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Herat - Kabul
E.Route : Kandahar-Kabul +: ETD 0700 : ETA 1500 : Dist : 311m.
A.Route : Herat - Kabul : ATD 1325* : ATA 1530** : Dist 683m.
- Depart Herat airport 1325
- 1350 - 1540 Shopstop in Herat.
- 1613 - 1625 Return to Airport.
- 1735 - 1818 Cholera check.
- 2005 - 2111 Stop at resthouse.
- 2257 - 0103 Meal at resthouse.
- 0500 - 0548 Kandahar ***
- 0635 - 0655 Toll stop.
- 0935 - 1004 Cholera check.
- 1104 - 1320 Breakfast (Ghazni)
- 1343 - 1350 Toll stop.
- Arrive Kabul 1530**
Est.A.Spd : 38.8.mph : Gross.A.Spd. 26.20 mph. : Net.A.Spd. 38.1 mph.
Stop Time : 8:12 hr. : Speedo TD 8301.5 : Speedo TA ****
Comment : Hypnotic Afghan highway driving overnight. (*) - Much-argued decision to cut out Kandahar and maximise time in Kabul. (** 1530 on 11th). (***) - most of the time spent finding the location of camp of the majority who had left Herat on morning of 10th, and spent night in Kandahar. (****) No speedo reading for arrival in Kabul -have taken the estimated 311 miles from Comex Mag. and added it to the 372 to Kandahar (8301-8673). Much time spent In Kabul trying to find campsite - finally settled at Kargah Dam at 1630 hr.
(+) This in fact the scheduled travel for 11th. Aug. Schedule for 10th was Ealam-Qala - Kandahar (see previous page Travel day 14 for details).
Jim Lindsay's diary:
This was a marathon session, two days of travel with no more than a couple of hours stop
at a time. Greg's wonderful convoy system was well and truly dead and after a good deal of
internal strife our contingent's decision was to carry on through to Kabul rather than
overnight in Kandahar.
This was not a happy day, with a cholera zone imminent and all sorts of worries about
amoebic dysentery and the need to boil water. This was not helped by some of our medical
experts claiming that this did not do any good in any case. There were huge hornets that
bumbled around the site and clustered wherever there was water to lap. They were evidently
much less worried about their health than we were.
I can't remember why we left so late in the day - there was no obvious reason for delay and
most crews had left earlier. It was certainly cooler in the evenings but we had been given
grim warnings about things that happened to night travellers, so it was not the easy option.
Before we left, we went shopping. Herat had lots of shops geared to the overland traveller
market, and plenty of overlanders of the "Kabul or bust" kind to fill them. We all dickered
with different levels of enthusiasm. Ricky haggled fiercely for a karakul hat and was not
pleased when I got one much cheaper because I was not really interested and the shopkeeper
kept lowering the price just to make some kind of sale. I still have the thing and it smells
as odd as when I bought it.
Then it was a long dreary drive in the dark. There was a compulsory stop at a cholera zone
check point and a couple of hours later we had a chai stop in a big caravanserai that the
Russian road-makers had built as their regional headquarters. It had relics of its former
splendour and there was even a swimming pool for those with change to spare. Later we stopped
and ate at a humbler roadhouse. While we were there the local bus stopped and out came two
French teenagers travelling east on their own. Hard to feel adventurous in our cosy coach
after that! We also met the first of the wonderful decorated lorries that we would see all
the time from then onwards.
We had made apricot jam at Tabriz and by now it was fermenting. Through the plastic you could
see currents carrying little insects rising and falling slowly with the turbulence inside.
While we were eating a pair of peasants arrived and made it clear by sign language that they
would like to eat, so the kindly cooks spread jam on bread for them. After a couple of
mouthfuls they must have detected the alcohol because they threw their food down, stamped on
it, and ran off presumably to pray. The main course was pork luncheon meat. Luckily nobody
offered them any.
The desert air was unbelievably clear, with a host of stars and a great many meteorites -
this was around the season for the Perseid shower. We had swapped some crew with Oxford in
the way we tended to do later and I was navigating with Rick. As we plodded along it was
possible to see sets of tail-lights many miles ahead as we gradually caught up with one
lorry after another.
We got to Kandahar around 0500 and the streets were empty, but there was a dawn chorus of
birds making odd popping noises. It was warm and had the distinctive sweetish smell that
Afghan towns do. The plan was to find the pre-arranged campsite where the others were meant
to be, and rest there for a couple of hours, but it was not to be located. Eventually we
found ourselves in a central square and heard faint voices coming from a tower. Dave Spooner
and I ventured in and found that it was a police station with half a dozen policemen whiling
away the night shift, at least as surprised by us turning up as we were to find them. They
were a motley bunch. No two had the same uniform or even clothes of matching shades of blue.
The one who came closest to speaking English was kind enough to act as guide and after a lot
of confused driving we found our scheduled destination. Unfortunately the only person there
was Greg, so the others had clearly all carried on. So we left him there, returned our guide
to his card game, and went back out on the road.
On the road by Liz Y
As the maps of Europe and Asia unfolded beneath our wheels, we saw how one landscape merged into another,
how all the countries were basically connected. Borders we passed had been man-made, delineated and often
fought over, each place forging its unique identity like adjacent houses on the same plot.
We set out as a modern caravan constantly on the move with 500 fellow travellers. It was impossible to
know them all. Each group had its own small realm. We travelled strung out along the Europe-Asia highway,
in radio range of some, but mostly miles apart. The coaches reassembled from time to time, but each quite
self-contained. Our group lived in three layers, Cuddles, Comex and the ever changing landscapes through
which we passed.
Cuddles was our mobile home, where we spent many hours, days, nights on the road. We became our own little
community reliant on one another to play our part. We made our own decisions on when to explore, travel,
refuel, replenish water, shop, cook, eat, stop at the roadside or sleep under the stars. We stopped to
explore cities, towns and villages, where we glimpsed how people lived and tried our best to communicate
without language. We had no handbook of useful phrases in Turkish, Kurdish, Azerbaijani, Farsi, Dari,
Pashto, Urdu, Punjabi, Hindi or all the many other languages and dialects spoken along the way.
We would remember mosques, citadels, landmarks, the deserts and the mountain passes, but we would also recall
small things. Little stones and rutted roads in Khorasan. A narrow street in Herat between high mud walls,
no windows. Two girls emerging from a doorway, bright colours quickly concealed beneath a burqa. The lined
face of an old man in a white turban. The cooling shade of the walls against the glare of the sun. The earthy
fragrance of a market stall. A neat pile of watermelons under a canvas awning. The pattern of flat roofs,
mud houses, little courtyards on a distant hill outside Kabul. Remember the Khyber Restaurant where overlanders
swapped their stories.
Perhaps because we couldn't speak, we became more aware of colours, sounds, smells of little streets, sweet
and fetid in the heat of the day. We began to understand the informal language of the roads. The persistent
blaring of a horn when a vehicle appeared over the horizon, a cacophonous greeting and the signal to close
all windows and the door, to get aboard quickly if we happened to be outside. Passing traffic threw up a
storm, which if you weren't careful, filled your eyes, hair, clothes and everything on board with gritty
dust. In the spirit of things, the driving crew bought a loud horn for our return journey.
We met people on the road. At a tea house we sat outside with tribesmen and tethered camels and drank clear
tea. We ate unleavened bread with apricot jam and unwittingly offered pieces to some of the tribesmen. They
were pleased, tasted it, felt obliged to spit it out, detecting slight fermentation. At a roadside a young
man on a motorbike drew up at our open door, smiled, vaguely expectant, mildly intrusive. A puzzle. Another
time, a dignified older man appeared as if from nowhere. People sometimes did in the desert. He was impressive,
patriarchal in turban and curl-toed shoes. We offered sliced watermelon and he showed us a good way to cut it.
Sharing food sometimes took the place of words.
We watched the light fade at the close of day, felt the first slight chill of a desert night, remembered the
colours of a day on the road.
