khorog

in the morning, we said goodbye to belinda and tizian and got right to hitchhiking again. sadly, as we packed up, we saw about a dozen trucks go by, and by the time we made it to the road, there was nothing for hours. finally, two trucks pulled up and agreed to take us. communication is always a bit hard, so i tried to learn a bit of russian before going to tajikistan and it really paid off. still, i can't hold a conversation, so after the usual "what name, where from, where go, where wife", i always had a lot of time to read, if the road condition allowed for it.

this was the third day in a row where i had a hitchhiking headstart and still arrived hours after my companions. i must've spent 12 hours driving that day, but eventually, i met the others in a guesthouse in khorog, the biggest city in the pamir range. we stayed there for three days to get some rest, and more importantly, register at a government office, which you have to do after a maximum of 10 days in the country.

the people at the foreigner office didn't speak english, wanted us to wait a full day to fill out a form, wanted all our documents copied but didn't let us use their printer, and to top it off, they didn't accept any payment method except card payment with a national tajik debit card. it was a total fuck-up, and we just decided that we'd still have enough time to do it in dushanbe eventually.

there was one more thing in khorog, though: every saturday, the border to afghanistan (which is always right across the river from this point on) opens, allowing the locals of the two countries to have a shared market. of course we went there, and it was pretty cool, but in the end both nationalities just sell the same chinese made stuff to each other. at least after a couple of tries, i managed to convince an afghani vendor to sell me his shemagh. it's my favourite souvenir so far.

khorog, in general, was the closest i've ever come to time travelling. it's exactly how i imagine the udssr must've been like. really fascinating.Read more