Ashgabat

Apologies for the break in transmission  Wi-Fi has been woeful. Some catching up….

The day began quite early, with a knock at our door at 1am. It’s never a good time to be woken, and when one has been subjected to the intransigence of a dictatorship, one’s first thoughts in such a situation are ‘what have I done?’ The door rapped again, louder this time. I jumped out of bed, struggling to find something to make myself more presentable, to find our guide outside. I thought, well maybe he’s going to tell me he has received permission for us to drive but we must leave now. Obviously not. He said we won’t be leaving until 10 am, rather than the scheduled 6am. Ok. I had no idea what rooms everyone else was in so I left the early alarm, so I could tell them in the morning. 

The guide then presented himself once more to my door in the morning to tell me he had not secured a multi-car transporter and was it ok if he ordered four individual ones? Not much choice I replied and returned to my morning ablutions. 

After a curious breakfast (but surprisingly good coffee) and later in the morning, we returned to the scene of yesterday’s battles with officialdom; slightly nervously and with an equal degree of dread. 

We collected our cars from the compound, without much fuss and after a little wait (getting used to it) we loaded the cars on the beaver-tail lorries, climbed into a taxi and set off for Ashgabat. We have experienced various standards of driving, these last few weeks but nothing matches the earnestness of a Turkman driver trying to outwit the numerous police speed checks, the sudden bumpy road and the other equally energetic drivers. All accomplished at 100mph. Yes!  Crazy. 

The route to Ashgabat has taken us through the Karakoum desert. An extraordinary landscape of emptiness; excitingly we feel as if we are really adventuring now but sadly sitting in a racing bullet and not in our cars, which we overtook within the first mile or so. The scenery really is reminiscent of our joint visit to Mongolia 15 years ago. Desert; shadowed, creased, sculpted hills rising to larger mountains behind; all tonally similar; all sparse and without much vegetation. Then suddenly grasses, trees, camels (a few at first, now so many we don’t bother to look up), many police. They all come with a look of well-fed bodies and a swagger, topped off with a splendid hat. Nigel has his eye one getting one.

We have just witnessed a classic piece of silent barter. A policeman waved us down by jiggling his stick at us. The driver stopped, some hundreds of yards up the road and then reversed to the policeman. The window was lowered, a hand holding a note moved noiselessly to the expectant policeman’s hand. Not a word was exchanged, but an exchange had just happened. 

To those naysayers who might remark that we have broken the chain of London to Singapore, I say this: the cars and their owners have continued on this epic journey but not necessarily together. Seems technically sound to me.