrow.  We are told the border is open 24 hours so the present plan is to rock up this evening before it is dark and check out of Tajikistan and then hang about somewhere in between to go through the Uzbekistan formalities after midnight. I rather suspect it will not be that simple but we shall see.  Dilshon, our man in Dushanbe, went to the front of the queue at the Uzbek consulate and told the people inside that we were diplomats and we got the visa in ninety minutes which is astounding, but for good reasons they wouldn’t make it for today.  Even the suggestion of a special payment didn’t work which I suppose is good in one way but a nuisance for us.

I feel sorry for the main agent of this trip who has to now reorganise every thing for the next four days and find someone to pick us up in the early morning at the border.  But we did have a little credit because a couple of nights ago due to Dilshon’s error we only had one bedroom and I had to share with Colin, and even worse he had to share with me, for two nights.  Colin got the double bed and generously suggested I could use it as well but I didn’t find that idea very alluring.  This was the most upmarket of the places we stayed on the way here but it had the hardest beds ever and made our times of sleeping on the floor or ground seem luxurious.

We left Osh in Kyrgyzstan and headed south on the fabled Pamir Highway which was built by the Soviets 1930-40 to provide access around the edges of their empire where it borders China and Afghanistan.  The scenery is consistently mountainous and spectacular but some days were even more.  The roads were consistently horrendous but some days more than others, and I reckon we would have been lucky to average more than 30kph.  Our Special Correspondent for Roading and Sanitation will have more detail about this later.  The border was again in the middle of nowhere and on the Kyr. side Colin handed over NZ stickers as part of the deal and then we stood idly around while the customs guys made someones life difficult by making them take every bag and box out of their vehicle and off the roof.  Apparently that was the wrong thing for us to do because a bloated youth in uniform looked at us and said “CAR” so we promptly got into ours where Colin mouthed off about jumped up little pricks, and I said shut up.  On the Taj side we picked up a new vehicle and a new driver along with a guide.  The driver should have been born in a rugby playing place because he had the build of a front rower and the guide reckoned he was a good wall.  The guide had a damaged right arm and it didn’t take Colin too long to inquire what the problem was  –  he had wrecked his hand in a car crash and it had been removed but the medically cool thing was that his arm had been split into two long “digits” using the two bones in the arm, and then by some surgical wizardry the muscles and tendons had been rearranged to enable him to hold things with it like a pair of bbq tongs.  Both guys came from the Pamir which is mainly populated by Ismailis who probably can be traced back to Persia and their spiritual leader is the Aga Khan.  Their religion is not intrusive and is a Shia offshoot grafted onto the old Zoroastrian faith which means there is a bit of fire involved in their worship.  Thank goodness they don’t have mosques making loud noises early in the mornings because getting a good sleep wasn’t easy. We spent several days over 4000m and it was cold at night.  Our beds were either pallets on the floor or little beds with slats so either way there was a rush for the spare blankets and “mattresses”.   On the third day we branched off the Pamir Highway into the Wakhan Valley and then spent four days following the Amu Darya river which is the border with Afghanistan.  This river used to be known to us as the Oxus and for those of a historical bent it is well known   –  from memory Alexander the Great got to it and he or others decided that was far enough.  It used to flow into the Aral Sea but now disappears before there and more will be told about that when we get there.  Initially the rivers were all glacier water and a bright turquoise.  The Wakhan was the highlight of this part of the trip.  At one stage we had the colourful river, the big rocky mountains on our side and the same on the Afghan side, but behind them towering up all steep, jagged and white were the peaks of the Hindu Kush range in Pakistan.

Anyone who has read Kipling or more recently A Small Walk in the Hindu Kush, or anything about the Great Game would have to find this exciting beyond the scenery.  I did.  The next day was Independence Day and as it is autumn it is also harvest time.  The little villages are on any spare flatish land, which is usually an alluvial fan with irrigation, and the crops are grain and hay.  Being a holiday everyone was out working and this looks like a long time ago as the the main tools are sickles and the main transport is human or donkeys.  We did see one mechanised thresher and apparently it was home made.  We stood around watching while they got it going and moved away pretty quickly becauseit was rather noisy and the dust was thick.  The standard female attire is a variation on the long dress and leggings style and usually in bright colours with shiny and sparkly stuff or animal skin print.  Scarves are usual but not pervasive.  Colin is a serial watcher of the younger women and I am sometimes dragged down to his level, as there are some very attractive sights.  The men are all boring in the usual jeans and t shirts or old suits.  School children are very formally dressed and the girls in the last little town had tunics that looked like zebra patterns.

Getting a snack for lunch is not easy and if the lunch is included we end up with 2 courses plus lots of extras. When we have been doing 7-8 hour drives and not wanted the full meal we end up eating Snickers Bars which is a new experience for me.  Colin has one secreted away so he won’t starve if we end up sleeping in no mans land tonight.  The food has generally been good plain stuff and I have never drunk so much tea.  It comes in two varieties, black and green and being the sensitive townie I have green, Colin has black.  The homestays we have been in are not flash in appearance, in fact most of them would be dismissed as completely unacceptable if you could find such a place in NZ.  En suites are not known and some of the bathrooms are best not looked at too carefully, but one gets used to anything and lowered expectations mean one can delight in the small things like a shower that runs hot and doesn’t change its mind about releasing water, and eating dinner on a dodgy terrace over a river.  I find it is necessary to have simple systems when doing this sort of travel like always putting things away in their appointed place as soon as you have used them.   Colin is used to such micro management being driven by someone else he knows very well, and I don’t want to be a nuisance so I haven’t checked each morning that he has got all his stuff.  A few days ago he managed to leave not only his towel but also his torch behind and I just muttered a few words about systems and the consequences of not having any.  This was not wise.  However our guide picked up on it and made a couple of phone calls which meant we picked up these goods from a hotel in another town two days later.

Tajikistan is 93% mountains over 1500m, has a population of over 8 million of which 1 million work in Russia and their money sent back is something like 50% of GDP. No one is sure how much is earned by being the main conduit for heroin out of Afghanistan, but there are a few suspiciously large houses to be seen..  Half the working age population is unemployed.  They had a civil war for 7 years in the 90s which killed about 60000 people and the  country is now ruled by an ex communist who was elected by 98% of the votes last election.  The opposition weren’t allowed to stand any candidates which explains his popularity.  There are lots of expensive ego driven buildings and monuments that don’t help the country at all and one wonders if this guy has ever driven on some of the roads we have.  Probably not because beside each of the stupid buildings is a tidy helicopter landing site.  Ten days ago the deputy defence minister apparently was the leader of a terrorist attack that killed about seven people in and near Dushanbe.  He is rumoured to have been killed today but it is not confirmed.  There is also a gathering of the leaders of Russian orientated countries starting so security is very visible including an armed personnel carrier we saw on the way in and lots of soldiers with effective looking guns..  

And now, the Special Correspondent for Roads and Sanitation.
The roads are the worst I have ever experienced.  Dennis says he has seen similar in the Amazon Basin and it’s a toss up as to whether the so called sealed roads are better or worse than the metal ones.  Huge potholes, corrugations, collapsed culverts and water courses down the middle.  Most roads follow river valleys and twist and turn looking for the easiest contour.  Sometimes on the rivers edge and also high above where we tip toe along cuttings in the rock face.  It seems much better to be sitting on the cliff face side but that is certainly illusory as a 100m fall is neither here nor there in relation to which side of the back seat you are in.  The on coming traffic is searching for the best pothole free route too, so we have to be prepared for a sudden swerve away from a certain head on followed by a last minute correction, and we survive again.  The large red Chinese trucks demand respect and frequent off road sanctuary to allow them passage.  

The tour routine is to take turns in the front seat on a daily basis.  I calculate that the team leader D has a 4.5 hour advantage so I will be bringing this up at the next scheduled tour meeting.  Meetings usually start about 5pm and continue until libations are finished.  To be fair we have had several AFDs, mostly because the villages had no corner yurt grog shops and we couldn’t find Good Neighbour type pubs at 4000m, snowing, mud brick building and depressed Karakul or Murgab.
The Chinese, Iranians and Turks are building roads which are a huge boon to this country which is badly in need of infrastructure investment.
I trained assiduously for fitness in preparation for this trip but D didn’t tell me to practice knee bends and squats to strengthen my muscles for some of the facilities we have had to use.  Those at camping and yurt level are a dunny out the back somewhere, being a huge hole in the ground, a little shed over it and corrugated brown paper that requires stitches after use.  The wash basin is usually somewhere else outside and not easily identified.  Thank goodness June insisted I bring antiseptic hand wash.  Bathrooms are varied, but at Johns level accommodation specifications one must be grateful for some water, hot or cold, at all. An old saucepan ladle and warmish tap water was novel but refreshing at Murgab.

Washing ones socks, undies etc at ablution times has been surprisingly successful.  I don’t understand why washing day is reputed to be such a chore  –  and of course no ironing is required at all and we continue to look sharp and neat.

The present luxuriating in Dushanbe with all facilities and a large room is too good to last and next time we will tell you all about getting into Uzbekistan and what happened over night.

Dennis again.  Don’t believe everything a diary farmer says. 
Farewell.