A strange day.Woke and ascertained that we were on the wrong road, so we returned towards Dushanbe to get on the right road and, having noticed that 27,400 miles including several thousand over crap roads had worn the horizontal tread off the tyres, went to a garage for a tyre change. Assumed it was a case of “Yer mate ave it ready in an hour”, whereby the garage gets the tyres and fits them.
No. we were told to go to the Big Bazaar, buy our tyres and bring them back to be fitted. Couldn’t quite believe it and I must have been looking sufficiently nonplussed because a garage man offered to come with us and sort things. Good job he did, some guy tried to sell us some second hand tyres which were said to be very good, but our garage friend looked unimpressed and then some brand new ones were brought out but cost a good bit more. I said OK and the real problem arose in trying to pay for them. Few people take cards, and it was a case of touring Dushanbe’s ATM circuit finding a machine that would take my card and, if it did, whether it had any money in it. Eventually found such a machine, put my card in, pressed all the right buttons, and the screen went blank and swallowed my card. We got taxi and went to the bank that owned the machine, which said we would have to wait to 5 pm. Our garage friend argued with them and got it down to 2 pm.
Eventually got card back, paid tyre shop owner and tyre fitting place, and took our garage man back to his garage. He had spent 6 hours helping us instead of doing his work and had been calm, courteous and helpful throughout. I paid him £20 which is a lot in Tajikistan but reckoned he was worth every penny. A lovely, charming man. Jennifer thinks he is the most charming person we have met on the trip. I think the next person was. Got flashed by a motorist going round a bend near Obigarm but too late and got stopped by a tough-looking policemen with a smile from ear to ear. Looked at passport and international driving licence and we spent 30 minutes talking in Russian about Tajikistan, England, football, beautiful Tajik women, what my sons did for a living etc etc before he said goodbye and waved us on. He had the most infectious laugh I’ve ever heard. A real bundle of fun.
At Obigarm, the road to Darband via Rogun, where a huge hydro station is being built, was blocked by the army and, after bumping up an unmade road with huge ruts, eventually got onto the main road and an old man with a long white beard said we were going the right way. Found a nice quiet place off the road to spend the night. Until the police came. Very friendly and polite; we could stay there but they preferred us to follow them to a hotel. So we did and convinced the owner that rather than pay £10 for a room, we preferred to pay half the amount and sleep in the van in his compound, guarded by an old man with a long white beard. Still we can wash in the hot thermal waters from which Obigarm gets its name “Water is warm”.
