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Day 68 : Travel Day 30 : 20.9.69.
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Fariman - Shapesand

E.Route : Fariman - Shahpesand : ETD ------- : ETA ------- : E.Dist -----
A.Route : Fariman - Shahpesand : ATD 0620 : ATA 0029 : Dist 373m.

Distance 373 m : Gross T.Time 18:09 hr. : Net.T.Time 13:23 hr
E.Av,Spd. --------- : Gross A.Spd. 20.55 mph. : Net.A.Spd 27.84 mph
Stop time 4:46 hr : Speedo TD 12833 : Speedo TA 13206

Comment : Return over the worst section of road in the whole journey - although the local roads departments appear to be doing some maintainence and resurfacing, the diversions, for miles along minor back roads, round sections which were under reconstruction, added considerably to the time of the journey.

Gordon's letters

Jim Lindsay's diary:

19 September

Apart from being more or less imprisoned this was a fairly typical rest day. They fed us well and we read our battered stock of paperbacks. One drawback was that whereas huge bumbling hornets lived at Herat Airport, this place was over-supplied with wasps, which treated us like a big picnic. Round the back of the hospital some entrepreneurs had set up tented shops selling basics like biscuits and cigarettes.

The fact that they let these merchants in without quarantining them as well suggested that the whole thing was a formality, but we started hearing rumours about people testing positive. First of all they said that there were carriers, and then that there were people actually infected. There were said to be two on Durham. Then Iona turned out to be positive, which started a round of rather uneasy jokes.

20 September

Despite the rumours we were allowed to leave today, but they kept Iona. This worried us, but once again we could not believe that if they seriously thought she was a danger, all her immediate contacts would be allowed out into the community.

We started at 0600 but fairly soon we had more trouble with the fuel pump and lost a couple of hours. Now that we had travelled out and were on our way back we could be certain that the roads we covered in the first half of this day were the worst on the whole journey. It was made worse by regular diversions that took us onto even worse minor roads. As always, these were flagged by irregular lines of little stones across the main road, often disturbed and quite easy to miss.

We were supposedly travelling down the centre of a broad valley but the diversions took us into the foothills on either side, making us ford little streams and giving us glimpses of secretive farms. Every so often we could see the cloud of dust raised by some other divertee. Up front where the drivers and navigators worked their shifts, there was a giant box of Indian Nutro biscuits, which we nibbled as a perk of the job. They were not much in favour back in the cheap seats in any case. The supply seemed endless and it was rather a surprise when it eventually ran out.

Eventually we worked our way onto the better roads of the Caspian lowlands, and the remainder of the day was a long hypnotic journey. Jim Moyes and I had the last long stretch to the field at Shahpesand, with the whole contingent asleep behind us. We got there well after midnight. The floodlights were not on and the hordes of insects were absent. We simply stretched out the groundsheet and laid our sleeping bags out on it. Later in the journey when nights were colder we learned to protect the sleepers from cold and dew by doubling up the tent canvas over them like a huge blanket.

An unplanned stop by Liz Y

I don't think we even knew the name of the little village we stumbled upon, near where Cuddles broke down shortly after we left Fariman. We had visited many spectacular places during our weeks of travel, but small and seemingly unremarkable villages like this could be equally intriguing, places we might easily have missed.

Finding ourselves stranded for a couple of hours, we couldn't resist the chance to explore little alleyways between the small domed and cube-shaped houses. From the coach on our outward journey, we had seen similar villages with buildings constructed of mud bricks and daubing. They had seemed to merge into the desert landscape, like small sandcastles washed over by the tide.

It was still early in the morning when we arrived, not yet 8 o'clock. At first the village seemed deserted, but almost immediately villagers began to appear from all directions and greeted us with welcoming smiles. We were treated as guests to the village and invited into people's homes. Watermelons were produced and sliced for our refreshment. The young teenage son in the home, which I visited, was eager to demonstrate how skilfully he could cut up the melon and we stepped outside to watch him do it. There is an art in cutting watermelon and he was quick and adept at the task.

The interior of the house was immaculately arranged, with floral print cushions piled neatly around the sides of the living area. Pinned to the walls were several pictures, cut from a glossy magazine, showing an ornately decorated and furnished room in a grand palace. It crossed my mind that this village home was much more agreeable than the extravagantly austere residence shown in these images. This village was fascinating in so many ways. First of all the architecture was deceptively simple. The design of these mud-coloured structures had evolved over many centuries. Inside, the air was cool and fresh, without any apparent form of mechanised air-conditioning.

We were left with two lasting impressions of the village. The first was of the spontaneous warmth and friendliness with which we were received by the villagers. They didn't know us, had no prior warning of our visit and yet didn't hesitate to invite us into their homes. The second impression was of how fascinating these mud brick buildings were, how well adapted they seemed to the intense desert heat and how much in harmony with their surroundings. I have been curious to find out more about the design and functionality of this kind of architecture. Other people in the contingent probably know a lot more about this than I do. I discovered that there is a term "earth architecture" and that there is a growing interest in the structural properties and sustainability of buildings using unfired mud bricks, which could help to reduce carbon emissions and global warming. Mud is an easily available material worldwide and there is now blue sky research, exploring ideas, such as how to bio-manufacture unfired mud bricks using microbes on sand to bind and make them more durable.

So on our unexpected stop, we had experienced both the ancient custom of hospitality to travellers and seen some interesting aspects of a traditional form of Iranian village architecture. I think we learned something else too about the gains and losses from modern speed of travel. That day we covered about 400 miles to reach Shahpasand. In the heyday of the Silk Road, before sea routes opened up between India, China and the West, caravans moved much more slowly, covering maybe ten or twenty miles a day. Caravanserais were located at close intervals all along the Silk Road for travellers to rest and shelter their animals. Here they would have got to know local people, with whom they would trade and on whom they were dependent for food and shelter. They would also be able to share news and information.

On our long day's journey to Shahpasand, we stopped in Bojnurd, with just enough time for afternoon chai, but not enough time to learn that Bojnurd is a multi-cultural, multi-lingual city, famed for its mineral springs, horsemanship and stunning, early nineteenth century house of mirrors. We only had a few months, not years, to get to India and back!

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