The Diarrhoea Diaries
Monday, November 16, 2009
Tajikistan: The Wakhan Corridor
You'd think that when you organise a vehicle and driver for four days on a per-kilometre rate, that you'd at least get a vehicle with a working odometer. Not the case in Tajikistan, unfortunately! The only thing more ridiculous than the situation itself is the solution offered by the incompetent, yet unjustifiably arrogant woman at the PECTA tourism office in Khorog, 'It's OK, you just need to look at roadsigns and ask locals so that you can accurately gauge the distance'!!!
Being normally so even-tempered, it may come as somewhat of a surprise to many of you that I lost it at this point!
After a fruitless search for a replacement vehicle, an argument with Little Ms. Arrogant, and much deliberation with my three carmates, the driver of the odometer-less vehicle, Shob, finally agreed that he would take us on our loop of the Wakhan and Shokh Dara valleys based on our rough estimate of 520km.
Our jeep was an ex-army Russian jeep which had served as a medical vehicle during the Afghan war more than twenty-five years ago. We rolled out of Khorog at close to midday. After all the faffing around with trying to sort out a vehicle, we'd wasted so much time that we didn't make it to the trans-border market in Ishkashim before it closed. It's possible to leave your passport with the Tajik border guards and cross to the market which sits on an island in the river between Tajikistan and Afghanistan. Technically, it's Afghan soil, but really it's no-man's land between the two countries' border controls. Whatever the case, you can come away from the market and brag that you went to Afghanistan, watching looks of admiration appear on people's faces and feeling smug when you hear their 'Oohs' and 'Aahs'!
The road leaves Khorog and follows the Pyanj River south to its junction with the Wakhan River. Both rivers form the border between Afghanistan and Tajikistan, so I can now say that I have seen a great deal of Afghanistan without ever actually setting foot on its soil. Craggy, barren mountains rise on either side of the river creating an almost impenetrable landscape. Villages surrounded by rice paddies and terraced fields of wheat provide an occasional splash of green in an otherwise brown landscape. Paths connecting these villages run through numerous caves cut into the sheer-sided cliffs above the river, leading us to speculate as to whether Osama may be hiding inside one.
After a brief stop to buy samosas from some friendly local women in Ishkashim, we bore east and followed the Wakhan valley. With the mountains becoming loftier and increasingly capped with snow, it was now possible to see parts of Tajikistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan (The spine of the Hindu Kush range, rwhich rises up on the Afghan side of the river, forms the Afghan-Pakistani border and so the peaks are shared by the two countries).
The Wakhan has a feeling of utter remoteness, like it has been long forgotten and left behind in time. It's a beautiful place, with a verdant valley floor blanketed with farmland and tiny traditional villages tucked in their midst where life seems to continue in much the same way as it has for centuries. The villages are connected by a single dirt road that sees little traffic and is lined with ancient fortresses that stood guard over the valley as far back as 2000years. Marco Polo, the original 'backpacker', traveled the length of the valley back in 1271!
We spent our first night in a homestay in the tiny, bizarrely-named hamlet of Ptup. This is really your only option for accommodation in the Pamir or Wakhan, and if communal sleeping and disgusting outdoor pit-toilets aren't your thing, then maybe this isn't the destination for you! Many of these homestays are asking as much as US$15 for board and meals. This may not sound like a lot to you, but in a country where the minimum wage is $4 a month, and considering that your meals are generally a carb-overload of bread, rice, fried potatoes and (unfried!) onions, this figure is somewhat over-inflated for this part of the world. One cheeky woman even tried to charge us $6 for a lunch of plov (fried rice with a couple of pieces of mutton on top), something which costs around a dollar at any market foodstall in Tajikistan! We haggled and in most places came to the mutually agreeable price of around $5 per person.
The traditional Pamiri home is built around one large, brightly-painted and decorated room with four pillars surrounding a skylight at its centre. These four pillars represent the five pillars of Islam (one of the pillars is shared between two), as well as the five holy prophets (Mohamed, Ali, Fatima, Hassan and Hussein). The raised area surrounding this central feature is used to eat meals which are laid out on a tablecloth and eaten communally. At night, thick mattresses and layers of warm blankets are thrown down in the same space and everyone sleeps there together.
The patriarch of our host-family that night told us of the difficulties of life in the Wakhan. Despite being a desert area, the Wakhan gets extremely cold. In winter there is no electricity in the region and the river itself freezes solid for three months. I tried to imagine getting through a Montreal winter without electricity - not a nice prospect!
Our second day began with a diversion off the main 'highway' and up the side of the mountains to one of the region's many hotsprings, which, despite its spectacular location, was indoor with no view. We decided to skip it in favour of exploring neighbouring Yamchun Fort, the most well-preserved in the area. Dating from the 3rd century BC, the fort occupies a rocky mountain lookout. Its exterior wall is still more-or-less intact, with many turrets still standing, and the views up and down the valley are absolutely beautiful. It's hard to imagine that these forts were ever even necessary since the area is hard enough to get to today, let alone two millenia ago!
Shob had now decided that the journey was going to be more than 520km, and reneged on his original commitment to our agreement, saying he wanted to reassess the distance when we returned to Khorog! Always the same story in Central Asia!
Our second day was our longest in terms of driving time. After the fort, we made a stop at an ancient buddhist stupa, perched on a slope above the village of Vrang. We were directed by some local children - the 'keepers of the stupa' - on the correct procedure to follow there. A young girl handed each of us seven small white rocks which we carried along a path (being sure not to stray from it for fear of suffering their wrath!) to the top of the stupa where we said some sort of prayer and threw the rocks on the top-most layer of the stupa. It was all very bizarre considering that the area is, and has been for centuries, muslim!
After our lunch stop at Langar, the last town in the valley, the road climbed up above the river which now ran through a massive gorge. There were a few more random forts en-route, but the road eventually became more desolate, with no life to be seen, save for a few shrubs and the occasional wild camel drinking in the river on the Afghan side. After a flat tyre and an overheated engine, we eventually made it to a superbly remote military checkpost, where I had a heart-stopping moment looking for my passport (with permit for the GBAO region) which I feared I'd left in Ptup! Much to the amusement of my travel companions, driver and soldiers, I found it after 2 panicked minutes of searching!
We headed north across a 4000-or-so-metre pass, the jeep barely making it to the top, and descended to rejoin the Pamir Highway for a brief moment before turning off to overnight in Bulunkul.
Bulunkul truly feels like the end of the world. It's little more than a small scattering of block-like houses on a desolate plain, hemmed-in by barren mountains. We found accommodation with a local family since a documentary crew had taken all the beds in the town's one guesthouse.
We'd come to Bulunkul to hike to a large lake, Yashil Kul, nearby, but these plans were quashed in the morning when a man with a gun, claiming to be a ranger for the Tajik National Park, came into our room and demanded that we pay 100 somoni each (about US$23) because we were in the National Park. Feeling rather intimidated, but also feeling safety in numbers, the four of us refused to pay and asked for the man's ID. Claiming he'd left his ID in his 'hotel', the man again took his gun out to show us as 'ID' before telling us we would all have to pay 1000 somoni fines and then leaving!
We went to the documentary team to see if they'd had the same experience. Apparently, according to the Australian bitch (sorry, can't think of another word to describe her) who was heading the team, they hadn't had a visit from the ranger, but she assumed that all their permits had been arranged, since their guide was the former Head of Forestry for the country.
As it turned out, the man with the gun was the ranger, and when he re-emerged, a heated discussion between the former Head of Forestry and the ranger ensued. The ranger insisted that just by being in Bulunkul, we were in the Tajik National Park, while Mr Forestry insisted that we were not yet inside the national park boundary. Whatever the case, there is no signage anywhere around the national park stating that a fee must be paid (about half of the Pamir Highway runs through the national park, and we'd not been stopped at a single checkpost or ticket booth, because they don't exist!).
The ranger offered us to just pay for two people, with the other two being free, making us wonder, if we'd paid the full amount asked, where would all this money have gone?
While the discussion went on, the Aussie cow (Ooh! There is another word to describe her!) piped up, saying 'You should go to the lake. It's beautiful! When will you ever be here again? What's $25 to you anyway? I mean, how much do you earn in a year?'
I'm sorry...... What was that last comment?!
Inge, Elke and myself were momentarily speechless before rage set in. Marcello went into a fit of stuttering and gesticulation.
Clearly this woman existed in a bubble, being driven around with her guide and filmcrew and never getting a sense of what things cost or are worth in the local economy. Moreover, we'd already paid US$100 for a Tajik visa, plus another $50 for a special permit to enter the GBAO region. We certainly weren't going to pay another $25 just to see one lake - especially when the 'ranger' had just threatened us with a gun! I'm not sure where this woman takes her holidays, but I'd be fairly surprised if she's ever paid $25 to see a lake in Australia, Europe, North America - anywhere for that matter - let alone one in Tajikistan!
We chose not to give in to the ranger's bully tactics and left Bulunkul shortly after, without visiting the lake and without paying a single somoni. Incidentally, several other travellers later reported to us that they had gone to Yashil Kul, had never been asked to pay a fee, and that the lake was pretty ordinary anyway!
We drove a small section of the Pamir Highway again, before crossing the Gunt River and climbing on a rocky dirt track with steep switchbacks (where a frustrated Shob was forced to stop and work on a very unhappy jeep) to a beautiful, high-altitude plain.
We spent a good hour-and-a-half debating on which of two dirt tracks to take when we came to a junction. Shob wanted to go left, I insisted that it was straight ahead. Showing him the map and trying to explain in broken Russian did little more than confuse him, so we walked straight ahead until we reached a lake that made it evident that this was in fact the right way.
One thing that has become apparent while travelling in Asia, is that neither mathematics nor map reading are high priorities in the educational curriculums in these countries. A calculator is always used to work out the change from 100 when an item costs 50, and asking someone to show you where you are on a map of their town is like giving them a Rubiks Cube and saying, 'Solve this'!
Our 3km unplanned walk was actually one of the highlights of the entire four days. There was not a breath of wind or a single sound up there, only the crunching of stones underfoot. The surrounding mountains were starkly beautiful and the intensely-blue sky above seemed close enough to touch!
From the plain we descended again, entering the Shokh Dara Valley which lies between the Wakhan and Gunt Valleys. Shob hadn't planned very well, and we had to coast downhill as much as possible with the engine off since we were almost out of petrol!
We passed two craggy 6,500m peaks, named after the two fathers of communism, Peaks Engels and Karl Marx. Before being renamed after independence, the highest peak in the country (and in the former Soviet Union), was called Peak Communism!
We stayed that night in a homestay in the tiny village of Javshanguz, where many of the houses are built against the side of massive boulders that lie strewn across the valley floor, almost appearing to be growing out of them. Unfortunately, our meal of fried macaroni (and raw onions!) was to be our last taste of delicious Pamiri cuisine.
The next day we descended through the spectacular gorge carved out by the Shokh Dara River back to Khorog. Shob must have grown to like us, because he decided that he was happy with our original agreement on price after all. We had done some recalculating and discovered that our original estimate had been a little short, so we bumped it up somewhat just to be fair.
After a rest day in Khorog, lazing around in the park and eating at a great Indian restaurant (Finally, food with flavour and spice! How have all these spices escaped Central Asia??), we headed to the nation's capital, Dushanbe.
Marcello took an earlier shared jeep while the girls and I took one together. We were crammed into the jeep with three other passengers for the journey which took about twenty hours! Over the course of this time, we grew to despise each of the three with equal intensity.
The man in the front seat refused to rotate positions so that everyone got some time in the incredibly uncomfortable back seat because he had two trays of apricots in the front with him. He wouldn't even give it up when the woman sitting next to me started being sick - well, trying to be sick. We soon realised that her attempts at vomiting came straight after one of our rotations, when she was either in the back seat or in the middle of the middle row of seats. She ended up having the seat behind the driver - the only seat in back with a working window and the one with the most legroom - She was about 5-feet tall! The 6'5", gold-toothed, 20-year-old arm-wrestler with whom I seemed to always be sharing the impossibly-cramped back seat, insisted on trying to have a conversation with me, even when it had become apparent just how limited my Russian was. After about hour number five of this, I wanted to punch him! In addition to this, the dimwit had traveled to Khorog without his passport (you must have this as ID at all times in all Central Asian countries), meaning that at each of the frequent police checkpoints, a lengthy wait ensued. Each time, a bribe had to be paid, and our driver became more and more irate while the young man just smiled his stupid gold-toothed grin.
The road itself, like every road I traveled on in Tajikistan, was absolutely spectacular! We followed the Pyanj for several hours before saying goodbye to the views of Afghanistan and climbing up and over a massive pass. En route we passed by several burnt-out tanks, remnants of the '90s civil war, left discarded to rust away on the roadside.
After dark, the jeep began experiencing battery problems and we were forced to stop every ten minutes or so. The driver was now tired and having trouble staying awake, which was quite important on the winding, clifftop road, so Inge stayed awake behind him, giving him a wake-up jab whenever he began to doze off. We finally arrived in Dushanbe at 3am. I've never been so glad to get out of a vehicle in my entire life.
Being normally so even-tempered, it may come as somewhat of a surprise to many of you that I lost it at this point!
After a fruitless search for a replacement vehicle, an argument with Little Ms. Arrogant, and much deliberation with my three carmates, the driver of the odometer-less vehicle, Shob, finally agreed that he would take us on our loop of the Wakhan and Shokh Dara valleys based on our rough estimate of 520km.
Our jeep was an ex-army Russian jeep which had served as a medical vehicle during the Afghan war more than twenty-five years ago. We rolled out of Khorog at close to midday. After all the faffing around with trying to sort out a vehicle, we'd wasted so much time that we didn't make it to the trans-border market in Ishkashim before it closed. It's possible to leave your passport with the Tajik border guards and cross to the market which sits on an island in the river between Tajikistan and Afghanistan. Technically, it's Afghan soil, but really it's no-man's land between the two countries' border controls. Whatever the case, you can come away from the market and brag that you went to Afghanistan, watching looks of admiration appear on people's faces and feeling smug when you hear their 'Oohs' and 'Aahs'!
The road leaves Khorog and follows the Pyanj River south to its junction with the Wakhan River. Both rivers form the border between Afghanistan and Tajikistan, so I can now say that I have seen a great deal of Afghanistan without ever actually setting foot on its soil. Craggy, barren mountains rise on either side of the river creating an almost impenetrable landscape. Villages surrounded by rice paddies and terraced fields of wheat provide an occasional splash of green in an otherwise brown landscape. Paths connecting these villages run through numerous caves cut into the sheer-sided cliffs above the river, leading us to speculate as to whether Osama may be hiding inside one.
After a brief stop to buy samosas from some friendly local women in Ishkashim, we bore east and followed the Wakhan valley. With the mountains becoming loftier and increasingly capped with snow, it was now possible to see parts of Tajikistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan (The spine of the Hindu Kush range, rwhich rises up on the Afghan side of the river, forms the Afghan-Pakistani border and so the peaks are shared by the two countries).
The Wakhan has a feeling of utter remoteness, like it has been long forgotten and left behind in time. It's a beautiful place, with a verdant valley floor blanketed with farmland and tiny traditional villages tucked in their midst where life seems to continue in much the same way as it has for centuries. The villages are connected by a single dirt road that sees little traffic and is lined with ancient fortresses that stood guard over the valley as far back as 2000years. Marco Polo, the original 'backpacker', traveled the length of the valley back in 1271!
We spent our first night in a homestay in the tiny, bizarrely-named hamlet of Ptup. This is really your only option for accommodation in the Pamir or Wakhan, and if communal sleeping and disgusting outdoor pit-toilets aren't your thing, then maybe this isn't the destination for you! Many of these homestays are asking as much as US$15 for board and meals. This may not sound like a lot to you, but in a country where the minimum wage is $4 a month, and considering that your meals are generally a carb-overload of bread, rice, fried potatoes and (unfried!) onions, this figure is somewhat over-inflated for this part of the world. One cheeky woman even tried to charge us $6 for a lunch of plov (fried rice with a couple of pieces of mutton on top), something which costs around a dollar at any market foodstall in Tajikistan! We haggled and in most places came to the mutually agreeable price of around $5 per person.
The traditional Pamiri home is built around one large, brightly-painted and decorated room with four pillars surrounding a skylight at its centre. These four pillars represent the five pillars of Islam (one of the pillars is shared between two), as well as the five holy prophets (Mohamed, Ali, Fatima, Hassan and Hussein). The raised area surrounding this central feature is used to eat meals which are laid out on a tablecloth and eaten communally. At night, thick mattresses and layers of warm blankets are thrown down in the same space and everyone sleeps there together.
The patriarch of our host-family that night told us of the difficulties of life in the Wakhan. Despite being a desert area, the Wakhan gets extremely cold. In winter there is no electricity in the region and the river itself freezes solid for three months. I tried to imagine getting through a Montreal winter without electricity - not a nice prospect!
Our second day began with a diversion off the main 'highway' and up the side of the mountains to one of the region's many hotsprings, which, despite its spectacular location, was indoor with no view. We decided to skip it in favour of exploring neighbouring Yamchun Fort, the most well-preserved in the area. Dating from the 3rd century BC, the fort occupies a rocky mountain lookout. Its exterior wall is still more-or-less intact, with many turrets still standing, and the views up and down the valley are absolutely beautiful. It's hard to imagine that these forts were ever even necessary since the area is hard enough to get to today, let alone two millenia ago!
Shob had now decided that the journey was going to be more than 520km, and reneged on his original commitment to our agreement, saying he wanted to reassess the distance when we returned to Khorog! Always the same story in Central Asia!
Our second day was our longest in terms of driving time. After the fort, we made a stop at an ancient buddhist stupa, perched on a slope above the village of Vrang. We were directed by some local children - the 'keepers of the stupa' - on the correct procedure to follow there. A young girl handed each of us seven small white rocks which we carried along a path (being sure not to stray from it for fear of suffering their wrath!) to the top of the stupa where we said some sort of prayer and threw the rocks on the top-most layer of the stupa. It was all very bizarre considering that the area is, and has been for centuries, muslim!
After our lunch stop at Langar, the last town in the valley, the road climbed up above the river which now ran through a massive gorge. There were a few more random forts en-route, but the road eventually became more desolate, with no life to be seen, save for a few shrubs and the occasional wild camel drinking in the river on the Afghan side. After a flat tyre and an overheated engine, we eventually made it to a superbly remote military checkpost, where I had a heart-stopping moment looking for my passport (with permit for the GBAO region) which I feared I'd left in Ptup! Much to the amusement of my travel companions, driver and soldiers, I found it after 2 panicked minutes of searching!
We headed north across a 4000-or-so-metre pass, the jeep barely making it to the top, and descended to rejoin the Pamir Highway for a brief moment before turning off to overnight in Bulunkul.
Bulunkul truly feels like the end of the world. It's little more than a small scattering of block-like houses on a desolate plain, hemmed-in by barren mountains. We found accommodation with a local family since a documentary crew had taken all the beds in the town's one guesthouse.
We'd come to Bulunkul to hike to a large lake, Yashil Kul, nearby, but these plans were quashed in the morning when a man with a gun, claiming to be a ranger for the Tajik National Park, came into our room and demanded that we pay 100 somoni each (about US$23) because we were in the National Park. Feeling rather intimidated, but also feeling safety in numbers, the four of us refused to pay and asked for the man's ID. Claiming he'd left his ID in his 'hotel', the man again took his gun out to show us as 'ID' before telling us we would all have to pay 1000 somoni fines and then leaving!
We went to the documentary team to see if they'd had the same experience. Apparently, according to the Australian bitch (sorry, can't think of another word to describe her) who was heading the team, they hadn't had a visit from the ranger, but she assumed that all their permits had been arranged, since their guide was the former Head of Forestry for the country.
As it turned out, the man with the gun was the ranger, and when he re-emerged, a heated discussion between the former Head of Forestry and the ranger ensued. The ranger insisted that just by being in Bulunkul, we were in the Tajik National Park, while Mr Forestry insisted that we were not yet inside the national park boundary. Whatever the case, there is no signage anywhere around the national park stating that a fee must be paid (about half of the Pamir Highway runs through the national park, and we'd not been stopped at a single checkpost or ticket booth, because they don't exist!).
The ranger offered us to just pay for two people, with the other two being free, making us wonder, if we'd paid the full amount asked, where would all this money have gone?
While the discussion went on, the Aussie cow (Ooh! There is another word to describe her!) piped up, saying 'You should go to the lake. It's beautiful! When will you ever be here again? What's $25 to you anyway? I mean, how much do you earn in a year?'
I'm sorry...... What was that last comment?!
Inge, Elke and myself were momentarily speechless before rage set in. Marcello went into a fit of stuttering and gesticulation.
Clearly this woman existed in a bubble, being driven around with her guide and filmcrew and never getting a sense of what things cost or are worth in the local economy. Moreover, we'd already paid US$100 for a Tajik visa, plus another $50 for a special permit to enter the GBAO region. We certainly weren't going to pay another $25 just to see one lake - especially when the 'ranger' had just threatened us with a gun! I'm not sure where this woman takes her holidays, but I'd be fairly surprised if she's ever paid $25 to see a lake in Australia, Europe, North America - anywhere for that matter - let alone one in Tajikistan!
We chose not to give in to the ranger's bully tactics and left Bulunkul shortly after, without visiting the lake and without paying a single somoni. Incidentally, several other travellers later reported to us that they had gone to Yashil Kul, had never been asked to pay a fee, and that the lake was pretty ordinary anyway!
We drove a small section of the Pamir Highway again, before crossing the Gunt River and climbing on a rocky dirt track with steep switchbacks (where a frustrated Shob was forced to stop and work on a very unhappy jeep) to a beautiful, high-altitude plain.
We spent a good hour-and-a-half debating on which of two dirt tracks to take when we came to a junction. Shob wanted to go left, I insisted that it was straight ahead. Showing him the map and trying to explain in broken Russian did little more than confuse him, so we walked straight ahead until we reached a lake that made it evident that this was in fact the right way.
One thing that has become apparent while travelling in Asia, is that neither mathematics nor map reading are high priorities in the educational curriculums in these countries. A calculator is always used to work out the change from 100 when an item costs 50, and asking someone to show you where you are on a map of their town is like giving them a Rubiks Cube and saying, 'Solve this'!
Our 3km unplanned walk was actually one of the highlights of the entire four days. There was not a breath of wind or a single sound up there, only the crunching of stones underfoot. The surrounding mountains were starkly beautiful and the intensely-blue sky above seemed close enough to touch!
From the plain we descended again, entering the Shokh Dara Valley which lies between the Wakhan and Gunt Valleys. Shob hadn't planned very well, and we had to coast downhill as much as possible with the engine off since we were almost out of petrol!
We passed two craggy 6,500m peaks, named after the two fathers of communism, Peaks Engels and Karl Marx. Before being renamed after independence, the highest peak in the country (and in the former Soviet Union), was called Peak Communism!
We stayed that night in a homestay in the tiny village of Javshanguz, where many of the houses are built against the side of massive boulders that lie strewn across the valley floor, almost appearing to be growing out of them. Unfortunately, our meal of fried macaroni (and raw onions!) was to be our last taste of delicious Pamiri cuisine.
The next day we descended through the spectacular gorge carved out by the Shokh Dara River back to Khorog. Shob must have grown to like us, because he decided that he was happy with our original agreement on price after all. We had done some recalculating and discovered that our original estimate had been a little short, so we bumped it up somewhat just to be fair.
After a rest day in Khorog, lazing around in the park and eating at a great Indian restaurant (Finally, food with flavour and spice! How have all these spices escaped Central Asia??), we headed to the nation's capital, Dushanbe.
Marcello took an earlier shared jeep while the girls and I took one together. We were crammed into the jeep with three other passengers for the journey which took about twenty hours! Over the course of this time, we grew to despise each of the three with equal intensity.
The man in the front seat refused to rotate positions so that everyone got some time in the incredibly uncomfortable back seat because he had two trays of apricots in the front with him. He wouldn't even give it up when the woman sitting next to me started being sick - well, trying to be sick. We soon realised that her attempts at vomiting came straight after one of our rotations, when she was either in the back seat or in the middle of the middle row of seats. She ended up having the seat behind the driver - the only seat in back with a working window and the one with the most legroom - She was about 5-feet tall! The 6'5", gold-toothed, 20-year-old arm-wrestler with whom I seemed to always be sharing the impossibly-cramped back seat, insisted on trying to have a conversation with me, even when it had become apparent just how limited my Russian was. After about hour number five of this, I wanted to punch him! In addition to this, the dimwit had traveled to Khorog without his passport (you must have this as ID at all times in all Central Asian countries), meaning that at each of the frequent police checkpoints, a lengthy wait ensued. Each time, a bribe had to be paid, and our driver became more and more irate while the young man just smiled his stupid gold-toothed grin.
The road itself, like every road I traveled on in Tajikistan, was absolutely spectacular! We followed the Pyanj for several hours before saying goodbye to the views of Afghanistan and climbing up and over a massive pass. En route we passed by several burnt-out tanks, remnants of the '90s civil war, left discarded to rust away on the roadside.
After dark, the jeep began experiencing battery problems and we were forced to stop every ten minutes or so. The driver was now tired and having trouble staying awake, which was quite important on the winding, clifftop road, so Inge stayed awake behind him, giving him a wake-up jab whenever he began to doze off. We finally arrived in Dushanbe at 3am. I've never been so glad to get out of a vehicle in my entire life.
