July 20, 2004

300km from nowhere

Pamir Tales - Part 4

Murghab, Tajikistan

I awake to another morning in Murghab. This time at least I can head straight down to the bazar, not needing to register. I get down there at 8:30am but it's virtually deserted. Okay, back to the main road.

Again I'm lucky to get a lift pretty quickly. "Khorog?", I ask. Yes, they say. Okay, let's go!

Turns out that this is not the car that will be going to Khorog though. The car that we will be taking is presently sitting in a field and not working. Ahh, wonderful.

The guys spend an hour or so tweaking this and poking that, swapping parts back and forth from another, apparently working, car. Eventually they seem to succeed. The car starts, it moves forward, it stops. What more could you want? I hand over my 60 soms (about $20) for the trip and we're off. Well, we're off back to town. You see, first we have to run a couple of errands, visit some friends, go to the bazar and have a chat for twenty minutes. Visit some more friends, pick up the petrol, run another couple of errands. It's now twelve o'clock and we're stopped for no apparent reason on one side of town. "When will we leave?" I ask. The answer is a bit evasive. I push the question finally getting the response that we won't leave, the guy doesn't think the car is up to a 300km journey. I almost blew my top. What the hell did he think he was doing for the last two hours running all over town? To me that was valuable standing-by-the-road time. He look genuinely crestfallen and I felt a bit sorry for him, he really wanted to make the journey and have the cash. He pulled my 60 soms out of his pocket and gave them back and I picked up my backpack once more for a journey out to the main road.

Again I was lucky though. Well, sort of. A car came by fairly quickly with four guys inside. "Where are you going?", I ask. "Alichur", they answer, the place I could have gone yesterday in the morning. At this stage I'll take anyway that's out of Murghab so I hop inside.

They turn out to be a very friendly bunch. We listen to some good tunes on the cassette deck, stop by a pleasant stream for some lunch, fix a couple of flat tyres. I discovered why the cars are always full. Having no jack you need all your friends with you to lift the car up to change the tyre.

We reach the tiny town of Alichur a little before 4pm. After the obligatory tea and bread at the guy's house I announce that I'm heading for the road to try for a lift. Don't bother they say, there'll be nothing now. Just stay here for the night. I'm adamant though and head out to the road. As I sit there I reflect on what a desolate landscape this is. The supplies from the Aga Khan Foundation are absolutely necessary because nothing can possibly grow here. 4000m high and virtually no rain. I have no idea what any of the people that live in these little towns do.

As it turns out luck is with me again. I've only been there about 15 minutes when a truck comes thundering down. Turns out to be going all the way to Khorog with a driver from Osh and a student from Bishkek heading back to his family for the summer. I happily jump in and off we go.

Sadi, the student from Bishkek, turns out to be quite a strange guy. Having offered me some of his drink he picks up my water bottle, only three quarters empty, and to my horror throws it out the window. I can't drink his water and now, without a bottle to refill from the stream, I'll have nothing to drink for the next five hours of travelling at 4000m altitude. Sadi seems not to think this is a problem.

As we finally drop off the high plain and start to enter the greener landscape of the towns near Khorog Sadi seems to think it appropriate to lean out the window and yell in Pamiri to the locals such encouragement as "good worker". He also delights in waving in such an enthusiastic manner that passers-by think they must know him from somewhere. I'm convinced he's a few sandwiches short of a picnic.

Still, he's hospitable enough and when we reach Khorog at 9pm and he offers to put me up at his family's home I'm happy to accept the offer. I couldn't help but be surprised though, after seeing a top-of-the-line Toshiba laptop in the house, to find that the toilet paper consisted of torn-off sheets from an old receipt book. I guess they don't have phone books here.

Posted by David at July 20, 2004 02:13 AM