So, the next morning we got up relatively early, we got to meet the kids (as I blathered on about on the other entry) which was highly rewarding and then started working out the routes we would take out the country. Paul and Umed and some of the other local people involved with the centre kindly escorted us to the border at / near Tursunzoda. This involved some backtracking back to Dushanbe and then taking a big left west back towards Uzbekistan. This route out the country was so completely different in conditions to the way in, and it only took us a couple of hours to get to the border. We said our farewells and thanks to the folks from Sworde-Teppa and then headed into the first part of the crossing. I should add that the reason we backtracked out this way was essentially because it was the only flat route out the country. The way we came in - where Helen had got sick, was actually the second lowest route out and we didn’t have the time or stupidity to try that one again. Everything else would have been probably at least 1000m+ higher. It was daylight when we arrived at the border - probably around 3pm. The first part - getting out of Tajikistan was relatively simple. There were quite a number of different points we needed to get through but the guards were friendly enough (I even got winked as by the rather handsome Tajik man who seemed to be top guy), it was just a fairly slow and long crossing, with a few barriers, offices and quite a lot of sitting in no-mans land. The Ice Cream guys were first in the queue and actually moved through the Tajik side much faster than us. We caught up with them waiting for us next to the Uzbek office. They’d been waiting quite a while and decided as it was taking so long and they were on their own and it was coming on to sunset, that they would launch into an impromptu party. Thus when we rolled up to them, they were standing on the roof of the van, sun setting behind them, bandanas on, arms outstretched and dancing to Magic Carpet Ride, that was blaring out across no mans land. They were getting some very dirty looks from the guards who Helen and I thought were of the impression that they were arrogant Americans. Just before getting to the Uzbek office and Alex and Ryan we had driven through a disinfectant dip. A chap came up to our car and asked Helen and myself for some money for the dip. Alex and Ryan came bounding over and said ‘don’t give him any money!’ And told us that he was making it up and going for a bribe - apparently he couldn’t decide how much to ask for when he’d asked them. So I felt a bit uncomfortable saying we had no money…he only wanted $1. I think in most places it wouldn’t have mattered but with hindsight, being at the border, it would have been better safe than sorry to have just given him some money anyway. This incident may have contributed - (I think it did, but we don’t really know), to the pain the arse we then had trying to get through to the other side. The bloke walked into the Uzbek office as we joined the queue at the end ,and he spoke to the guards as he went through down a corridor. We queued for a while and then when we got to the front the guard behind the counter said that he was now closed and that we had to go to the office on the other side of the road. This was really annoying as we now had a pretty big queue behind us and they went galloping over to the other office, so by the time we got over there we were at the back. Well, we were sort of at the back - queuing didn’t actually exist on this side. It was all women in their long robes and they jostled and crammed and wedged their way anyway they could, waving their arms and pawing at the counter top trying to get the blokes attention behind the window. We couldn’t really compete and didn’t really want to…being very English I suppose. We stood at the back of the crowd and decided that just about everyone between us and the window was going to get served first and that was acceptable. But when more women started joining, with babies being waved as a queue bargaining tool, we started to stand our ground and edge forward. Ellis managed to get near the window and as a woman was handing over her passport he shot out his hand and the surprised guard took it. He had appeared to be ignoring us till then. But he took the passport, put it on the side and still ignored us! Meanwhile we were trying to encircle the window and not let anymore people get in between so that the guard would be forced to serve us. I had this overweight, hot sweaty woman breathing literally down my neck and pushing and wedging her body up against my back - it was disconcerting and Really Irritating. Eventually we were in a position where we really had to get served, at that point the chap walked over from the other office (who has told us it was shut and sent us over to this side), he entered the office, spoke to the chap who we had been trying to get the attention of, and told us the office was now closed. ‘What?!’ We had been trying to get the attention of a guard for probably about an hour. We decided to speak to him as politely as possible, at the same time trying to explain that we really needed to get through. He told us it was all now closed and that we wouldn’t be getting through and that to do it the next day. In two sentences before stalking off he’d told us that in effect we would be having a night in nomans land. We were already being held up more than we wanted - we were supposed to be meeting up with Mike from Ice Cream Adventure and Nathan and Daniella from Wrong Way Round in Samakand that evening! It was all going badly wrong. So we started approaching some of the other guards that were having a nice time sitting at a table outside on the grass next to the office. We asked Ellis to speak to him - because Ellis is so tall and also wasn’t Ryan or Alex who seemed to annoy them so much! Anyway, the bloke told us he couldn’t help and told us to take our passports somewhere else….it was getting very confusing. But Ellis told him that our passport was in the office that was closed. I think that at least got the bloke into the office and he then told the original guard to stamp our passports, or whatever it was he was supposed to do. We were then told that it was too late to get the other stamp we needed but that we might as well get our cars checked over further along. So we drove the cars towards the next point where they were to be checked over. But the guards looked at our passports and tried to send us backwards. We refused but ran back to the first office and almost begged for them to just put whatever bloody stamp was needed in it. We were going back and forth like chickens with no idea what was going on. I think it was a very sweet revenge they had. Anyway, eventually - the light was almost gone, we were all at the final hurdle where the cars were checked. I arrived there to find a guard sitting in Daisy looking happy and trying to press buttons and rummaging around. Ryan and Alex were keeping an eye on him. The Ice Cream Van was driven first into the checking area - which was on the side of a building. Another guard came up to me and told me to take ‘my baggage’ into the building, where I was going to get my paperwork, etc. I said thanks but he stopped me and said ‘Take your baggage,’ ‘eh?’ I gestured at my passport - stupid man. He kept insisting angrily I took my baggage into the office…but I didn’t have any - unless you call a car baggage! Anyway, I just walked away from him. Helen and all the others, other than Ellis who followed me shortly, were at a drive through on the side of the building with the cars. I got the usual stuff done and was directed out the other side of the building. I started walking round back to the cars - which were about 50m away from the exit, and was told by the angry man that I had to stay where I was. He said ‘you came out that side, you stay there.’ He couldn’t get past the idea that I had been processed and therefore had to stay on one side of a building, even though my car and everyone else was helping with the cars being searched, etc. there wasn’t much I could do, so I sat on the wall and just watched what was going on. After a while Ellis got processed and sat with me. He left me though because he had some of his bags in the Ice Cream Van and they guards pulled it out and started asking who it belonged to. The searching of the cars was on a whole new level. With hindsight it was because it was a main drug smuggling border, but we didn’t realise this at the time and could hardly believe the amount of hassle and the animosity they were giving us. The Ice Cream Van got most of the hassle, being first and being blokes. The guards demanded every single thing we taken out the van. They looked through photos and saw a picture of one of them smoking in Turkey and said ‘You have drugs! We will find the drugs!’ and continued to swarm all over the van. At one point one of the guards was even peeling off the sticker on a board that said ‘Dairy Ice Creams’, there was a bloke on the roof checking the tires, a bloke under the van and a bloke in the van and a bloke unzipping and riffling through the bags as they were on the floor and a sniffer dog going over it all. Alex went to say hello to the dog - which appeared to be a docile cocker spaniel, but a word from the guard sent it suddenly beserk and trying to bite Alex’s leg. He got away with it but had pretty torn trousers…so it was close thing! Photo: Alex not actually happy at all....probably not a great idea to take a photo with a guard next to you at the border either...doh! Meanwhile, I was just sitting on this wall on my own and wishing I could get some Deet out the car to spray on my feet. The other thing that was worrying me was that Helen and I had done some washing and she’d put her stuff away, but basically various undergarments of mine were stuffed loose around the front (in fact before my underwear used to be hung on our map light - and I‘d probably just grabbed them off and stuffed them behind the seat). I just had this hideous thought that Daisy was next and all these male guards would start pulling out various personal items that I really didn’t want them too. So, when I remembered they were there, I started gesticulating at Helen…trying to get her to come over (as I wasn’t allowed off the wall). But she wouldn’t come over and I couldn’t exactly shout across the border that I wanted her to try and save me from humiliation. Anyway, the idiot guard that told me to stay by the wall seemed to have left the scene. So I decided that I’d go over to the cars and hoped no one would shout at me. When I got to Daisy, Ryan came up to me and whispered fairly subtly that I was married. Oh! Alright then. I didn’t know why or which one of the border guards was resulting in the blokes (for once) deciding that they would take the initiative in saying I was married. By this point the guards had decided that they had enough of the van and that it seemed clean. So they started circling round Daisy. I hadn’t done much of a rescue job with my various floating items in the car - because the car was such a mess I couldn’t actually find anything! But….things turned out differently for us. Helen and I were lucky. I assume because it was all male guards they decided they weren’t going to invade our privacy so much. Instead they wanted the roof box opened and everything pulled out and opened the boot and had a bit of a rummage. They even checked under the bonnet in the air filter and in the sleeping bags. Meanwhile, as they were rummaging the car, I got out and sat on a seat to the side. The head honcho himself (certainly not a man to mess with considering the fairly intimidating situation we were in), he sat down next to me and started asking me questions. He started off with ‘Where do you come from?’ then ‘Who do you live with?’ I was SO glad I‘d been warned that I was supposed to be marrried, because I just would have caught myself out at the start otherwise. Instead, for the first time I was in this situation where I was actually going to have to use the cover story Helen and I came up with in Georgia. Please God Don’t let this man ask me about the names…because it would all go terribly wrong. BUT, luckily he didn’t. I told him I lived with my husband and he asked me where he was and I said he was at home, and he wanted to know why and I told him he was farmer and that he made wine. And then he started asking me about where my children where and when I said I didn’t have any, he started asking why not and we starting having this minor debate about how I was/wasn’t too young to be shooting out sprogs. Gawd…it went on, and I just sat there thinking…I must keep this bloke on side. I always tend to say the wrong thing. Anyway, eventually I got up and started putting things back into the car, and the WWR car was just being finishing up being checked. I quietly spoke to Ryan and asked him what had prompted him to say I was married. He said that one of the guards had indicated me, whilst I was sitting on the wall getting annoyed, and had asked THEM whether he/they could take me off somewhere. I’m not quite sure whether Helen was included in that as well. BUT…the cheek of it….and the dodgyness! And I think the worst bit is that they probably weren’t being cheeky at all but actually thought they could have the right to do whatever they wanted without another bloke to tell them they couldn’t. We were finally allowed out into Uzbekistan - after I think what was a 5.5hr crossing - which could have been worse but it felt like longer - mainly because we hadn’t done anything other than queuing and being shoved and watching our cars and belongings get molested. It was at least another dramatic part of the Tajikistan adventure if not one of the good bits.
So, the next morning we got up relatively early, we got to meet the kids (as I blathered on about on the other entry) which was highly rewarding and then started working out the routes we would take out the country. Paul and Umed and some of the other local people involved with the centre kindly escorted us to the border at / near Tursunzoda. This involved some backtracking back to Dushanbe and then taking a big left west back towards Uzbekistan. This route out the country was so completely different in conditions to the way in, and it only took us a couple of hours to get to the border. We said our farewells and thanks to the folks from Sworde-Teppa and then headed into the first part of the crossing. I should add that the reason we backtracked out this way was essentially because it was the only flat route out the country. The way we came in - where Helen had got sick, was actually the second lowest route out and we didn’t have the time or stupidity to try that one again. Everything else would have been probably at least 1000m+ higher.
It was daylight when we arrived at the border - probably around 3pm. The first part - getting out of Tajikistan was relatively simple. There were quite a number of different points we needed to get through but the guards were friendly enough (I even got winked as by the rather handsome Tajik man who seemed to be top guy), it was just a fairly slow and long crossing, with a few barriers, offices and quite a lot of sitting in no-mans land. The Ice Cream guys were first in the queue and actually moved through the Tajik side much faster than us. We caught up with them waiting for us next to the Uzbek office. They’d been waiting quite a while and decided as it was taking so long and they were on their own and it was coming on to sunset, that they would launch into an impromptu party. Thus when we rolled up to them, they were standing on the roof of the van, sun setting behind them, bandanas on, arms outstretched and dancing to Magic Carpet Ride, that was blaring out across no mans land. They were getting some very dirty looks from the guards who Helen and I thought were of the impression that they were arrogant Americans. Just before getting to the Uzbek office and Alex and Ryan we had driven through a disinfectant dip. A chap came up to our car and asked Helen and myself for some money for the dip. Alex and Ryan came bounding over and said ‘don’t give him any money!’ And told us that he was making it up and going for a bribe - apparently he couldn’t decide how much to ask for when he’d asked them. So I felt a bit uncomfortable saying we had no money…he only wanted $1. I think in most places it wouldn’t have mattered but with hindsight, being at the border, it would have been better safe than sorry to have just given him some money anyway.
This incident may have contributed - (I think it did, but we don’t really know), to the pain the arse we then had trying to get through to the other side. The bloke walked into the Uzbek office as we joined the queue at the end ,and he spoke to the guards as he went through down a corridor. We queued for a while and then when we got to the front the guard behind the counter said that he was now closed and that we had to go to the office on the other side of the road. This was really annoying as we now had a pretty big queue behind us and they went galloping over to the other office, so by the time we got over there we were at the back. Well, we were sort of at the back - queuing didn’t actually exist on this side. It was all women in their long robes and they jostled and crammed and wedged their way anyway they could, waving their arms and pawing at the counter top trying to get the blokes attention behind the window. We couldn’t really compete and didn’t really want to…being very English I suppose. We stood at the back of the crowd and decided that just about everyone between us and the window was going to get served first and that was acceptable. But when more women started joining, with babies being waved as a queue bargaining tool, we started to stand our ground and edge forward. Ellis managed to get near the window and as a woman was handing over her passport he shot out his hand and the surprised guard took it. He had appeared to be ignoring us till then. But he took the passport, put it on the side and still ignored us! Meanwhile we were trying to encircle the window and not let anymore people get in between so that the guard would be forced to serve us. I had this overweight, hot sweaty woman breathing literally down my neck and pushing and wedging her body up against my back - it was disconcerting and Really Irritating.
Eventually we were in a position where we really had to get served, at that point the chap walked over from the other office (who has told us it was shut and sent us over to this side), he entered the office, spoke to the chap who we had been trying to get the attention of, and told us the office was now closed.
‘What?!’ We had been trying to get the attention of a guard for probably about an hour. We decided to speak to him as politely as possible, at the same time trying to explain that we really needed to get through. He told us it was all now closed and that we wouldn’t be getting through and that to do it the next day. In two sentences before stalking off he’d told us that in effect we would be having a night in nomans land. We were already being held up more than we wanted - we were supposed to be meeting up with Mike from Ice Cream Adventure and Nathan and Daniella from Wrong Way Round in Samakand that evening! It was all going badly wrong.
So we started approaching some of the other guards that were having a nice time sitting at a table outside on the grass next to the office. We asked Ellis to speak to him - because Ellis is so tall and also wasn’t Ryan or Alex who seemed to annoy them so much! Anyway, the bloke told us he couldn’t help and told us to take our passports somewhere else….it was getting very confusing. But Ellis told him that our passport was in the office that was closed. I think that at least got the bloke into the office and he then told the original guard to stamp our passports, or whatever it was he was supposed to do. We were then told that it was too late to get the other stamp we needed but that we might as well get our cars checked over further along. So we drove the cars towards the next point where they were to be checked over. But the guards looked at our passports and tried to send us backwards. We refused but ran back to the first office and almost begged for them to just put whatever bloody stamp was needed in it. We were going back and forth like chickens with no idea what was going on. I think it was a very sweet revenge they had.
Anyway, eventually - the light was almost gone, we were all at the final hurdle where the cars were checked. I arrived there to find a guard sitting in Daisy looking happy and trying to press buttons and rummaging around. Ryan and Alex were keeping an eye on him. The Ice Cream Van was driven first into the checking area - which was on the side of a building. Another guard came up to me and told me to take ‘my baggage’ into the building, where I was going to get my paperwork, etc. I said thanks but he stopped me and said ‘Take your baggage,’ ‘eh?’ I gestured at my passport - stupid man. He kept insisting angrily I took my baggage into the office…but I didn’t have any - unless you call a car baggage! Anyway, I just walked away from him. Helen and all the others, other than Ellis who followed me shortly, were at a drive through on the side of the building with the cars. I got the usual stuff done and was directed out the other side of the building. I started walking round back to the cars - which were about 50m away from the exit, and was told by the angry man that I had to stay where I was. He said ‘you came out that side, you stay there.’ He couldn’t get past the idea that I had been processed and therefore had to stay on one side of a building, even though my car and everyone else was helping with the cars being searched, etc. there wasn’t much I could do, so I sat on the wall and just watched what was going on. After a while Ellis got processed and sat with me. He left me though because he had some of his bags in the Ice Cream Van and they guards pulled it out and started asking who it belonged to.
The searching of the cars was on a whole new level. With hindsight it was because it was a main drug smuggling border, but we didn’t realise this at the time and could hardly believe the amount of hassle and the animosity they were giving us. The Ice Cream Van got most of the hassle, being first and being blokes. The guards demanded every single thing we taken out the van. They looked through photos and saw a picture of one of them smoking in Turkey and said ‘You have drugs! We will find the drugs!’ and continued to swarm all over the van. At one point one of the guards was even peeling off the sticker on a board that said ‘Dairy Ice Creams’, there was a bloke on the roof checking the tires, a bloke under the van and a bloke in the van and a bloke unzipping and riffling through the bags as they were on the floor and a sniffer dog going over it all. Alex went to say hello to the dog - which appeared to be a docile cocker spaniel, but a word from the guard sent it suddenly beserk and trying to bite Alex’s leg. He got away with it but had pretty torn trousers…so it was close thing!
Photo: Alex not actually happy at all....probably not a great idea to take a photo with a guard next to you at the border either...doh!
Meanwhile, I was just sitting on this wall on my own and wishing I could get some Deet out the car to spray on my feet. The other thing that was worrying me was that Helen and I had done some washing and she’d put her stuff away, but basically various undergarments of mine were stuffed loose around the front (in fact before my underwear used to be hung on our map light - and I‘d probably just grabbed them off and stuffed them behind the seat). I just had this hideous thought that Daisy was next and all these male guards would start pulling out various personal items that I really didn’t want them too. So, when I remembered they were there, I started gesticulating at Helen…trying to get her to come over (as I wasn’t allowed off the wall). But she wouldn’t come over and I couldn’t exactly shout across the border that I wanted her to try and save me from humiliation. Anyway, the idiot guard that told me to stay by the wall seemed to have left the scene. So I decided that I’d go over to the cars and hoped no one would shout at me. When I got to Daisy, Ryan came up to me and whispered fairly subtly that I was married. Oh! Alright then. I didn’t know why or which one of the border guards was resulting in the blokes (for once) deciding that they would take the initiative in saying I was married.
By this point the guards had decided that they had enough of the van and that it seemed clean. So they started circling round Daisy. I hadn’t done much of a rescue job with my various floating items in the car - because the car was such a mess I couldn’t actually find anything! But….things turned out differently for us. Helen and I were lucky. I assume because it was all male guards they decided they weren’t going to invade our privacy so much. Instead they wanted the roof box opened and everything pulled out and opened the boot and had a bit of a rummage. They even checked under the bonnet in the air filter and in the sleeping bags. Meanwhile, as they were rummaging the car, I got out and sat on a seat to the side. The head honcho himself (certainly not a man to mess with considering the fairly intimidating situation we were in), he sat down next to me and started asking me questions. He started off with ‘Where do you come from?’ then ‘Who do you live with?’ I was SO glad I‘d been warned that I was supposed to be marrried, because I just would have caught myself out at the start otherwise. Instead, for the first time I was in this situation where I was actually going to have to use the cover story Helen and I came up with in Georgia. Please God Don’t let this man ask me about the names…because it would all go terribly wrong. BUT, luckily he didn’t. I told him I lived with my husband and he asked me where he was and I said he was at home, and he wanted to know why and I told him he was farmer and that he made wine. And then he started asking me about where my children where and when I said I didn’t have any, he started asking why not and we starting having this minor debate about how I was/wasn’t too young to be shooting out sprogs. Gawd…it went on, and I just sat there thinking…I must keep this bloke on side. I always tend to say the wrong thing.
Anyway, eventually I got up and started putting things back into the car, and the WWR car was just being finishing up being checked. I quietly spoke to Ryan and asked him what had prompted him to say I was married. He said that one of the guards had indicated me, whilst I was sitting on the wall getting annoyed, and had asked THEM whether he/they could take me off somewhere. I’m not quite sure whether Helen was included in that as well. BUT…the cheek of it….and the dodgyness! And I think the worst bit is that they probably weren’t being cheeky at all but actually thought they could have the right to do whatever they wanted without another bloke to tell them they couldn’t.
We were finally allowed out into Uzbekistan - after I think what was a 5.5hr crossing - which could have been worse but it felt like longer - mainly because we hadn’t done anything other than queuing and being shoved and watching our cars and belongings get molested. It was at least another dramatic part of the Tajikistan adventure if not one of the good bits.
The morning began thankfully calmly after the shenanigans of the previous two days. Our aim was to get to SWORDE-Teppa in Kurgan Tyube - a couple of hours drive away. We therefore had a bit of a lie in. Helen was feeling much better but still fragile and decided after reading the paperwork in the morning that she would stay on the altitude drugs until we got at of all of the big mountain countries. This might not have been necessary but probably psychologically helped everyone in terms of not wanting to contemplate facing again the panic of the night before. Although it did appear later that the downside of the pills was that they led to Helen getting exhausted or sleepier quicker. Helen said, that with reference to the night before, that she had felt so awful that if someone had offered to shoot her and leave her up the mountain it would have been tempting. So the morning was mainly spent sorting things out. We got some cash from a cash machine, found a shop which actually had lots of food in it and that we could binge on, and went out for a fry up. After breakfast we then started sorting/repacking the car. Whilst we were packing up the car, Helen accidentally managed to put to keys in the glove box and close the car door, which then locked us out. Luckily the boot was still open. So after remembering where the keys were in the first place, we then asked Alex whether he felt like going for a dive into the car. The car was tightly packed up consistently until about a foot off the ceiling. So Alex started his dive into the car just as Helen and I were approached by a local Tajik man who seemed really keen to try to talk to us. He was very smiley and tactile and seemed determined to try and make himself understood. So whilst he was earnestly talking to us, Alex’s feet were just sticking out the boot - which must have looked really odd but didn’t distract the guy who was standing next to the boot at all. Helen and I really couldn’t understand him, so then the guy got his wife. She stood there by his shoulder wearing her headscarf and dress, with many gold teeth and smiled at us the whole time. Finally something the bloke said clicked into place and it turned out that he was trying to say that (I can’t remember which way round it was) Helen was an angel and I was angelic. The chap was really in raptures, and his wife didn’t seem to mind that he was trying to recruit himself another wife. Helen and I felt a bit foolish as we had been desperately trying to figure out what he was saying before and the best we could come up with was that he was wanted to swop his wife’s hairband with one of ours….doh!! Anyway, Helen managed to cunningly get away from him and want around the side of the car - I was trying to get away without being rude and was backing away between Daisy and the Van, but he kept coming on and was getting really uncomfortably close. So I called out to Ryan and Alex, ‘Is it ok that one of you can be my husband?’ Alex said that was ok, so I shook my head at the guy and pointed in Alex’s direction and I think put my hand over my heart, or something like that. The chap then launched himself over to Ryan and Alex, and went into absolute paroxysms of overt friendliness, the guys suddenly found themselves squashed under each of his arms and being kissed many times over…meanwhile I sneaked away quite relieved. After we had gotten rid of the weird/friendly man and packed up, we took our leave of Dushanbe and headed of for Kurghan-Tyube. We didn’t know what to expect but found the road to be amazing. Really it was flawless and we made fast progress through some fairly nice views. Nothing in the same ball park as the day before though. Paul had given us directions and some landmarks, and after trundling down the main street of Kurghan-Tyube, knowing that we were close, we spotted him waiting for us on the pavement. The last time we had seen Paul was in Hyde Park, where we had very little time to meet him before heading off. We parked up and he introduced us Umed and some of the other people that worked with him. just arrived and being met by Paul We were then shown our way into the centre. The Sworde-Teppa centre is actually very impressive and according to Paul offers the best educational facilities in the whole of Tajikistan as well as has the best teachers. It is an impressive achievement but also reflects on the situation of Tajikistan, that the best facilities are not in the capital and are offered by a small and financially struggling charity. We sat down in the library and finally found the time to properly talk to Paul over our glasses of local fizzy pop. We then went exploring. The library itself is a strange mis-match of books. The centre has quite a lot but some of them are so old and obscure. We got quite a few laughs out of the ‘Learn how to disco dance’ book. Most of the library is on proper shelves but one side of the room the book shelves are made of cardboard boxes with planks between them. If we’d realised that we probably would have tried to bring along some shelves. The Sworde-Teppa Library (both Alex's photos) There are a couple of other rooms on the ground floor but of most interest for us was the laboratory. There was loads of stuff going on in there, not least loads of dead specimens of strange creatures. Best of all was an adorable desert hedgehog, christened Yoshi (or something like that), who had been rescued by one of the kids and that had become too tame to release back into the wild. We spent most of the time in that room, crowded round Yoshi’s tank and trying to touch his prickles. Apparently he would probably have been eaten by the locals if he was released outside. Yoshi - our Mongol Rally Mascot (Alex's photo), and the Sworde-Teppa laboratory Paul gave us a tour of the building, though it was mostly in the dark. I can’t remember exactly why he can’t turn on most of the lights - I think its something to do with local bureaucracy and only being allowed to have x number on at any one time. Overall, Paul seems to be trying to juggle a number of ridiculous demands being placed upon him. The main problem, which we weren’t aware of before hand, is that the centre itself is on a 3 year lease. Regardless of the fact that it was a derelict building before it was renovated by Sworde-T, the local authorities now want it for themselves. It seems completely illogical that it is the local community that benefits - the teaching ranges from the kids to the local police and government officials, and it will be the community and their long term prospects that will suffer if the centre shuts down. Even though the lease isn’t yet up - there is another year to go, the authorities are trying to make Paul’s life and the functioning of the centre as difficult as possible - usually by sending in a steady stream of local regulators during the week. Paul can only hope for two things: either when the lease is up, the local authorities will allow him to renew it (which seems unlikely), or he can attempt to buy the land and building. The only other alternative is to start all over again and build a new centre. One of his aims is to gain enough funding to at least buy some land in which he can set up another centre, or potentially expand outwards. It was lucky that we were visiting in peak summer. Apparently the winters in Tajikistan are very cold and the centre doesn’t have the money to run the generator throughout the winter to keep the centre warm. In fact, and I can write this now as I’m catching up with this blog and it is so much later…one of the Mongol Ralliers has just been out to visit the centre and try and give Paul some support. Graham has just got back and has said that it is indeed very cold, and the photos show him teaching in the classrooms in the semi-dark with everyone wrapped up in coats and woolly hats. Sworde-Teppa has some short term aims in terms of funding. Firstly, and the most immediate is to get enough money to use the generator throughout the winter months. Paul told us that in winter the electricity is shut off in Kurghan-Tyube and the generator is therefore necessary. Secondly, the saving of the centre itself - which is obviously a huge challenge within a short timescale. It is hoped that the inclusion of the Sworde-Teppa as an official charity that can be supported by teams in 2008 might help at least go someway towards raising some funds - though it is unlikely to be enough and depends on the number of teams that pledge their support. Everybody that visited the centre - Helen and I, Alex and Ryan, and Andrew and Ellis, had made the trip there on the faith that it would be worth it. We didn’t know what to expect of Tajikistan or of the charity we planned to visit - it was unknown and had no representatives in the UK. We collected some items that Paul had emailed across as a helpful list of things for the centre, and it would have been very easy for us to have been disappointed when we finally got there. Instead, what we found was a modest English bloke being supported by his staff, running a centre that was offering some the best facilities and opportunities within the whole country. The next day we popped into one of the classrooms and met the kids having their English lessons. Their teacher had never been to England and other than Paul, he had very little chance to chat to English speakers. He asked us after the lesson whether we could understand him and kept apologising, but to us he sounded brilliant and he was teaching the kids really well. The kids we met were actually all in their summer holidays but they chose to go to the centre to learn English anyway. We talked to them for about an hour and the impression we came away with, and that they directly told us, was that the most fun they had was at the centre, and that they love to learn English. They asked us the questions they had learned through their lessons, like: `Do you have any pets / brothers/ sisters / what do we do, etc etc, ’ but we also were fielding some coming in from the left field such as, ‘Are you rich?’ and they wanted to find out how much it costs to go to university in England. Some of the Sworde-T kids (Alex's photo) Paul runs the centre as sustainable as possible - the kids from the wealthier families pay for their lessons and this allows the poorer kids to have free tuition. Outside the classroom we met one young man who was introduced to us by Paul. This guy (and I couldn’t pronounce his name at the time) was the top student. He looked like he was about 14 but apparently had finished his education and wanted desperately to go to university in the UK or US. It was clear that talking to us meant the world to him - he was trying to be casual but at the same time was gripping his elbows and his voice was shaking. Paul said to us (and the boy knows), that if the centre had the money to send off the kids for scholarships (and they have managed to do that the odd time in the past) then this chap would be the one to go. However, regardless of the fact that Paul knows far more than we could on the subject, he was desperately trying to have an in depth conversation in English, but he thought that we might have some magical solution up our sleeves for him. It was for me, actually one of the most upsetting moments of the trip - because it meant so much to him and he was trying to not to show it, and he thought we might have the answer. I was talking to him and there was nothing I could say or do that could make any difference. And when he asked me for advice I couldn’t give him any, I could just refer him back to Paul. When we left the centre the next day, there was a scrawl in pen on the car saying ‘take me with you.’ I left Sword with only one big wish, and that was that kid someday gets to go to university in the West. The were a few instances of things that could make anyone bitter. That young man tried hard, excelled and was trying to fulfil his dreams of achieving, and for him, without changes to his country or direct intervention - it will be a physical impossibility. What exactly is the point of trying hard, learning and being clever, if there is no opportunities to let you get out of your situation? We heard a shocking story from Paul regarding Umed. Umed is a Tajik national and helps Paul run the centre. We met him briefly in London and he greeted up on arrival to the centre. Umed is apparently very clever and he took an exam that could result in a scholarship to an Ivy League university. The university had offered the scholarship to a Tajik national with the highest exam results and Umed came first. However, due to the corruption which is systematic within the authorities, and because Paul doesn’t want Sworde-T to be involved in bribery, Umed didn’t get to go. The University was told that someone else came first. So Umed is still in Tajikistan, and one can’t help but wonder at the irony that he is working for Sworde-T. Anyway, harking back a bit. We arrived, we were shown around, we were impressed. Paul mentioned to us in the library that he was invited to a wedding in a local village that evening and that we could go if we wanted. We all said yes and after being shown around, started smartening ourselves up for the wedding. We ended up with not much time to do that and as we were about to leave (we were later than planned), Paul dropped the bombshell that they hadn’t started the wedding because they were waiting for us!!! So that got us getting a move on, and we jumped in our cars and followed in a convoy through the night, to a village complete with the obligatory cows in the road. Paul had filled us in on some of the local customs, but nothing really could have prepared us for the evening. Firstly, Helen and I wandered along to where the music from, and in the dark tried to avoid stepping in various trenches and ditches, which did in fact claim a local woman walking near us. We came round the back of what we though was a building - and started trying to make our way through a crowd of women. Helen at this time, decided she was going to fall in a sludgy pit which couldn’t have been anticipated as we tried to get through the crowd. Lots of the ladies made ooo noises as they saw Helen go down, and many helpful hands went to pick her up. The crowd stopped at the front of the `building’ and suddenly we were in a large central space with two long lines of plastic tables and chairs, they ran from the stage platform (which we had been negotiating our way round the back of) to the far end where some bloke with a mike was setting up. So we walked into the area and saw the guys sitting down on about the third table and there were spare seats for Helen and I. We walked over, took our places and then realised just how many people were watching us. the crowd behind the boy in the stripey white top (above right) was the way we came to the wedding and it was in the midst of the crowd that Helen went and slipped into the ditch! A crowd of women ran from the platform to the speaker, about 100m and about 3 persons deep, there was the opposing line of tables, which was all women and they were also all looking at us. And then we realised that we were the only women that were not family and that were sitting on the bloke line of tables. Also, I thought for some reason that I probably wouldn’t be wearing my buff (which doubles as a hair covering) so I'd left it behind, and I looked around and saw every single woman wearing a scarf. Whoops. Ryan kindly lent me his. On the wedding platform, the bride and groom sat. After the music started and people were dancing the bride would often stand up, lift up her veil and bow three times. We couldn’t figure out what was triggering it, but eventually worked out that every time there was new dancer she would bow. The hospitality at this wedding was amazing! Our tables were crammed with food, we were in guest of honour places and were given vodka and whiskey, which the other tables didn’t get. When the music started, it was Loud…the men started dancing, and the women danced separately, there was a lot of finger clicking going on. The rally guys sat there petrified that they would be asked to dance. Paul sat looking stressed because he knew he was going to have to make a speech. Helen and I though it was great. When the ladies started dancing there was about 4 of them and I was smiling and clapping enthusiastically…until one of them decided I looked like I wanted a have a go. So I got taken out on the ‘dance floor’ and did my best to imitate the definitely difficult to acquire local dance...not helped by a complete lack of co-ordination and stomping around in flip-flops. After a little while I’d do the thumbs up and try to disappear back to the table. I don’t think the bride even got her chance at doing three bows. Ellis in fear of being dragged up to dance (Alx's) I'm quite fancying having a boogie (Alex's) The party mutated a bit until everyone was dancing together, the women, the men and the ralliers all doing their best to at least do a token dance in a big circle of wedding guests. It was awesome. Some of the men could really dance and were crouching down and spinning. The men generally partook in a lot of embacing, arm flapping, yelling and some rapid shuffling. Everybody had gold teeth and was smiling at us - even the kids. Funnily enough though, the groom who sits on the right on the bride has to sit at the table throughout all the celebrations and look miserable! He did a very good job of being stony faced but started to crumble during the speeches. The wedding drew to a close quite quickly - there is apparently some new law saying that there can’t be a public gathering, including weddings, that last for more than 3 hours. Its to stop conspirators plotting against the authorities apparently. We said our thanks, made our way out and tried to find our cars again. We got back to the centre, stayed up chatting over beers with Paul in the kitchen till 4am and then slept very well indeed.
The morning began thankfully calmly after the shenanigans of the previous two days. Our aim was to get to SWORDE-Teppa in Kurgan Tyube - a couple of hours drive away. We therefore had a bit of a lie in. Helen was feeling much better but still fragile and decided after reading the paperwork in the morning that she would stay on the altitude drugs until we got at of all of the big mountain countries. This might not have been necessary but probably psychologically helped everyone in terms of not wanting to contemplate facing again the panic of the night before. Although it did appear later that the downside of the pills was that they led to Helen getting exhausted or sleepier quicker. Helen said, that with reference to the night before, that she had felt so awful that if someone had offered to shoot her and leave her up the mountain it would have been tempting.
So the morning was mainly spent sorting things out. We got some cash from a cash machine, found a shop which actually had lots of food in it and that we could binge on, and went out for a fry up. After breakfast we then started sorting/repacking the car. Whilst we were packing up the car, Helen accidentally managed to put to keys in the glove box and close the car door, which then locked us out. Luckily the boot was still open. So after remembering where the keys were in the first place, we then asked Alex whether he felt like going for a dive into the car. The car was tightly packed up consistently until about a foot off the ceiling. So Alex started his dive into the car just as Helen and I were approached by a local Tajik man who seemed really keen to try to talk to us. He was very smiley and tactile and seemed determined to try and make himself understood.
So whilst he was earnestly talking to us, Alex’s feet were just sticking out the boot - which must have looked really odd but didn’t distract the guy who was standing next to the boot at all. Helen and I really couldn’t understand him, so then the guy got his wife. She stood there by his shoulder wearing her headscarf and dress, with many gold teeth and smiled at us the whole time. Finally something the bloke said clicked into place and it turned out that he was trying to say that (I can’t remember which way round it was) Helen was an angel and I was angelic. The chap was really in raptures, and his wife didn’t seem to mind that he was trying to recruit himself another wife. Helen and I felt a bit foolish as we had been desperately trying to figure out what he was saying before and the best we could come up with was that he was wanted to swop his wife’s hairband with one of ours….doh!! Anyway, Helen managed to cunningly get away from him and want around the side of the car - I was trying to get away without being rude and was backing away between Daisy and the Van, but he kept coming on and was getting really uncomfortably close. So I called out to Ryan and Alex, ‘Is it ok that one of you can be my husband?’ Alex said that was ok, so I shook my head at the guy and pointed in Alex’s direction and I think put my hand over my heart, or something like that. The chap then launched himself over to Ryan and Alex, and went into absolute paroxysms of overt friendliness, the guys suddenly found themselves squashed under each of his arms and being kissed many times over…meanwhile I sneaked away quite relieved.
After we had gotten rid of the weird/friendly man and packed up, we took our leave of Dushanbe and headed of for Kurghan-Tyube. We didn’t know what to expect but found the road to be amazing. Really it was flawless and we made fast progress through some fairly nice views. Nothing in the same ball park as the day before though. Paul had given us directions and some landmarks, and after trundling down the main street of Kurghan-Tyube, knowing that we were close, we spotted him waiting for us on the pavement.
The last time we had seen Paul was in Hyde Park, where we had very little time to meet him before heading off. We parked up and he introduced us Umed and some of the other people that worked with him.
just arrived and being met by Paul
We were then shown our way into the centre. The Sworde-Teppa centre is actually very impressive and according to Paul offers the best educational facilities in the whole of Tajikistan as well as has the best teachers. It is an impressive achievement but also reflects on the situation of Tajikistan, that the best facilities are not in the capital and are offered by a small and financially struggling charity.
We sat down in the library and finally found the time to properly talk to Paul over our glasses of local fizzy pop. We then went exploring. The library itself is a strange mis-match of books. The centre has quite a lot but some of them are so old and obscure. We got quite a few laughs out of the ‘Learn how to disco dance’ book. Most of the library is on proper shelves but one side of the room the book shelves are made of cardboard boxes with planks between them. If we’d realised that we probably would have tried to bring along some shelves.
The Sworde-Teppa Library (both Alex's photos)
There are a couple of other rooms on the ground floor but of most interest for us was the laboratory. There was loads of stuff going on in there, not least loads of dead specimens of strange creatures. Best of all was an adorable desert hedgehog, christened Yoshi (or something like that), who had been rescued by one of the kids and that had become too tame to release back into the wild. We spent most of the time in that room, crowded round Yoshi’s tank and trying to touch his prickles. Apparently he would probably have been eaten by the locals if he was released outside.
Yoshi - our Mongol Rally Mascot (Alex's photo), and the Sworde-Teppa laboratory
Paul gave us a tour of the building, though it was mostly in the dark. I can’t remember exactly why he can’t turn on most of the lights - I think its something to do with local bureaucracy and only being allowed to have x number on at any one time. Overall, Paul seems to be trying to juggle a number of ridiculous demands being placed upon him. The main problem, which we weren’t aware of before hand, is that the centre itself is on a 3 year lease. Regardless of the fact that it was a derelict building before it was renovated by Sworde-T, the local authorities now want it for themselves. It seems completely illogical that it is the local community that benefits - the teaching ranges from the kids to the local police and government officials, and it will be the community and their long term prospects that will suffer if the centre shuts down. Even though the lease isn’t yet up - there is another year to go, the authorities are trying to make Paul’s life and the functioning of the centre as difficult as possible - usually by sending in a steady stream of local regulators during the week. Paul can only hope for two things: either when the lease is up, the local authorities will allow him to renew it (which seems unlikely), or he can attempt to buy the land and building. The only other alternative is to start all over again and build a new centre. One of his aims is to gain enough funding to at least buy some land in which he can set up another centre, or potentially expand outwards.
It was lucky that we were visiting in peak summer. Apparently the winters in Tajikistan are very cold and the centre doesn’t have the money to run the generator throughout the winter to keep the centre warm. In fact, and I can write this now as I’m catching up with this blog and it is so much later…one of the Mongol Ralliers has just been out to visit the centre and try and give Paul some support. Graham has just got back and has said that it is indeed very cold, and the photos show him teaching in the classrooms in the semi-dark with everyone wrapped up in coats and woolly hats. Sworde-Teppa has some short term aims in terms of funding. Firstly, and the most immediate is to get enough money to use the generator throughout the winter months. Paul told us that in winter the electricity is shut off in Kurghan-Tyube and the generator is therefore necessary. Secondly, the saving of the centre itself - which is obviously a huge challenge within a short timescale. It is hoped that the inclusion of the Sworde-Teppa as an official charity that can be supported by teams in 2008 might help at least go someway towards raising some funds - though it is unlikely to be enough and depends on the number of teams that pledge their support.
Everybody that visited the centre - Helen and I, Alex and Ryan, and Andrew and Ellis, had made the trip there on the faith that it would be worth it. We didn’t know what to expect of Tajikistan or of the charity we planned to visit - it was unknown and had no representatives in the UK. We collected some items that Paul had emailed across as a helpful list of things for the centre, and it would have been very easy for us to have been disappointed when we finally got there. Instead, what we found was a modest English bloke being supported by his staff, running a centre that was offering some the best facilities and opportunities within the whole country. The next day we popped into one of the classrooms and met the kids having their English lessons. Their teacher had never been to England and other than Paul, he had very little chance to chat to English speakers. He asked us after the lesson whether we could understand him and kept apologising, but to us he sounded brilliant and he was teaching the kids really well. The kids we met were actually all in their summer holidays but they chose to go to the centre to learn English anyway. We talked to them for about an hour and the impression we came away with, and that they directly told us, was that the most fun they had was at the centre, and that they love to learn English. They asked us the questions they had learned through their lessons, like: `Do you have any pets / brothers/ sisters / what do we do, etc etc, ’ but we also were fielding some coming in from the left field such as, ‘Are you rich?’ and they wanted to find out how much it costs to go to university in England.
Some of the Sworde-T kids (Alex's photo) Paul runs the centre as sustainable as possible - the kids from the wealthier families pay for their lessons and this allows the poorer kids to have free tuition.
Outside the classroom we met one young man who was introduced to us by Paul. This guy (and I couldn’t pronounce his name at the time) was the top student. He looked like he was about 14 but apparently had finished his education and wanted desperately to go to university in the UK or US. It was clear that talking to us meant the world to him - he was trying to be casual but at the same time was gripping his elbows and his voice was shaking. Paul said to us (and the boy knows), that if the centre had the money to send off the kids for scholarships (and they have managed to do that the odd time in the past) then this chap would be the one to go. However, regardless of the fact that Paul knows far more than we could on the subject, he was desperately trying to have an in depth conversation in English, but he thought that we might have some magical solution up our sleeves for him. It was for me, actually one of the most upsetting moments of the trip - because it meant so much to him and he was trying to not to show it, and he thought we might have the answer. I was talking to him and there was nothing I could say or do that could make any difference. And when he asked me for advice I couldn’t give him any, I could just refer him back to Paul. When we left the centre the next day, there was a scrawl in pen on the car saying ‘take me with you.’ I left Sword with only one big wish, and that was that kid someday gets to go to university in the West. The were a few instances of things that could make anyone bitter. That young man tried hard, excelled and was trying to fulfil his dreams of achieving, and for him, without changes to his country or direct intervention - it will be a physical impossibility. What exactly is the point of trying hard, learning and being clever, if there is no opportunities to let you get out of your situation?
We heard a shocking story from Paul regarding Umed. Umed is a Tajik national and helps Paul run the centre. We met him briefly in London and he greeted up on arrival to the centre. Umed is apparently very clever and he took an exam that could result in a scholarship to an Ivy League university. The university had offered the scholarship to a Tajik national with the highest exam results and Umed came first. However, due to the corruption which is systematic within the authorities, and because Paul doesn’t want Sworde-T to be involved in bribery, Umed didn’t get to go. The University was told that someone else came first. So Umed is still in Tajikistan, and one can’t help but wonder at the irony that he is working for Sworde-T.
Anyway, harking back a bit. We arrived, we were shown around, we were impressed. Paul mentioned to us in the library that he was invited to a wedding in a local village that evening and that we could go if we wanted. We all said yes and after being shown around, started smartening ourselves up for the wedding. We ended up with not much time to do that and as we were about to leave (we were later than planned), Paul dropped the bombshell that they hadn’t started the wedding because they were waiting for us!!!
So that got us getting a move on, and we jumped in our cars and followed in a convoy through the night, to a village complete with the obligatory cows in the road. Paul had filled us in on some of the local customs, but nothing really could have prepared us for the evening.
Firstly, Helen and I wandered along to where the music from, and in the dark tried to avoid stepping in various trenches and ditches, which did in fact claim a local woman walking near us. We came round the back of what we though was a building - and started trying to make our way through a crowd of women. Helen at this time, decided she was going to fall in a sludgy pit which couldn’t have been anticipated as we tried to get through the crowd. Lots of the ladies made ooo noises as they saw Helen go down, and many helpful hands went to pick her up. The crowd stopped at the front of the `building’ and suddenly we were in a large central space with two long lines of plastic tables and chairs, they ran from the stage platform (which we had been negotiating our way round the back of) to the far end where some bloke with a mike was setting up. So we walked into the area and saw the guys sitting down on about the third table and there were spare seats for Helen and I. We walked over, took our places and then realised just how many people were watching us.
the crowd behind the boy in the stripey white top (above right) was the way we came to the wedding and it was in the midst of the crowd that Helen went and slipped into the ditch!
A crowd of women ran from the platform to the speaker, about 100m and about 3 persons deep, there was the opposing line of tables, which was all women and they were also all looking at us. And then we realised that we were the only women that were not family and that were sitting on the bloke line of tables. Also, I thought for some reason that I probably wouldn’t be wearing my buff (which doubles as a hair covering) so I'd left it behind, and I looked around and saw every single woman wearing a scarf. Whoops. Ryan kindly lent me his.
On the wedding platform, the bride and groom sat. After the music started and people were dancing the bride would often stand up, lift up her veil and bow three times. We couldn’t figure out what was triggering it, but eventually worked out that every time there was new dancer she would bow. The hospitality at this wedding was amazing! Our tables were crammed with food, we were in guest of honour places and were given vodka and whiskey, which the other tables didn’t get. When the music started, it was Loud…the men started dancing, and the women danced separately, there was a lot of finger clicking going on. The rally guys sat there petrified that they would be asked to dance. Paul sat looking stressed because he knew he was going to have to make a speech. Helen and I though it was great. When the ladies started dancing there was about 4 of them and I was smiling and clapping enthusiastically…until one of them decided I looked like I wanted a have a go. So I got taken out on the ‘dance floor’ and did my best to imitate the definitely difficult to acquire local dance...not helped by a complete lack of co-ordination and stomping around in flip-flops. After a little while I’d do the thumbs up and try to disappear back to the table. I don’t think the bride even got her chance at doing three bows.
Ellis in fear of being dragged up to dance (Alx's)
I'm quite fancying having a boogie (Alex's)
The party mutated a bit until everyone was dancing together, the women, the men and the ralliers all doing their best to at least do a token dance in a big circle of wedding guests. It was awesome. Some of the men could really dance and were crouching down and spinning. The men generally partook in a lot of embacing, arm flapping, yelling and some rapid shuffling. Everybody had gold teeth and was smiling at us - even the kids. Funnily enough though, the groom who sits on the right on the bride has to sit at the table throughout all the celebrations and look miserable! He did a very good job of being stony faced but started to crumble during the speeches.
The wedding drew to a close quite quickly - there is apparently some new law saying that there can’t be a public gathering, including weddings, that last for more than 3 hours. Its to stop conspirators plotting against the authorities apparently. We said our thanks, made our way out and tried to find our cars again. We got back to the centre, stayed up chatting over beers with Paul in the kitchen till 4am and then slept very well indeed.
This border post was unlike anything we had seen or were to see again on the whole of the trip. There was a massive contrast between the Uzbek side and the Tajik side. We drove over to a small hand painted army camouflaged shack. We got out the cars and were told to go in with the machina passports (as per usual), so we walked up the steps, along a small corridor to a tiny room…at which point the guard who was in front of us, screwed the light bulb into the one lone socket hanging from the brown painted very bumpy looking ceiling. The room was very spare with a table and bench and a filing cabinet, there was space for about 4 people top sit down at the bench. One of the officers sat down and started playing around with paperwork whilst the other one went to the cabinet and starting bringing out books, presumably telling them what they were to do with us. We were then invited to sit next to them on the bench and started filling out the usual paperwork and duplicates and I think a total car tax of $100. When that was done they started telling us (and its all through charades) that they thought we were all very tall, and then the chap asked me who the chief was! As they seemed to have such a great respect for height, I nominated Ellis, being as he is 6ft6! So there was some other random attempts at communication and then they took us back to the cars. They didn’t want to sign the cars, but they did want to have a look in the van. The guard’s eyes lit up when he saw that ICA were carrying a mini-guitar and he grabbed it and put in my hands whilst telling me to play something. I told him I really couldn’t play guitar but he wasn’t having it, he instructed me to play and looked quite severe and refused to move. So I felt completely stupid strumming it, with an awful noise coming out, and the guy started hopping around, grinning and dancing immediately in front of me. It was so very odd. So anyway, he then made out to Alex that he wanted him to follow him back into the shack. We didn’t know what was going on but hoped it was all ok. We heard raised voiced out the window and thought Alex might be being asked to pay some money or something. Anyway, after about 15 minutes Alex came out and said ‘He wants a present. He wants a present from England.’ So apparently the bloke had just been raising his voice at Alex because Alex couldn’t understand what was going on for quite a while. So we all started wondering what we could give them and I said that I had the whiskies, etc. So Alex took one of the whiskeys and then he came back and said that it wasn’t what they were after, and that they didn’t want money or alcohol but preferably aftershave or something with the union jack on, or something like that . So we were a bit stuck and then ICA remembered that they had some furry mini-dice that they had been trying to offload for ages. So Alex took the furry mini dice into the shack and was there awhile. He came out with the furry dice, saying that the two guards had played around and thrown them around for a while, but they ultimately decided that they didn’t want them either. The guards decided that we could after all go on our way, so we waved them off and headed off down a gravel track into Tajikistan dodging the now standard donkeys and pedestrians in the road. We hadn’t been on the road too long before we happened upon the town on Penjikent. We had been told by the guards at the border to not drive at night, and so we were looking at the LP Guide and trying to find a large nice hotel that was supposed to be in the area. We drive right through the centre of town, there were not many cars and people generally looked gobsmacked to see us. There was a disconcerting moment as we drove past a house, where a woman was bending over a ditch and it sounded like she was killing a cat. Weird …and we didn’t want to find out, but I felt more comfortable thinking that perhaps it was a chicken I was hearing being slaughtered. We pulled over to a lady and her family and I asked her for directions - she clearly didn’t register and just looked into my face looking bemused for a while. When I showed her the map she just nodded and smiled at me and that was all she did do, regardless of where I pointed. So we gave up on that and pulled in at the petrol station. As we filled up the tanks the locals started trying to give us directions to the local hotel, they also told us not to drive at night by pointing in the direction we were heading and on the map and doing a large cross with their arms and then doing wave like motions. Anyway, then an ambulance pulled into the petrol station, they started to get involved in the directions to the hotel and then told us to follow them. So we followed the ambulance, which had its lights flashing through the centre of the town and up a hill to a large gate and some large building. We said thank you and they left us to it. We made our way into the foyer that had no lights on, and the guy there told us to follow him. He took us outside and through the patio to some rooms. He opened the door and we were greeted by a strong musty dank smell He turned on the light and we wandered in to inspect the worst place we had come across (well - at least that Helen and I had). The room probably hadn’t been used for about 40 years, everything was falling apart and everything looked like a bit of a health hazard. There was an entrance hall with a bathroom to our left, a bedroom in front of us to the left and a living room in front and to the right. Firstly, the bathroom - They had kindly provided us with towels…but there was no running water. The chap kindly said he would ‘bring us some water’ and this materialised in two buckets. Frankly, I thought the bathroom could have been worse, but two of the guys were sick and didn’t feel that they wanted to inflict themselves on the facilities of a bathroom with no water. So.. not promising. (all photos here borrowed from Alex). It probably wouldn’t have been such a let down if we hadn’t initially thought we’d found the right place. our lovely bathroom The bedroom consisted of two beds - but they were pretty festy looking - the usual sad lone undersized sheet tried to cover the festy mattress but didn’t succeed. However, there was a nice attempt at giving us some blankets. The rest of the room was disintegrating - honestly. There were a lot of holes in the walls. Our lovely bedroom The living room turned out to be the second bedroom and had two festy, very dusty torn sofas and some hideous waterfall picture over one wall. But there was an old tv (see I’m being fair). Overall it was probably the best room. Our lovely lounge / second bedroom (+ Ellis of WWR) So anyway, we looked around pretty disheartened and realised this couldn’t possibly be the place mentioned in the LP guide. We asked how much the rooms were and were told $60 for one night for one room!! They were clearly taking the Michael! So we said ok and made out way to the cars - what we meant to say was ‘we will think about it,’ but I think no one actually said that so the bloke probably thought we were coming back. We went back to the cars and decided to get out of the awful place. We headed back out again in convoy to the main road and almost immediately got flagged and pulled over by the police. The guy started enquiring where we were going and we told him we were looking for this posh(er) hotel and he said that we must go with him. Anyway, he put on his flashing lights and emergency style took us back to the place we had just left. We said thanks and he left and we felt like complete fools. We’d done a runner after clearly turning our noses up to the owner and came back escorted by the police with very little choice! We sat in the car park and looked for the hidden clues in the LP book…where were we going wrong? Anyway, Ryan then looking shamefaced confessed that he’d been managing to look at the wrong place/page the whole time. In fact, the LP book said that in Penjikent there were two places to stay - one was really grim and the other one was even grimmer - so just go to least grim place. We realised that we must be at the least grim place and other than sleeping in the car we didn’t have much choice. I was in Daisy with Alex, and we sat there, indignant that the bloke was trying to charge us $60 and refusing on principle, we would have slept in the car. But the others didn’t feel the same, the guys who were sick wanted a loo - even if it was rubbish, and they ended up getting a separate apartment to themselves. Everyone hung out in our apartment through the evening and went out onto the joint balcony that adjoined our bedroom and the lounge (sounds nice doesn’t it?) . After a protracted time trying to figure out how the MSR stove worked, there was cooked up a magnificent noodily and pasta dinner, washed down with whiskey. Although by the time Ryan had cooked the pasta Alex was already fast asleep so never got any (we did at least debate about waking him up). Ellis almost managed to electrocute himself whilst trying to turn the tv on (because it involved touching a wall socket in extreme disrepair), but then found the Russian dubbed Die Hard which made everything good with the world. When I retired to my room I found Helen was risking sleeping on one of the beds but I spread out the bug sheet and made my self comfortable on the floor. It was all one hell of an introduction to Tajikistan. Day 2 -Tajikistan Helen woke me up as usual to tell me that I had missed breakfast through oversleeping, but that it was a great breakfast and that there was no time to have it anymore. So, anyway, I took against that and decided that even if food was no longer available I would at least go and have a cup of morning tea. I ended up getting offered a cold frankfurter and some very cold egg. Such a shame as I was having major fried egg cravings and I did miss out. My trip in general was typified by cravings - chocolate, friend eggs and bizarrely flip flops being the main ones. So we packed up and headed out of Penjikent. Even just by walking to the cars we were greeted by the most fabulous view of the mountains towering around us and it was beautiful clear blue sky. I took photos but lost my camera in Mongolia - so its a bit lacking. The aim of the day was to get to Kurgan-Tyube, which is south of the capital Dushanbe. We had been told by Paul of the charity that we would have a high pass to go over with a road in severe disrepair and that we would touch snow on the tops. The chap I spoke to in Samarkand told us that he thought our cars would be able to make it and that we got to drive through a glacier - but I didn’t really register that, probably because it sounded a bit far fetched. So we headed off and started getting into the Tajik countryside - almost immediately from the time of leaving Penjikent the views we came across were stunning. It started off with us driving alongside a wide, lush valley with a river flowing through it. Lots of donkeys and almost no traffic. We started gaining altitude gradually and the roads were pretty dusty but not too pot holed. We crossed over the sides of valleys by driving over sparse metal bridges that crossed raging torrential rivers. Just some of the bridge crossings (Alex photos): Everyone waved at us - from the little kids who tried to run alongside the car to the woman balancing stuff on their heads and wearing their bright dresses, to the builders at the houses we passed. The kids made whooping noises to try and get our attention as we passed and when we stopped they would surround the car and try to beep the horn or just stare at us in fascination. They had all the enthusiasm of the Uzbek kids but none of the savvyness or hardness that we saw so much of in the cities or at borders. The more we drove the more the views left us stunned. We didn’t believe it could get any better but every corner we came round opened into another vista of beauty unlike we had come across anywhere else. There were no words that could describe what we were seeing or how we felt about it. We just kept taking photos and filming on the camcorder, and we said wow a lot - but it felt inadequate saying something. (Ellis's photo i think, could be Andrews) Alex's photo The road did start getting a lot rougher. The roadworks were appalling and cropped up mainly in the towns. The theory behind the roadworks appears to be that a track thats good enough for a JCB is good enough for a car. It made me feel uneasy when a huge digger inched past me with a huge load of rocks, being driven by a person who looked to be about 14 and then just as we realised that, the rocks started tumbling out, falling next to my window. There was a lot of driving along unsurfaced roads along very steep valley sides, but it didn’t tend to be too windy and so the views were amazing. At some point during the early afternoon, Helen crashed out - she said she was so exhausted that she wasn’t enjoying the view anymore and not taking it in. I guess that we were all fairly knackered but the scenery just left me flying elated most of the day. It was truelly the first time we felt we were really ‘out there.’ After one of the sections driving along a valley side we were held up. There was a pretty large queue, mainly of large Kamaz (?) the Russian trucks, parked up and snaking their way along the sides of the valley. As we came round the bend and started slowing for the queue we could see a digger at work in the middle of the trucks, effectively trying to put the road back together. There had either been a large rock fall off the towering mountain faces we were driving right next to, or there had been a landslide. In any case it was digging a nice indent onto the side of the cliff - below the road and above the river, just in case a car happened to fall off, it wouldn’t necessarily fall into the river below. (Alex's) We were stuck there for a while but eventually we all got moving. Unfortunately we were now ensconced driving behind probably about 20 trucks that were kicking up huge amounts of dust. Also, when we got round the corner, there was a small bridge and then the road become much more windy - going under cliff overhangs, and the road was narrow enough to make the passing of trucks in the other direction an uneasy affair. (Alex's) Helen and I soaked bandanas and tried to cover our faces to help breathing with the air so clogged up. We eventually got shot of the trucks and started making our way towards where it started to get higher. We had a small river crossing to get through, where a river burbled across the road, and I also had to pull over and get my feet in some of the beautiful clear mountain lakes we were driving next to. As we got more and more remote, we started passing through a lot of completely undeveloped villages. Apparently these villages in the mountains are only open for 4 months due to the heavy snows that cover the country and particularly the mountains most of the year. This road from Penjikent is also only recently completed. Anyway, driving along this road was really interesting for us and I think really interesting for the locals as well. I couldn’t help but remind myself that we were the first rally cars to make this journey and potentially some of the first westerners the locals had clapped their eyes on. At the same time, the level of poverty that seemed to be prevalent in these remote villages was striking. Although some aspects we had seen before in Uzbekistan, like the washing of clothes, etc, next to the road in puddles or ditches, here it felt more pressing - probably because of the complete lack of services, infrastructure and the incredibly dramatic harsh terrain. The village houses would usually be perched and jammed together on the less steep sides of the mountain bases next to or above the road, and were offset by jagged red cliff faces and mountains rising up immediately behind them. The houses were generally rectangular and made of boulders, with no decoration, etc. The local population all relied on their donkey for helping with the carrying of bundles of sticks or hay and as a mode of transport. As with the other ‘stans so far, all the kids, even the little ones, seemed to be working their socks off. So anyway, we finally started getting on to the section that was the Anzob pass (3,500m). We crawled up a steep, fairly wide, dusty road for ages and after about an hour were convinced we must be getting near the top. We were so wrong. The road went up and up and up, the air started getting thinner and colder and we started getting some pretty incredible views. Unbelievably for us, as we rounded a corner and felt like we were on top of the world (though more gradually climbing it) we saw a glacier in front of us, and then we realised that we had already passed a section that was below us. As we got closer to it, we realised that we were in fact going to drive through it. I was confounded and whooping with delight as we had a clear view of the Ice Cream Van drive right through the centre of it, with ice walls on either side, and then it was our turn. The WWR Micra actually stopped and they stuck out their hand and had a taste as they drove through. It was madness. So we continued up and the path once again started getting steeper. We stopped off a couple of times to check out the view and take some pictures. But we left the cars running as we were afraid that the air was so thin if we turned them off they wouldn’t start again. Helen was really struggling with Daisy as she just couldn’t find the power to keep going. She often just ground to a halt and I would have to get out, give her a push and then walk to catch up. When we stopped another time, Alex and I saw a pretty cool dust devil whipped up on the road behind the cars and Helen told me that she was having a struggle with her breathing and felt we needed to move on asap. Although Andrew didn’t look too happy either, it was Helen that was finding that the dust was irritating her asthma and said she was starting to get shakey. When she told me that, I said I felt I should drive, but she was adamant that it made no difference and shut off that conversation. Before this point and shortly afterwards, Helen had been really snapping at me, she’d also said that she’d had a headache but I just didn’t pick up on the warning signs. She’d even asked me in the car what the symptoms were of altitude sickness , but because she didn’t mention anything was wrong I just reeled off about half of them i.e. and the ones that came to mind. So perhaps, if she’d said she had a headache and then asked and I checked the sheets I had bought, it might have been flagged up sooner - not that it would have made any difference, but it might have made more sense when Helen started coming up with the odd thing that didn’t make much sense to me. Actually, I only have one example, which was when Daisy ground to a halt again and we were stuck, she was determined she could get her going again but she couldn’t and I got out. I was going to give Daisy a push but Helen barked at me not to push. Alex came up and said ‘Are we pushing?’ and with the window open and not wanting to get Helen more angry, I said ‘no…we’re not pushing.’ Which made absolutely no sense as we weren’t going anywhere….anyway, Alex ignored it, gave Daisy a push and got her moving again. It was worrying though that night seemed to be closing in and we still hadn’t got to the top. We had been advised not to drive on the normal Tajik roads at night, and I was wondering how much of a handful it was going to be getting down off the Anzob Pass in the dark. Anyway, things took a huge turn of the dramatic as I was happily filming out the window and Helen said rapidly ‘I can’t breathe!’ ‘What? ! You can’t breathe??’ Oh no. So I told her to stop the car and get her head down. I didn’t know what the hell I was saying or what was good advice but it sounded about right at the time. Luckily, this was the one section of road that Daisy hadn’t struggled with. She had managed to pick up speed and we had overtaken all the others in the hope that by keeping the momentum going she wouldn’t stop. So when Helen said she couldn’t breathe ,I’d jumped out the car and pelted down the mountain a bit and flagged down the Ice Cream Van and the WWR Micra. I ran up to the van and just said ‘Helen can’t breathe. What do we do?,’ and then, not feeling like I conveyed the urgency, when I got to the Micra I said ‘Helen can’t breathe. AT ALL!!.’ Everyone got out the cars and started running up to Daisy. Helen was sitting on the seat, with her legs out and her head down gasping. I suggested her inhaler, which she thought was in her pocket. It wasn’t and her hands we shaking massively. So I dug around and found it, gave it to her and we all stood there wondering what the hell we were going to do. We knew that if it was altitude sickness we just had to get her down as soon as possible. But heading down after coming so far and taking so long, and having absolutely no other options than this one road, left us knowing that we had little choice but to keep going up. But, we couldn’t justify the risk if there was far to go. There was a car coming down the mountains, it was now almost dark, and I flagged it down. The guy wound down the window and I tried to explain what was going on and that I wanted to know how much further up it was. He eventually seemed to understand and I thought was trying to tell me 2km. So it was decided that Helen would go into the van, with Andrew as a supporting passenger and Ryan driving, Ellis and Alex were in the Micra (of which the suspension was dying), and I had to drive up Daisy alone. It was necessary as we had absolutely no choice but to get to the top asap, and with less weight in Daisy (as she was now stationary) she had less chance of getting stuck again. I said lots of very very nice and encouraging words to that car to get her up to the top of the mountain. It turned out to be only about 200m to the summit and when we got there the van overtook and flew and thumped its way down the other side at suicidal speed. At some point Alex became my passenger as Daisy had more ground clearance and a stronger suspension than the car Ellis was trying to get down the mountain with the least damage. There were points when Daisy was in fourth gear and sliding and smashing into potholes and large rocks on the cliff edges, as we made our way down in the dark. It was probably a very good thing we couldn’t really see what we were doing. Most of the time the van was almost out of sight, but time to time I managed to catch up, and we saw black smoke pouring out the exhaust and we couldn’t figure out how Ryan was managing to pull the speeds out that he was doing. We pulled over every half an hour or so to get an update on Helen, but she appeared to actually be getting worse. We kept the pedal to the metal and kept going as fast as possible for hours just trying to get as low as possible. Visibility was at times almost zero because of the heavy dust and we would be going at 40mph. Although the situation felt dire it turned into an exhilarating adrenaline rush, where I was flipping between mild panic and worry that Helen was going to cop it, and then laughing manically as the driving got crazier. Alex had the job of sorting through the pills that were stuffed into the medical box, reading up on the notes I’d bought and deciding what was the stuff we should get Helen on. We gave her a couple of pills but they didn’t seem to be working. We couldn’t stop, the road was such a mess and like a permanent construction site as we started getting lower and there were still no towns. We kept pushing on to Dushanbe. We tried to use the sat phone we had for emergencies but couldn’t contact any of the medical people who could give us advice. By the time we started reaching a better road we pulled over into a petrol station and Helen was helped out of the van to be sick. Andrew came over to tell us that she now had a fever. That rung a bell and looking at the medical notes it said that fever was one of the signs of cerebral edema, one of the life threatening forms that altitude sickness could develop into. This got me panicking and trying to get the sat phone working again. We had some strong steroid type drugs but without speaking to an expert I didn’t want to be responsible for giving them to Helen. So we kept driving on to Dushanbe, I kept trying to get Alex trying on the sat phone and when we finally got the experts ring tone we got his answer machine. I then got my pharmacist housemate on the line, who got me the drugs…started telling her but then got cut off. We then couldn’t reconnect. Finally, as we were getting into Dushanbe and spotted a big hotel in the centre we managed to get my friend Holly, a doctor on the line. I was so wound up by then and with the hotel in front of me was utterly on edge and then managed to get pulled over by a policeman. This idiot, who was strutting around self importantly, insisted on seeing our documents - that had got lost in the car in the panic, and secondly Helen had repacked the car and I had no idea where most things were anymore. I sent off Alex to speak to Holly and started shouting at the policeman. He just stood there, whilst I huffed and puffed and then motioned he wanted me to open the roof box! Idiot! Anyway, I found some form of document that he couldn’t be bothered to look at, I got the keys into the roof box and then he just said ‘what is your name?’ I said ‘Sophie’ and he made some noise and waved with his little red baton as if you go ‘You may go.’ So I jumped back in the car - everyone was now already parked up outside the hotel, and I pulled a completely illegal manoeuvre across the traffic lights and opposing traffic, risking a side on collision and pulled up outside the hotel. This manoeuvre had inevitably been seen by about 5 policeman, of which one came over indignantly trying to explain that I just wasn’t allowed to do that. Alex and Ryan then immediately intercepted him and started the usual charm offensive that had the police man smiling and shaking their hands and walking off happily in about 3 minutes. Helen thankfully looked like she was taking a turn for the better and was talking to Holly over the phone, whilst sitting in the van in the hotel car park. Someone checked out the hotel, which is the biggest or most established in the capital, and it turned out to only have communal corridor bathrooms and dormitory rooms. So we trundled along to another one, which happened to be worse and could only offer a room on a high floor but had no lifts nor running water. So we went back to the first one, got settled into the rooms and Helen went immediately to bed, whilst we sat in the other room unwinding over some pot noodles and cuppa soups.
This border post was unlike anything we had seen or were to see again on the whole of the trip. There was a massive contrast between the Uzbek side and the Tajik side. We drove over to a small hand painted army camouflaged shack. We got out the cars and were told to go in with the machina passports (as per usual), so we walked up the steps, along a small corridor to a tiny room…at which point the guard who was in front of us, screwed the light bulb into the one lone socket hanging from the brown painted very bumpy looking ceiling. The room was very spare with a table and bench and a filing cabinet, there was space for about 4 people top sit down at the bench. One of the officers sat down and started playing around with paperwork whilst the other one went to the cabinet and starting bringing out books, presumably telling them what they were to do with us. We were then invited to sit next to them on the bench and started filling out the usual paperwork and duplicates and I think a total car tax of $100.
When that was done they started telling us (and its all through charades) that they thought we were all very tall, and then the chap asked me who the chief was! As they seemed to have such a great respect for height, I nominated Ellis, being as he is 6ft6! So there was some other random attempts at communication and then they took us back to the cars. They didn’t want to sign the cars, but they did want to have a look in the van. The guard’s eyes lit up when he saw that ICA were carrying a mini-guitar and he grabbed it and put in my hands whilst telling me to play something. I told him I really couldn’t play guitar but he wasn’t having it, he instructed me to play and looked quite severe and refused to move. So I felt completely stupid strumming it, with an awful noise coming out, and the guy started hopping around, grinning and dancing immediately in front of me. It was so very odd.
So anyway, he then made out to Alex that he wanted him to follow him back into the shack. We didn’t know what was going on but hoped it was all ok. We heard raised voiced out the window and thought Alex might be being asked to pay some money or something. Anyway, after about 15 minutes Alex came out and said ‘He wants a present. He wants a present from England.’ So apparently the bloke had just been raising his voice at Alex because Alex couldn’t understand what was going on for quite a while. So we all started wondering what we could give them and I said that I had the whiskies, etc. So Alex took one of the whiskeys and then he came back and said that it wasn’t what they were after, and that they didn’t want money or alcohol but preferably aftershave or something with the union jack on, or something like that . So we were a bit stuck and then ICA remembered that they had some furry mini-dice that they had been trying to offload for ages. So Alex took the furry mini dice into the shack and was there awhile. He came out with the furry dice, saying that the two guards had played around and thrown them around for a while, but they ultimately decided that they didn’t want them either. The guards decided that we could after all go on our way, so we waved them off and headed off down a gravel track into Tajikistan dodging the now standard donkeys and pedestrians in the road.
We hadn’t been on the road too long before we happened upon the town on Penjikent. We had been told by the guards at the border to not drive at night, and so we were looking at the LP Guide and trying to find a large nice hotel that was supposed to be in the area. We drive right through the centre of town, there were not many cars and people generally looked gobsmacked to see us. There was a disconcerting moment as we drove past a house, where a woman was bending over a ditch and it sounded like she was killing a cat. Weird …and we didn’t want to find out, but I felt more comfortable thinking that perhaps it was a chicken I was hearing being slaughtered.
We pulled over to a lady and her family and I asked her for directions - she clearly didn’t register and just looked into my face looking bemused for a while. When I showed her the map she just nodded and smiled at me and that was all she did do, regardless of where I pointed. So we gave up on that and pulled in at the petrol station. As we filled up the tanks the locals started trying to give us directions to the local hotel, they also told us not to drive at night by pointing in the direction we were heading and on the map and doing a large cross with their arms and then doing wave like motions. Anyway, then an ambulance pulled into the petrol station, they started to get involved in the directions to the hotel and then told us to follow them. So we followed the ambulance, which had its lights flashing through the centre of the town and up a hill to a large gate and some large building. We said thank you and they left us to it.
We made our way into the foyer that had no lights on, and the guy there told us to follow him. He took us outside and through the patio to some rooms. He opened the door and we were greeted by a strong musty dank smell He turned on the light and we wandered in to inspect the worst place we had come across (well - at least that Helen and I had). The room probably hadn’t been used for about 40 years, everything was falling apart and everything looked like a bit of a health hazard. There was an entrance hall with a bathroom to our left, a bedroom in front of us to the left and a living room in front and to the right.
Firstly, the bathroom - They had kindly provided us with towels…but there was no running water. The chap kindly said he would ‘bring us some water’ and this materialised in two buckets. Frankly, I thought the bathroom could have been worse, but two of the guys were sick and didn’t feel that they wanted to inflict themselves on the facilities of a bathroom with no water. So.. not promising. (all photos here borrowed from Alex). It probably wouldn’t have been such a let down if we hadn’t initially thought we’d found the right place.
our lovely bathroom
The bedroom consisted of two beds - but they were pretty festy looking - the usual sad lone undersized sheet tried to cover the festy mattress but didn’t succeed. However, there was a nice attempt at giving us some blankets. The rest of the room was disintegrating - honestly. There were a lot of holes in the walls.
Our lovely bedroom
The living room turned out to be the second bedroom and had two festy, very dusty torn sofas and some hideous waterfall picture over one wall. But there was an old tv (see I’m being fair). Overall it was probably the best room.
Our lovely lounge / second bedroom (+ Ellis of WWR)
So anyway, we looked around pretty disheartened and realised this couldn’t possibly be the place mentioned in the LP guide. We asked how much the rooms were and were told $60 for one night for one room!! They were clearly taking the Michael! So we said ok and made out way to the cars - what we meant to say was ‘we will think about it,’ but I think no one actually said that so the bloke probably thought we were coming back. We went back to the cars and decided to get out of the awful place. We headed back out again in convoy to the main road and almost immediately got flagged and pulled over by the police. The guy started enquiring where we were going and we told him we were looking for this posh(er) hotel and he said that we must go with him. Anyway, he put on his flashing lights and emergency style took us back to the place we had just left. We said thanks and he left and we felt like complete fools. We’d done a runner after clearly turning our noses up to the owner and came back escorted by the police with very little choice!
We sat in the car park and looked for the hidden clues in the LP book…where were we going wrong? Anyway, Ryan then looking shamefaced confessed that he’d been managing to look at the wrong place/page the whole time. In fact, the LP book said that in Penjikent there were two places to stay - one was really grim and the other one was even grimmer - so just go to least grim place. We realised that we must be at the least grim place and other than sleeping in the car we didn’t have much choice. I was in Daisy with Alex, and we sat there, indignant that the bloke was trying to charge us $60 and refusing on principle, we would have slept in the car. But the others didn’t feel the same, the guys who were sick wanted a loo - even if it was rubbish, and they ended up getting a separate apartment to themselves.
Everyone hung out in our apartment through the evening and went out onto the joint balcony that adjoined our bedroom and the lounge (sounds nice doesn’t it?) . After a protracted time trying to figure out how the MSR stove worked, there was cooked up a magnificent noodily and pasta dinner, washed down with whiskey. Although by the time Ryan had cooked the pasta Alex was already fast asleep so never got any (we did at least debate about waking him up).
Ellis almost managed to electrocute himself whilst trying to turn the tv on (because it involved touching a wall socket in extreme disrepair), but then found the Russian dubbed Die Hard which made everything good with the world. When I retired to my room I found Helen was risking sleeping on one of the beds but I spread out the bug sheet and made my self comfortable on the floor. It was all one hell of an introduction to Tajikistan.
Day 2 -Tajikistan
Helen woke me up as usual to tell me that I had missed breakfast through oversleeping, but that it was a great breakfast and that there was no time to have it anymore. So, anyway, I took against that and decided that even if food was no longer available I would at least go and have a cup of morning tea. I ended up getting offered a cold frankfurter and some very cold egg. Such a shame as I was having major fried egg cravings and I did miss out. My trip in general was typified by cravings - chocolate, friend eggs and bizarrely flip flops being the main ones.
So we packed up and headed out of Penjikent. Even just by walking to the cars we were greeted by the most fabulous view of the mountains towering around us and it was beautiful clear blue sky. I took photos but lost my camera in Mongolia - so its a bit lacking. The aim of the day was to get to Kurgan-Tyube, which is south of the capital Dushanbe. We had been told by Paul of the charity that we would have a high pass to go over with a road in severe disrepair and that we would touch snow on the tops. The chap I spoke to in Samarkand told us that he thought our cars would be able to make it and that we got to drive through a glacier - but I didn’t really register that, probably because it sounded a bit far fetched.
So we headed off and started getting into the Tajik countryside - almost immediately from the time of leaving Penjikent the views we came across were stunning. It started off with us driving alongside a wide, lush valley with a river flowing through it. Lots of donkeys and almost no traffic. We started gaining altitude gradually and the roads were pretty dusty but not too pot holed. We crossed over the sides of valleys by driving over sparse metal bridges that crossed raging torrential rivers.
Just some of the bridge crossings (Alex photos):
Everyone waved at us - from the little kids who tried to run alongside the car to the woman balancing stuff on their heads and wearing their bright dresses, to the builders at the houses we passed. The kids made whooping noises to try and get our attention as we passed and when we stopped they would surround the car and try to beep the horn or just stare at us in fascination. They had all the enthusiasm of the Uzbek kids but none of the savvyness or hardness that we saw so much of in the cities or at borders.
The more we drove the more the views left us stunned. We didn’t believe it could get any better but every corner we came round opened into another vista of beauty unlike we had come across anywhere else. There were no words that could describe what we were seeing or how we felt about it. We just kept taking photos and filming on the camcorder, and we said wow a lot - but it felt inadequate saying something.
(Ellis's photo i think, could be Andrews)
Alex's photo
The road did start getting a lot rougher. The roadworks were appalling and cropped up mainly in the towns. The theory behind the roadworks appears to be that a track thats good enough for a JCB is good enough for a car. It made me feel uneasy when a huge digger inched past me with a huge load of rocks, being driven by a person who looked to be about 14 and then just as we realised that, the rocks started tumbling out, falling next to my window.
There was a lot of driving along unsurfaced roads along very steep valley sides, but it didn’t tend to be too windy and so the views were amazing. At some point during the early afternoon, Helen crashed out - she said she was so exhausted that she wasn’t enjoying the view anymore and not taking it in. I guess that we were all fairly knackered but the scenery just left me flying elated most of the day. It was truelly the first time we felt we were really ‘out there.’ After one of the sections driving along a valley side we were held up. There was a pretty large queue, mainly of large Kamaz (?) the Russian trucks, parked up and snaking their way along the sides of the valley. As we came round the bend and started slowing for the queue we could see a digger at work in the middle of the trucks, effectively trying to put the road back together. There had either been a large rock fall off the towering mountain faces we were driving right next to, or there had been a landslide. In any case it was digging a nice indent onto the side of the cliff - below the road and above the river, just in case a car happened to fall off, it wouldn’t necessarily fall into the river below.
(Alex's)
We were stuck there for a while but eventually we all got moving. Unfortunately we were now ensconced driving behind probably about 20 trucks that were kicking up huge amounts of dust. Also, when we got round the corner, there was a small bridge and then the road become much more windy - going under cliff overhangs, and the road was narrow enough to make the passing of trucks in the other direction an uneasy affair.
Helen and I soaked bandanas and tried to cover our faces to help breathing with the air so clogged up.
We eventually got shot of the trucks and started making our way towards where it started to get higher. We had a small river crossing to get through, where a river burbled across the road, and I also had to pull over and get my feet in some of the beautiful clear mountain lakes we were driving next to.
As we got more and more remote, we started passing through a lot of completely undeveloped villages. Apparently these villages in the mountains are only open for 4 months due to the heavy snows that cover the country and particularly the mountains most of the year. This road from Penjikent is also only recently completed. Anyway, driving along this road was really interesting for us and I think really interesting for the locals as well. I couldn’t help but remind myself that we were the first rally cars to make this journey and potentially some of the first westerners the locals had clapped their eyes on. At the same time, the level of poverty that seemed to be prevalent in these remote villages was striking. Although some aspects we had seen before in Uzbekistan, like the washing of clothes, etc, next to the road in puddles or ditches, here it felt more pressing - probably because of the complete lack of services, infrastructure and the incredibly dramatic harsh terrain. The village houses would usually be perched and jammed together on the less steep sides of the mountain bases next to or above the road, and were offset by jagged red cliff faces and mountains rising up immediately behind them. The houses were generally rectangular and made of boulders, with no decoration, etc. The local population all relied on their donkey for helping with the carrying of bundles of sticks or hay and as a mode of transport. As with the other ‘stans so far, all the kids, even the little ones, seemed to be working their socks off.
So anyway, we finally started getting on to the section that was the Anzob pass (3,500m). We crawled up a steep, fairly wide, dusty road for ages and after about an hour were convinced we must be getting near the top.
We were so wrong. The road went up and up and up, the air started getting thinner and colder and we started getting some pretty incredible views. Unbelievably for us, as we rounded a corner and felt like we were on top of the world (though more gradually climbing it) we saw a glacier in front of us, and then we realised that we had already passed a section that was below us. As we got closer to it, we realised that we were in fact going to drive through it. I was confounded and whooping with delight as we had a clear view of the Ice Cream Van drive right through the centre of it, with ice walls on either side, and then it was our turn. The WWR Micra actually stopped and they stuck out their hand and had a taste as they drove through. It was madness.
So we continued up and the path once again started getting steeper. We stopped off a couple of times to check out the view and take some pictures. But we left the cars running as we were afraid that the air was so thin if we turned them off they wouldn’t start again. Helen was really struggling with Daisy as she just couldn’t find the power to keep going. She often just ground to a halt and I would have to get out, give her a push and then walk to catch up. When we stopped another time, Alex and I saw a pretty cool dust devil whipped up on the road behind the cars and Helen told me that she was having a struggle with her breathing and felt we needed to move on asap. Although Andrew didn’t look too happy either, it was Helen that was finding that the dust was irritating her asthma and said she was starting to get shakey. When she told me that, I said I felt I should drive, but she was adamant that it made no difference and shut off that conversation.
Before this point and shortly afterwards, Helen had been really snapping at me, she’d also said that she’d had a headache but I just didn’t pick up on the warning signs. She’d even asked me in the car what the symptoms were of altitude sickness , but because she didn’t mention anything was wrong I just reeled off about half of them i.e. and the ones that came to mind. So perhaps, if she’d said she had a headache and then asked and I checked the sheets I had bought, it might have been flagged up sooner - not that it would have made any difference, but it might have made more sense when Helen started coming up with the odd thing that didn’t make much sense to me. Actually, I only have one example, which was when Daisy ground to a halt again and we were stuck, she was determined she could get her going again but she couldn’t and I got out. I was going to give Daisy a push but Helen barked at me not to push. Alex came up and said ‘Are we pushing?’ and with the window open and not wanting to get Helen more angry, I said ‘no…we’re not pushing.’ Which made absolutely no sense as we weren’t going anywhere….anyway, Alex ignored it, gave Daisy a push and got her moving again.
It was worrying though that night seemed to be closing in and we still hadn’t got to the top. We had been advised not to drive on the normal Tajik roads at night, and I was wondering how much of a handful it was going to be getting down off the Anzob Pass in the dark.
Anyway, things took a huge turn of the dramatic as I was happily filming out the window and Helen said rapidly ‘I can’t breathe!’ ‘What? ! You can’t breathe??’ Oh no. So I told her to stop the car and get her head down. I didn’t know what the hell I was saying or what was good advice but it sounded about right at the time. Luckily, this was the one section of road that Daisy hadn’t struggled with. She had managed to pick up speed and we had overtaken all the others in the hope that by keeping the momentum going she wouldn’t stop. So when Helen said she couldn’t breathe ,I’d jumped out the car and pelted down the mountain a bit and flagged down the Ice Cream Van and the WWR Micra. I ran up to the van and just said ‘Helen can’t breathe. What do we do?,’ and then, not feeling like I conveyed the urgency, when I got to the Micra I said ‘Helen can’t breathe. AT ALL!!.’ Everyone got out the cars and started running up to Daisy. Helen was sitting on the seat, with her legs out and her head down gasping. I suggested her inhaler, which she thought was in her pocket. It wasn’t and her hands we shaking massively. So I dug around and found it, gave it to her and we all stood there wondering what the hell we were going to do.
We knew that if it was altitude sickness we just had to get her down as soon as possible. But heading down after coming so far and taking so long, and having absolutely no other options than this one road, left us knowing that we had little choice but to keep going up. But, we couldn’t justify the risk if there was far to go. There was a car coming down the mountains, it was now almost dark, and I flagged it down. The guy wound down the window and I tried to explain what was going on and that I wanted to know how much further up it was. He eventually seemed to understand and I thought was trying to tell me 2km. So it was decided that Helen would go into the van, with Andrew as a supporting passenger and Ryan driving, Ellis and Alex were in the Micra (of which the suspension was dying), and I had to drive up Daisy alone. It was necessary as we had absolutely no choice but to get to the top asap, and with less weight in Daisy (as she was now stationary) she had less chance of getting stuck again. I said lots of very very nice and encouraging words to that car to get her up to the top of the mountain. It turned out to be only about 200m to the summit and when we got there the van overtook and flew and thumped its way down the other side at suicidal speed. At some point Alex became my passenger as Daisy had more ground clearance and a stronger suspension than the car Ellis was trying to get down the mountain with the least damage.
There were points when Daisy was in fourth gear and sliding and smashing into potholes and large rocks on the cliff edges, as we made our way down in the dark. It was probably a very good thing we couldn’t really see what we were doing. Most of the time the van was almost out of sight, but time to time I managed to catch up, and we saw black smoke pouring out the exhaust and we couldn’t figure out how Ryan was managing to pull the speeds out that he was doing. We pulled over every half an hour or so to get an update on Helen, but she appeared to actually be getting worse. We kept the pedal to the metal and kept going as fast as possible for hours just trying to get as low as possible. Visibility was at times almost zero because of the heavy dust and we would be going at 40mph. Although the situation felt dire it turned into an exhilarating adrenaline rush, where I was flipping between mild panic and worry that Helen was going to cop it, and then laughing manically as the driving got crazier.
Alex had the job of sorting through the pills that were stuffed into the medical box, reading up on the notes I’d bought and deciding what was the stuff we should get Helen on. We gave her a couple of pills but they didn’t seem to be working. We couldn’t stop, the road was such a mess and like a permanent construction site as we started getting lower and there were still no towns. We kept pushing on to Dushanbe. We tried to use the sat phone we had for emergencies but couldn’t contact any of the medical people who could give us advice. By the time we started reaching a better road we pulled over into a petrol station and Helen was helped out of the van to be sick. Andrew came over to tell us that she now had a fever. That rung a bell and looking at the medical notes it said that fever was one of the signs of cerebral edema, one of the life threatening forms that altitude sickness could develop into. This got me panicking and trying to get the sat phone working again. We had some strong steroid type drugs but without speaking to an expert I didn’t want to be responsible for giving them to Helen. So we kept driving on to Dushanbe, I kept trying to get Alex trying on the sat phone and when we finally got the experts ring tone we got his answer machine. I then got my pharmacist housemate on the line, who got me the drugs…started telling her but then got cut off. We then couldn’t reconnect.
Finally, as we were getting into Dushanbe and spotted a big hotel in the centre we managed to get my friend Holly, a doctor on the line. I was so wound up by then and with the hotel in front of me was utterly on edge and then managed to get pulled over by a policeman. This idiot, who was strutting around self importantly, insisted on seeing our documents - that had got lost in the car in the panic, and secondly Helen had repacked the car and I had no idea where most things were anymore. I sent off Alex to speak to Holly and started shouting at the policeman. He just stood there, whilst I huffed and puffed and then motioned he wanted me to open the roof box! Idiot! Anyway, I found some form of document that he couldn’t be bothered to look at, I got the keys into the roof box and then he just said ‘what is your name?’ I said ‘Sophie’ and he made some noise and waved with his little red baton as if you go ‘You may go.’ So I jumped back in the car - everyone was now already parked up outside the hotel, and I pulled a completely illegal manoeuvre across the traffic lights and opposing traffic, risking a side on collision and pulled up outside the hotel. This manoeuvre had inevitably been seen by about 5 policeman, of which one came over indignantly trying to explain that I just wasn’t allowed to do that. Alex and Ryan then immediately intercepted him and started the usual charm offensive that had the police man smiling and shaking their hands and walking off happily in about 3 minutes.
Helen thankfully looked like she was taking a turn for the better and was talking to Holly over the phone, whilst sitting in the van in the hotel car park. Someone checked out the hotel, which is the biggest or most established in the capital, and it turned out to only have communal corridor bathrooms and dormitory rooms. So we trundled along to another one, which happened to be worse and could only offer a room on a high floor but had no lifts nor running water. So we went back to the first one, got settled into the rooms and Helen went immediately to bed, whilst we sat in the other room unwinding over some pot noodles and cuppa soups.
