Tajikistan - Cold Going Over

There is a joke in Tajikistan. Just one. And everyone you meet will tell it to you. It takes a long time and it's not that funny. But it's very Tajik. It goes something like this: An American, a Frenchman and a Russian are stranded on a desert island. They find a bottle with a genie in it. Each gets three wishes. The American and the Frenchman choose great wealth, a long life and to get the hell off the island. The Russian thinks for a while and asks the genie for 10 cartons of cigarettes, four cases of vodka and, oh, for my last wish, can you bring my friends back?

That's kinda how it goes in Tajikistan. They miss the Russians.

The people of Tajikistan have that hard squint and painful stoop that comes from working in the fields too long. Life now is subsistence. Even the dogs look tough and hard. Tajik dogs are big dogs with their ears cut off to prevent the wolves from ripping them off.

Along the way sheepherders, soldiers, policemen, and pink-cheeked stocky women all stare and wonder why I am here. There is very little that could be described as exotic, things are mostly hard tough and poor. I get a chance to take pictures and meet the people more than I really want because about every 20 to 30 minutes our car conks out and the driver must attach the bicycle pump to the gas line to move the gas up into the carburetor. It gives me a chance to stretch my legs and look around. There is not much here. People will sit on the side of the road all day just to sell four or five apples.

Dusty stores are packed with up to a dozen brands of cheap vodka and 4 to 5 brands of cigarettes, but not much else. Cigarettes are the equivalent of about 10 to 20 cents a pack.

Money is a funny thing here. Tajik rubles come in denominations of 200. Most of them are brand new and packed into nicely banded wads. You need 900 Tajik rubles to make one U.S. dollar (6,000 Russian rubles for a U.S. dollar). There just isn't a whole lot to buy with rubles. U.S. dollars are the preferred currency and the black market is the accepted form of transfer.

We pass through spectacular scenery as we cross back and forth over the river gorge that will take us up into the mountains. Landslides are a common occurrence and the road is broken up, bent and rebuilt on a regular basis. It is getting colder and colder but the sky is clear and I enjoy the ride. The only high drama occurs when we cross over one of the many bridges that shift us from side to side.

The bridges range from old, rusty, army Bailey-type bridges to the Indiana Jones- style swinging wood bridges complete with gaping holes, missing planks and crunching sounds. All that's missing is the horror soundtrack as the planks creak and crack. For fun I look straight down and have no problem seeing the thundering rapids interrupted occasionally by the odd solid plank.

As we continue to climb I keep asking where the summit is. "Don't worry you'll know," is the answer. The sun is beginning to disappear behind the mountains and we are still nowhere near the top. Finally as we reach the snow line we see people walking down. My guide Hamrakul says now we are getting near the summit. Our car has conked out again so I get out and look around. The wind is fierce and there are thick bullying clouds that scud and collide with the peaks. We are heading into a blizzard. I decide to walk up ahead to scout things out.

The people that are walking down are old hands at this game. They drive as far as they can and then resign themselves to spending the night in some type of crude shelter instead of sitting out the howling storm packed in their cars. As we turn a corner I see where we are heading. It doesn't look good. There are long lines of screaming, spinning cars being pushed up by crowds of men. The road is now pure ice with people breaking up clumps of dirt to add traction. The light is fading and the storm is in full force. It is damn cold but the exertion of walking up and down the hill pushing cars keeps me warm. The dull blue light finally fades into night and the wind increases, smacking my face with sharp ice crystals. We are miles from the summit.

Down here where you can still see, people are having fun. Nobody is yelling and everybody is helping out. It seems the hardest part is keeping the cars from slipping over the precipitous edge and rolling thousands of feet into the unseen white chasms below. Some cars zip right past, others have to be pushed like overloaded toboggans up the hill. It seems that along with our car's fuel problem, his clutch has given out and the chains I thought would save us are slicing into the exposed cords of our bald tires.

Since I have made the fatal mistake of being the only able-bodied male in the vehicle (the driver of course must drive), I get to push. Not just a little to get some momentum but physically push the car up the mountain. As our car slithers and screams on the slick ice, the chains fly off and hit me in the knees. I am dripping with sweat as we run into the back of a long convoy stuck ahead of us. I decide to walk up and help work on the front of the line, but after walking for over a mile I realize that we are nowhere near the summit and we won't be going anywhere tonight. As if to finalize our predicament, when I get back to tell our driver not to be in a hurry, our car refuses to start. Our battery is dead.

I had not planned on doing a little high-altitude camping in the dead of winter so I improvised. I simply emptied out all the clothing in my pack and stuffed them in my pants and jacket. I look like the Michelin Man, but it will suffice. I also had the foresight to pack gloves and a hat. I end up giving my gloves and hat to my fellow passengers as the temperature drops inside the small car. I end up wearing socks on my hands and pulling my watch cap down over my face. When it is still sub-zero, I do manage to fall asleep once or twice, but I wake up to find my extremities heading toward frostbite. It is the coldest night of my life. Having spent a lot of my life in northern Canada, I know that death by cold is not an unpleasant death because your brain slowly turns to Jell-O and you sit there frozen, happy and stupid until your heart stops beating.

I forced myself to get out of the car around 3 a.m. The blizzard had stopped and the stars were out. I marveled at the beauty of freezing to death in such a clear beautiful place. Occasionally we would hear the crunch-crunch of someone walking around outside. From inside the car, all that could be seen were the delicate patterns of ice crystals as they grew from the bottom of the windshield to the top. I was sure I saw a tableau of a wolf-headed monster chasing four maidens. By around 4 a.m., everything in the car was frozen solid. The children in the back along with Hamrakul and the women were passably warm because they filled up the entire back seat with blankets and each other. I had given them all the spare clothes I had and I just sat shivering in the front watching my watch tick off the minutes until the sun would restore my body temperature to 98.6.

By 5:30 I couldn't just sit and freeze to death so I told Hamrakul that I was going to walk over the pass and down to the next village some 20 kilometers distant. No one was coming for us and it really doesn't matter if you freeze in a car or fall down the edge of the precipice that runs along the side of the road. He had lost the feeling in his feet and hands and thought that was a fine idea. We left our clothes with the woman and her children and told her we would walk ahead to see if there was a tractor or shelter. So we bid our driver adieu and crunched up the mountainside until we saw the faint dull dawn begin. In the dim light, the white mountains glowed a deep blue. The sharp wind and piercing cold were replaced by an eerie quiet, disturbed only by the crunching of our boots on the fresh snow. Soon we were at the top and were surprised to find a brand new emerald green Cadillac Seville among the dozen or so abandoned trucks and cars. Their occupants were inside a destroyed weather station with a small curl of gray smoke coming from the chimney. The building was too full of people to even enter.

The drivers inside were waiting for the sun to come up since it was more dangerous to attempt the descent of the pass on the ice than the ascent. Even walking was lethal. As we crested the summit and began walking down, I slipped and fell flat on my ass. As I struggled to get up, I began to slide off the road. Sheet-ice covered the road and there was a small edge of dirt before the cliff. Falling a few times, I learned to slowly put my foot down and measure my next step. As we gingerly walked down, the sun glanced off the tops of the massive crags. Later, when we hit our first patch of sun, it was like being recharged. For the first time, there was heat. As the light intensified, we could see the village below. About ten minutes straight down by parachute or hang glider, but miles as we walked back and forth along the steep switchbacks. Finally, we hitched a ride with a potato truck and basked in the strong mountain sun as the truck gingerly picked and slid its way down the mountain. In the village, we ordered soup, bread and tea at a chaikhana. The villagers had never met a Westerner and slaughtered a large sheep in my honor. They invited me to watch. I am not a fan of watching people or animals' last moments, but I politely sat there as the confused animal watched its lifeblood squirt out. Long after its blood had drained, it continued to breathe and then suddenly its brain starved of oxygen. The eyes glazed over and life was stopped. I wasn't really that hungry anyway.

-RYP