Leaving Tajikistan

At the end of the best trip ever...

          Summer camp in the Pshart Valley near Murghab           Best mates, Poi Mazar           End of the road, Bartang River valley           Momosaduk and Koban take a break on the Pamir Highway near Bash Gumbez           Entering the Wakhan Corridor behind our Khargush Pass guide :)           Ladies preparing vegies (yay!), Vanj           Rare high speed action, Murghab River valley           Main street strategy meeting, Khorog           Koban cools Uazie at 4000m near Kyzyl Rabat           Chai party, Poi Mazar Summer camp in the Pshart Valley near Murghab

Right now, Amber and I are holed up in a hotel room in Dushanbe, the stately capital of Tajikistan. We've just spent four gruelling weeks exploring the Pamirs by jeep. The mountains and the people who inhabit them are awe-inspiring and beautiful, but a "road" is just a concept out there and vegetarianism is a complete myth!

Our trusty Russian UAZ jeep needed many kinds of cajoling, with regular roadside TLC required for carburetor, radiator, starter motor, exhaust and tyres. Amber and I were required to push it to make it go on numerous occasions, but the beast was essentially indestructible and got us everywhere we needed to go. Some of the places we needed to go were on the other side of things we thought it impossible to get a vehicle to cross, but our intrepid driving/exhortation/TLC team of Kobanich and Momosaduk were supremely (and comically) competent.

In the end, there were only three things that denied us passage:

The cops at the Roshtkala checkpoint. They said we didn't have a permit. META said we didn't need one. Hmm. Mebbe cops wanna Somani...

The Bartang River in full summer flood. There's no arguing with a gazillion megalitres of roaring mountain water when it decides to eat a road.

A missing bridge. The UAZ can do many things, but flying isn't one of them.

It was a bone-shaking, thrill-inducing, arse-numbing, dust-encrusting ride. It was the revelation that in some places "Wow!" is an exclamation impossible to overuse. It was the discovery that in the Pamir, "highway" apparently relates to a road's altitude, not the quality of its construction. A local quoted in one of the guides we were carrying had it right. He was speaking of one road in particular, but I reckon his words apply to almost all of 'em: "The road to Kök Jar is fine, but at the end of the trip both the car and driver will be destroyed."

The Pamiri people are famed for their hospitality. We found that simply exchanging a few words during a chance encounter would usually result in an invitation for "chai". While certainly delightful, this was also fraught with the potential for misunderstanding - especially if, as was often the case, we had no common language or interpreter.

The invitation to chai is not easy to decline without giving offence. You might be wondering why we'd want to decline a cup of tea. It's never just tea: In the Pamirs "chai" is the use of many cups of tea to wash down a giant repast of bread, plates of tomato and cucumber and bowls of meaty soup or noodles. To decline or to fail to finish a dish would risk provoking great consternation among our hosts and it was pretty much impossible to adequately convey the concept of vegetarianism, even with a translator present.

Prior to this trip, I hadn't eaten meat, fish or eggs for over twenty years. Given the lack of vegetable protein available in Central Asia and the fact that I could never explain why I consider eggs a flesh food, I eventually compromised and began eating the eggs proffered at breakfast. We weren't prepared to compromise on the meat, but found we didn't really have a choice. Having heard an explanation of our idiosyncrasy, our hosts would smilingly serve us great bowls of meat soup. With a little side plate to place the meat we didn't eat on. Oh well...

Sometimes it was bearable. Often it wasn't. After twenty years abstinence, the taste and texture of a strong mutton broth is - um - rather unpleasant. We tried - oh how we tried -  to convey that "no meat" includes anything containing and/or made from from meat. We said we'd be happy with noodles and whatever veges were to hand. We said we'd be happy with bread and salad. We said eating meat was against our religion. Nothing worked.

Sometimes, when it all got too much, we'd find ourselves wondering if we should illustrate the point by asking our hosts how they'd feel if we served them pea and ham soup with a bowl for the porky bits. We never did, of course. Dammit! We hated feeling so ungrateful, especially since Tajikistan is a hair's breadth away from famine and the people whose wonderful hospitality we were enjoying are among the poorest of our planet's inhabitants. I couldn't help feeling it would be so much easier for everyone if Tajik hospitality revolved around music and dancing rather than food!

It was all quite ironic, given that Tajikistan was the first country in several months' travel in which vegetarian dishes form a substantial part of the traditional cuisine...

No complaints though. That's just how it was. Although no holiday, travelling in Tajikistan was the experience of a lifetime! More pics and (much later probably) video coming.