"I just wanna go to the border!"
By Johno
*Warning: Contains strong language *
[The previous blog saw the car falling apart near the Afghanistan border and the team failing to find a mechanic who could fix it in the dodgy border town of Mirajaveh.]
I slept surprisingly well until I was woken by the ear-splitting Call to Prayer from the adjacent mosque at 6am. Michael the German had decided to cross the border today whilst Craig and I would return to the city to try to get Hannah fixed. We arranged to try to meet up on the less-restrictive Pakistani side just before the bike-riding police escort turned up at the hotel and took him off on his own. This seemed to be one of the first sensible things they had done; we were both going in opposite directions so it made sense for us to wait for another escort... or so we thought.
Half an hour later the escort returned, picked us up and took us to the first checkpoint where Michael was still waiting and looking like his internal temperature was already nearing boiling point.
The journey back to the city was an exact rerun of the previous day’s bullshit but in reverse and it was mid-morning before we reached the dreaded six-hour-wait checkpoint and tried to explain that we needed to go to a mechanic and then back to the border. As before, we were left waiting around, passport-less and with no information at all.
As we wanted to get the fan fixed, back to the border and over into Pakistan in one day we couldn’t afford to mess around and waste any time so when the guards weren’t paying too much attention I took the broken fan and set off walking down the street.
Although the taxi body is British the engine is a fairly common Nissan model from Japan and so luckily the first mechanic I showed it to knew exactly what type of engine it was from and wrote me down an address of one of his friends who should be able to help us. He had just finished scribbling when the fuming guards appeared and frog-marched me back to the station.
Armed with the address and with lots of shouting from Craig we eventually got an escort to agree to take us to the mechanic. But whilst Craig was loudly negotiating with the boss, the young, but armed, recruits on the front desk were taking up a major issue with me.
“Koola! Koola!” they kept asking, each time more loudly and with less patience. From their gestures it quickly became apparent that they knew we, or more accurately Craig, had stolen their helmet the previous day and they wanted it back.
I played dumb as they got angrier and angrier and they even went out on the street, grabbed a passerby , put him in handcuffs and paraded him in shouting about the, “Koola!”, evidently trying to say that if I didn’t give it back I would be arrested. Luckily Craig had stashed it in the roofbox so their search of the car turned up nothing and I eventually persuaded them, with some Oscar-worthy angry shouting, that I didn’t know where the bloody thing was and that the German must have taken it.
It now serves as a rubbish bin in the back of the taxi.
The mechanics fixed the fan just after lunchtime for the bargain price of $30 meaning that it looked like we might actually make the border... if we could avoid the problems of yesterday. All we needed was to top up the fuel we had used going to the border and back...
-
When we stopped at the fuel station in the brewing dust storm I genuinely thought the policeman was going to run over, drag me out of the car and beat me down.
Despite repeatedly telling them that we needed Gazolé they had turned down the busy road back towards the police station. As we were following right behind I had to take the split –second decision whether to follow them to certain-faff or whether to cross the busy intersection, ditch the armed escort and go back to the petrol station then deal with the consequences afterwards.
I caught the look on the driver’s face as they realised we had totally ignored them and carried on and in any other situation it would have been hilarious. But that now we were in a notorious border city essentially running away from the armed police it was rather scary.
A few minutes later, maybe halfway to the fuel, the police car screeched up at the side of us with sirens blaring. The driver looked like he was about to explode and just his face scared me into following him to the next junction where he started to turn back towards the station again.
So once again, I was faced with the same situation and once again I ignored the police and headed towards the fuel. By the time they caught up with us we were almost there but the livid gesturings of the two officers tightened my stomach and bought me out in an immediate sweat. These guys were seriously angry. I was definitely for it.
Fortunately, very fortunately, for me as soon as we got to station they saw someone they knew and walked over, embraced and started chatting. When they turned their attention back to us they were only mildly annoyed and soon we had secured some diesel with our remaining US dollars and were ready to give the border another go. Or we would be if Craig hadn’t locked the keys in the car leaving us stranded in what was now becoming a sandstorm with the already irate escorts.
Luckily whichever Midlander built our taxi [super-secret break in advice removed] didn’t do a very good job and so by early afternoon we were all fixed, full of fuel and ready to brave the escort pass-it-on charade again. After much more shouting and pleading we got the current escort to take us around the ring road and quickly arrange the guard for the next section. We now had 40km to do in 55 minutes; things would be tight but there was a small chance we might actually cross after two days of trying.
-
On the way to Bam Craig and I had spent the night in a little tourist town and headed out to dinner after finding a hotel. As we were walking up the street a local man had accosted us, “Where are you from? What is your impression of my country? Do you want to have dinner with me?”
Not knowing the town, we agreed to go for dinner, jumped in the guy’s car and soon found ourselves at a Home Appliances shop.
“I just have to work for a few more hours then we will go for dinner,” he said beaming, “if you are hungry now I can go get you some biscuits or something?”
We thanked him and explained that we were very hungry after driving all day and said our goodbyes and went to find our own food.
As we were finished up our roasted chicken takeaway he suddenly appeared, “Come and meet my family!”
We declined, telling him we were tired from the drive and once again saying goodbye.
When we arrived back at the hotel we were amazed to find our new buddy sitting in the lobby waiting with an inane grin covering his face. Especially since we had never even told him where we were staying, “What time are you leaving tomorrow?”
Craig was reaching the end of his tether, “Look mate, we’re leaving early, we don’t need your help. Thank you very much but go away!”.
He said it better and much more directly than I ever could have and the stalker quickly left the hotel, although the idiotic grin never left his face.
The next morning we were woken very early by a rapping on the door. A sleepy Craig opened the door to our pushy friend, “What do you want to do...”
“Look mate! Piss orf! We told you already we don’t want your help! GO AWAY!” and with that he slammed the door in his face and exhaled vocally.
This had given me a flash of Craig’s temper but the last two days had showcased it on full-blown mentalist mode. Granted, the hassle we had been through with little water, no food and intense heat, would have stretched the patience of a saint but Craig had repeatedly been getting right into the faces of the recruits and bawling his head off. Craig is a big guy and I was genuinely amazed that he hadn’t intimated some of the young, skinny AK-47 wielding guards into some kind of action. I was just waiting for the moment that he went too far and a gaggle of 18 year olds would launch themselves onto him and start beating him with their rifle butts.
Now we were back at the final checkpoint with the border and escape from our escort hell almost within grasp. The problem was that we had gathered the border closed at 5pm and it was now 4.51pm, if we were going to make it we needed to leave this instant.
Of course, that never happened and this finally pushed Craig over the edge. He unleashed a stream of high-pitched choice insults at the people manning the checkpoint screaming that they were, “Facking cants!” and demanding that they, “Let us out of this facking sheethole!”
As I tried to reason that there was no way we would make the crossing tonight his attention was turned to the poor guy sitting in the back seat clutching his rifle but looking like he would be more comfortable in a school uniform. Craig turned round in his seat and lunged towards the “facking cant” shrieking that he was going to kill him. I will never know how he didn’t get a rifle-butt to the face.
[This whole incident happened to be caught on video... see it here, it’s better than I could ever describe it]
That evening we found ourselves once again in the hotel car park trying to make something to eat from the leftover dried food in the cab and Craig sat shaking his head in shame, “I can’t believe how much I lost my temper today”
The following morning, all being well, we would attempt to cross the border after two days of trying. After all we had been through there was still a chance we wouldn’t be able to cross as the car documents were all officially in Paul’s name. If we were turned away and had to rerun the gauntlet of police I don’t think even my normally over-serene temper would be able to hold up.
Trip Stats:
Days on the road: 137
Miles covered: 16,057
Meter reading: ?
Tanks of fuel used: 83
Tempers lost: Many
