I have also edited a book by a long-standing friend, Richard Meredith, a business journalist turned traveller and adventurer in his middle age.
Richard had the insane idea of driving a family car, a Daewoo Kalos, affectionately known as the Green Goddes (GG) from the home of the manufacturer in Luton, Bedfordshire, England, to its spiritual home in South Korea, Seoul. Accompanying him throughout was his co-driver, affectionately known as The Kid.
If you like the sample that follows of the resulting book, which contains hair-raising, thought-provoking and stomach-churning episodes in Afghanistan, India and on the high seas, is called Which Way Next? you can order the full volume from:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Which-Way-Next-Daewoo-Challenge/dp/095414323X/ref=sr_1_2/202-0785617-5551806?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1180372962&sr=8-2
Chapter 15
STRANDED!
I guess there must come a time in almost every epic journey when there is a defining moment for those taking part – a time when, quite literally, the fate of the adventure hangs in the balance.
In our case it wasn’t exhaustion or sickness or those kinds of things that threatened to force us to abandon our goal; nor even that GG, who is hardly suited for the trip (or so we thought!) should give up the ghost.
No, the defining moment which all but brought an end to this hair-brained scheme for the Kid and I arrived in the rugged mountains and sandswept passes of northern Afghanistan…
The young officer at the border patrol post is apologetic. He has checked our passports, made two calls on the field telephone to his superiors, listened to our story about having driven here halfway across the world, but he is sorry: we don’t have any special papers. SOS, the children’s charity we represent, is not on his approved list and there is no way he can let us in.
It is very early in the morning. We have driven all yesterday and right through the night to reach this crossing at Termez on the northern Afghan border. But now he is telling us we must go back into the flat and dusty fields of Uzbekistan to see for ourselves what can be done.
Across the border, patrolled by soldiers like him in combat dress with machine guns, and on the other side of the high wire fence and the strip of ploughed-up ‘dead man’s land’, lies a country which for the last 25 years has been one of the most troubled nations on earth.
We have already driven 12,000 km across 17 countries. Now we need only to get across 650 km of Afghanistan to reach Pakistan and the south east Asian corridor by which we plan to reach our destination of South Korea by the new Route 3.
We have looked at the map and made our calculations. Afghanistan doesn’t seem large. But then again, I imagine that has been the mistake that would-be invaders have been making down the centuries and, more especially, the Russians and Americans of more recent times.
Anyway, the officer is sorry. “It’s dangerous in there,” he says. “Only people with special permission can go in – and you don’t haven any.”
We are evidently not the first to be turned away. He pushes a piece of paper with a typed address in my direction. It’s the name of a United Nations compound about 6 km up the road.
“I suggest you go and talk to them,” he says.
The Kid looks shattered. It’s been a long and weary night and he has done much of the driving along winding, unlit roads to get here. “I can’t believe it,” he curses. “All this way, just to be told we can’t get in.”
We find the UN’s enclave without much trouble. It is well-known around here. They set it up not long after the long lines of Afghan women and children, struggling with their meagre possessions, came flooding across the border when the Russian troops with their tanks and guns, came muscling into their country 20-odd years ago, and they expanded its importance when the Americans arrived, carpet-bombing the mountain villages and sending thousands of their men on a fruitless search for Osama bin Laden and his Al Kaeda followers in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks in the USA.
Afghanistan has been a battleground for centuries. Its strategic importance as a crossing point between north and south, and east and west, is a prize which men have been asked to fight and die for right through history. But there’s never been anything like the scenes of these last few years when millions of Afghans have fled their country under the onslaught of the armies of the super-powers.
Paradoxically, such is the topsy-turvy world in which we live, the scale of the refugee problem has led to a greater demand for those whose role it is to provide assistance in all this man-made suffering. The plight of the refugees has to be monitored and co-ordinated, and at Termez, which is the oldest UN compound of its type, all the major relief agencies are represented.
“It’s dangerous in there,” repeats Anwar Kholbaev, the amiable and very capable head of the UN’s office for co-ordinating humanitarian affairs, when we get to see him and explain our story.
“Right now, the only people being allowed into Afghanistan are those on bona fide humanitarian work linked with the UN, and I’m afraid,” he can hardly suppress a little chuckle at this point, “that driving a family hatchback into the place on a scattered-brained adventure – no matter how worthy the cause – doesn’t qualify on any account.”
The Kid and I are shell-shocked.
“But SOS does great work for refugees - including Afghans,” I protested (having looked it up swiftly in my pack of reference papers). “And hey, look, if you’re worried about any comeback we’ll sign something saying we are doing it of our free will and…” (I have not checked with the Kid before saying this, although I felt sure he would agree).
But this was an issue on which Anwar, the UN’s top humanitarian, would not be moved.
And now there was another reason. A very big reason
We had taken him out to see little GG thinking that maybe, just maybe, her seductive allure, plus the scribbled messages of innocent children’s love and affection all over her paintwork, might loosen his resolve. But it was not to be.
He looked at her small tyres, confirmed with one question that she did not have four-wheel drive, and then told us: “The fact is, even if I wanted to give you permission you would never get through. The road between here and Kabul has been blocked by sandstorms for days and there have been a couple of tunnel roof-falls, which are proving hard to clear. Only the big 4x4s are getting through – and even they are having a tough time of it.”
The Kid and I tried to take it on the chin.
We had rehearsed a line once or twice before on this great escapade, but now I found myself saying it for real: “One impossibility is bad enough, but two makes it really difficult.”
In the language of never-say-die adventuring, that’s about as close as it gets to giving up.
Next morning, unable to sleep, I was sitting on the steps of the compound entrance watching the first rays of sun reminding the world that life does go on, when I heard the drone of an aircraft.
It wasn’t far away. In fact, as I stood to find a better view over the fence, and despite its camouflaged colours, I could clearly make out the darkly-mottled shape of a bulky transport plane as it rose into the lightening sky and made its way lazily into the distance.
Even as I watched it go, a thought was settling in my head.
So far, on this amazing journey of ours, we have twice loaded GG onto boats (the ferries from Greece to Turkey and then across the Caspian) and once, last week, on a train.
I took a last look at the disappearing plane. “M’m, I wonder…” I muttered.
“Colonel Hoppe will see you now. But I must warn you that he only has five minutes before he has to leave for an appointment,” said the sergeant who escorted us through the sentry post at the barracks of the German Air Unit at Termez’s small airfield sometime later in the morning.
Anwar, the UN’s man, had given us his phone number. “I shouldn’t do this,” he told the Kid and me. “We are not allowed to show any favours you know, but still, in all the circumstances …”
I knew I had to get straight to the point.
“Colonel, we are British and you are German but we have come to you because we need your help.”
I had rehearsed this introduction on the way here. It was cheeky. It was chancey. But it worked.
The colonel gave us double the time allowed. There was even a little twinkle in his eye as he joined in the spirit of my opening remark . “Ja,” he said, “we don’t often help each other do we?”
Ten minutes later and I had a promise from Colonel Wolfgang Hoppe, base commander of the large attachment of German Air Corps at Termez, whose task is to ferry peace-keeping international troops down to Kabul several times a week, that he might, just might, consider putting us and GG into the hold of one of his big Hercules aircraft.
“But first I must warn you that there will be several hurdles to overcome,” he said. “We will only be able to do it if you can get permission from my High Command in Germany, we can only do it if there is a plane available with sufficient space on board, and we shall need some proof that you are on the humanitarian mission which you say.”
I hardly had time to thank him before he added another condition: “Oh,” he said, “and you will have to make sure you have all the right customs clearance papers for the car.”
Back at the UN base Anwar listened to our story. Maybe GG had worked some magic on him too.
“No, I’ve never heard of it being done from here before but let’s see what I can do to help,” he said.
We had answers to the Colonel’s requests within 48 hours.
A call to the German attaché at the embassy in Tashkent produced a faxed permission to the Air Base from Potsdam in no time at all. It was signed by someone with a very impressive rank and the Colonel read it out to us, word for word and with great delight, when we saw him next.
There was also a full set of faxed endorsements of our fund-raising mission from the SOS organisation’s high command at Innsbruck. Peter Voelker, a deputy secretary-general who we had met on our visit there just a few weeks back, called me on the phone to confirm it was on the way.
“I hope you know what you’re doing,” he joked, but then added in all seriousness: “Afghanistan is very volatile. You don’t have to do this for us you know. I have to point out that it must be your decision.”
“I know,” I said. “Thank you for the warning, but yes, we want to go.”
Anwar, carried along by the euphoria, somehow managed to persuade his commissioner that our madcap adventure might have some benefit to the UN cause after all.
And finally we received the customs papers from an official called Illia who became so enthusiastic about the whole episode that he insisted on coming with us to meet the colonel and being chauffeur-driven there in GG.
We got the go-ahead call next day. It was the colonel’s aide de camp (ADC).
“Be here tonight with the car at 17.00 hours to receive your briefing. You will be flown by a Dutch air crew from Eindhoven under our command. There will be ‘passengers’ on board and we must remind you that this is a military mission. Please do not, therefore, release any information about this until the flight is over.”
I put down the phone. Anwar was beaming. So was the Kid.
“It’s a bloody miracle!” he said.
We reported for the flight next morning at 4.45am. After the briefing the Kid and I had gone out for a meal in a late-night restaurant to kill time and I had been hoping to get a few hours sleep in readiness for what I knew would be a dangerous and exciting day. But after five days of frustration and waiting around, my adrenalin was pumping as our chance approached to get going again and my brain would not slow down.
I found the Kid pacing around at 3am. It was the same for him.
“Can’t sleep either?” I queried in the darkness,
“Not a chance,” he said, “now I know how James Bond must feel before a mission.”
At the base we drove little GG in through the gates. Rudi, the big German ADC, is standing there waiting for us. The combination of Teutonic efficiency and military planning means everything must be done on time and to the strictest regulations.
“You must park car here,” he commands, directing us to an exact spot where the technicians will take over – weighing and measuring the car (although they have already done this once) checking and checking again that everything is in order before loading her into the cargo hold of the big Hercules which is standing on the far side of the runway.
I find myself patting her on the bonnet and, in that new habit of mine, passing her a goodwill wish. “Off you go GG,” I say. “Not long now and we’ll be on the road again.”
Rudi has been assigned to us. He leads us over to the area where close on 40 soldiers are milling in the waiting area dressed in full camouflage kit. These are the “passengers” we were told about earlier. They are part of a military force, headed up by the Germans, which is trying to bring some order to Kabul.
Like us, they have been waiting around somewhere for their turn to come. But unlike us, they are not looking forward to it. Their mood is edgy. Reports on the news, even in the last few hours, have spoken of more unrest to the south of the city where Taliban forces have clashed in the hills with men loyal to the new government. Their task as peace-keepers, acting as a human shield in a civil war where only the Afghans know the difference between friends and foe, is about to test their nerve and courage to the very limit.
Rudi tries to make light of it. In real life he has a good job as an interpreter and a wife and family who he likes taking on holidays to a hotel for the over-50s in Spain. “Afghanistan is Absurdistan,” he says, chuckling at his surprising line of wit. “Three months more of this and I will have done my turn to help the world. Then I will go and sit on the beach and drink some beer.”
Take-off time is drawing near. The sergeant whose job it is to make sure that no-one has decided that peace-keeping in Afghanistan can do without them, takes another roll call. Then, being all present and correct, the little German army, plus me and the Kid, board a bus and trundle over the tarmac to the waiting plane.
The scene inside reminds me of one of those war films where paratroopers stand up, one after another, and hurl themselves out into space over enemy lines. Like them, we sit in two parallel rows on either side of the fuselage, but today I notice a definite lack of parachutes as one of the Dutch crew hails us with comforting words down a megaphone about what to do if we are unfortunate enough to be hit by a ground-to-air missile.
GG, enjoying her celebrity status and, looking rather pleased with herself, is strapped to the floor further down the plane where everyone can see her.
I stretch out to shake the Kid’s hand as the four big engines roar us down the runway and the big bird rises into the early-morning sky.
“Put it there pal,” I said. “We finally made it.”
The flight didn’t take much more than an hour. Inside the Hercules, with my jacket fastened to the wall, I cannot watch the world out of the window from a comfortable reclining chair like they have on conventional jets, but far, far below I imagined us crossing the border post where all of this drama began, and I thought I caught a glimpse of the roadway covered in sand and the fallen tunnel we would have found impossible to pass.
Then, suddenly, as we approach what must be one of the most dangerous airports in the world, the pilot slings the plane into a series of corkscrew manoeuvres which tip us this way and that as we hurriedly lose height in our approach towards the distant runway.
“I sink he avoids guns, ja?” says the German opposite who, until now, appeared to have been dozing peacefully since the moment we had taken off.
The Kid and I have been doing our homework these last few days.
According to the TV, more than 20 years of occupation by foreign forces have left Afghanistan a country more divided than ever.
Backed by the peace-keeping troops, a new government is struggling to restore some normality to daily life while high in the mountains, where they have proved invincible to the superpowers, pockets of Taliban and Al Kaeda forces, maybe still with bin Laden amongst them, are said to be hiding out.
In the south there have been clashes between warlords seeking to establish their fiefdoms in the vacuum left by the recent conflicts, and there is anger and resentment everywhere against the havoc wreaked on their country by the superpowers.
“The place is like a powder keg that could go off again at any time,” Anwar, the UN’s man at Termez had said when we asked him what our chances were.
“Think how you would feel if your country had been bombed and shelled and then bombed again for all of your life. These people are volatile, they have suffered a great deal. It doesn’t take much to spark them off.”
“A number of foreigners had been kidnapped or shot,” he added thoughtfully. “But you should be fine as long as you are careful and don’t go asking for trouble.”
“Well that’s OK then,” said the Kid when I asked if he really, really wanted to go on with our journey.
“We’ll be going east from Kabul where things are relatively peaceful by all accounts and there will be fewer than 150 km to drive to the Pakistan border. We surely can’t come to much harm with that?”
He made it sound good. But he was wrong.
Not completely, as were soon to find out, but wrong just the same. We certainly could have come to harm on this never-to-be-forgotten day… and we very nearly did.
The plane ride had been all we could have wanted - a cloak-and-dagger adventure which made us feel, well yes, a bit like a pair of secret agents, and a wonderful gesture by the Dutch and Germans to help us on our way.
For a while after we landed at Kabul, reality was suspended. The manager at the airport came out to meet us personally, there were publicity pictures with the aircrew on the tarmac, our German soldier passengers marched off to keep the peace, little GG took her bow before an inquisitive new audience, and Blue Carrot (the base commander was on holiday – typical!) sent our latest story off across the airwaves from the World Media centre: ‘Stranded Brits airlifted to Kabul’.
But now we were part of Afghanistan, back on the road again – and fending for ourselves in the most dangerous country of our trip.
After clearing the airport, with its rapid reminders of shellfire damage and burned-out planes, we did what we had been advised to do – we went to see if we could hook up with a convoy of “friendly” army or civilian vehicles which might be heading across to Pakistan. We asked around, but nothing we could find would be setting out for another four days.
Then we took up another suggestion and simply asked anyone and everyone to tell us what they knew about the road going east and the problems we might face.
It was a worrying catalogue: Rough and treacherous roads, undetected mines, bombed-out buildings, broken down vehicles, road blocks, car-hijackings, armed bandits … everyone seemed to have a tale to tell.
“You can probably make it in five or six hours but set off as early as you can in case you hit trouble,” was the general advice. “Whatever you do, don’t still be out there after sundown.”
I looked at my watch. It was just after 2pm.
“That’s only about five-and-a-half hours of sunlight left. We’ll be running it very close,” I said to the Kid.
“Great,” said my partner of few words, “let’s get on with it.”
The first danger point arrived all too soon. Only 10 km or so out of Kabul’s damaged city, the road began to deteriorate as the thin covering of pock-marked tarmac split into patches, and then gave way completely to an unmade surface of dust, rocks and stone. Then, rising starkly against the burning sky, came the shimmering ranks of mountains, which we knew we must cross.
“My God,” I said to the Kid, “ this is going to be one hell of an afternoon.”
I guessed the outside temperature to be up around 40 degrees.
“Gauges and dials?” I queried.
He took a quick check round the dashboard.
“Yep, everything seems fine,” said the Kid. And then, in that laconic style of his, he looked up at the mountains and added: “It’s a good job we filled her with fuel at the airport – there certainly won’t be many garages up there.”
GG was bumping along. Our brave little car, with the strengthened suspension and under-body protection installed by Yves, the engineering Walloon, had proved to us that she could take a hammering back on those tracks in Kazakhstan. But she was now playing in a different league; this was a road that had tested the soldiers of America and Russia in their tanks and armoured vehicles.
In fact, if I had actually thought about it, I would have taken a long bet that GG was the first and only family hatchback ever to have tried the journey up here.
After a while the road began to rise in the foothills and we came to a fork where I noticed that several of the trucks ahead of us were veering off.
“Aha, that’s torn it,” I called, “the map doesn’t show any turning here. Sorry, but I haven’t a clue which way we should go.”
As we dithered, pulling the car to the side and preparing to take another big decision, I spotted a figure sitting just off the road on a makeshift chair in the shade of a tree. He was wearing the traditional garb and headgear of an Afghan tribesman and, too late, I noticed the rifle propped up beside him.
“Which way Pakistan?” I pointed this way and that, my voice quavering as I ventured the question..
He looked at me with my white skin and fair hair, looked at the Kid with his fresh face and boyish grin, looked at the car with her fancy decals and the bonnet on top and, quite honestly, I don’t think he had ever seen anything quite like it before.
It took a moment, and then his face broke into pure devilment. “You go …” he pointed one way, “and you go fast.”
And with that he looked up at the sun and, making a rolling motion with his hands, left us in no doubt what we had to do.
“Well, what do you reckon? Friend or foe?” I asked the Kid.
“Haven’t a clue,” he said. And nor had I.
It was 50:50, but we agreed to take a chance and go the way he said.
The road in the mountains soon became simply terrifying; there’s no other word for it. It wound around and around, often with a deep drop into oblivion off one side and with a sheer face of rock up the other. Mostly it was just wide enough for two lorries to pass, but frequently narrower than that, and the surface was deeply rutted where water had worked its way in amongst the sand and stone, and heavy loads had done the rest.
The Kid was at the wheel as we bounced and juddered along, going as fast as we dare and with his sharp eyes, as often as not, picking out the worst obstacles before we reached them. Occasionally there was another vehicle, usually a beaten-up saloon of ancient vintage that came hurtling past, or towards us, in a cloud of dust. But our problem – as with the man at the junction – was deciding whether the people inside were enemies or friends.
We remembered those warnings before we set out: how the Taliban fighters had pinned down whole convoys of trucks from hilltop positions up here as soldiers from the world’s superpowers sought to invade their country. How many of them, now in the pay of volatile warlords, still roamed the mountains? We remembered the stories of car hi-jackings, of foreigners being killed and kidnapped …I thought of Terry Waite, John McCarthy, Brian Keenan and gulped, hard.
“Don’t stop for anything – or anyone,” I said to the Karaoke Kid as he slowed GG to a walking pace while we worked our way around a lorry with a punctured tyre.
“But supposing we break down or we come round a corner and find the road blocked,” he wondered.
“Just say some prayers and don’t think about it,” I said. It was years since I had prayed; I began to make up for lost time.
We had been in the mountains for a couple of hours when the car pulled alongside. It had been in the mirror, following in our dust-stream, for long enough. But now they were beside us, five of them, in an old white heap of a car, which should have been in a museum, no, make that a scrapyard, and they gestured us to stop.
There was nothing else for it. “Oh shit, now we’ve got trouble,” I said, feeling an ache of fear welling up inside my stomach.
“Where you go?” shouted their driver through his wound-down window.
“Peshawar … Pakistan,” we both said as one.
“You hurry. Must hurry,” said the driver in his best broken-down English.
“Some places,” he pointed to another set of even higher mountains in the distance, “bad people. Night coming. You follow. OK?” It was the perfect set-up for a car hi-jacking.
Our strategy plan has been to share the driving burden one hour on, one hour off these past few weeks, making the stop to stretch our legs and let the air into GG’s engine as though she were a dog panting for breath. But today there is no time for such niceties. And anyway, the Kid’s adrenalin is now in full flow.
“Friends or foe?” I query again as the white car pulls off in front of us and the hands in the back wave at us to follow.
“Don’t know,” he says, “but do we have any choice?”
The white car proves to be our saviour. For the next two hours and more we follow it through every twist and turn and across every bump and judder, picking our way through villages where the Taliban warriors still walk with Kalashnikov rifles across their backs, past the burned-out tanks and rusted debris of battles won and lost, through cavernous tunnels where we are blinded by the sand from the white car’s wheels, spiralling round the mountains and ravines on our precarious ledge of a roadway.
And we stop for no-one.
In the beginning, still unsure whether they were deliberately leading us into danger, or even a trap, we hung back. But the driver coaxed us along, slowing until we had caught him up and then accelerating away when he felt sure we would follow. In turn, we grew more confident of him.
The pace quickened. It was what was needed. I know that now – because otherwise we would have been caught by the night - and he knew it too.
“Hey, this guy has been here before,” I said as we mimicked our leader and veered to one side just in time to avoid a large crater, which the Kid and I would almost certainly have failed to spot.
And so it went on. Or rather, so it might have gone on if we hadn’t lost ground on our leader while a lorry barred our path for an age as it ground its way slowly round an especially severe set of bends.
We found the white car slewed off the road with all five of its occupants gathered round a tyre at the back, which had blown itself apart from all the pounding.
“We have to stop now,” I said to the Kid. But he had already put his foot on the brakes.
The men refused our help. I gave them the last of our water but they urged us to carry on.
“No, no - you safe. Go now,” said the driver waving us away. “Mountains finish. You see.”
I looked the driver full in the eyes, this man I had never met who had decided to help two fair-skinned strangers in their ridiculously conspicuous car, to survive an afternoon’s lunacy in the mountains where so many of his countrymen had died.
I put my hand across my heart in the Afghan gesture of trust and friendship. “Thank you, thank you so much,” I said. “I think you have probably saved our lives.”
He wouldn’t have understood my English, but he tilted his head in acknowledgment and I was sure he knew what I meant.
And he knew just where we were too. Around the very next bend the panorama changed as abruptly as it had begun into the beginning of a wide flat plain, which would take us across to Jalalabad and then on to the safety of Pakistan.
We reached the border just as the sun was dipping down for the night and just as we had hoped to do. The distance from Kabul was only 150 km, but we had taken six hours to complete the most heart-stopping journey of our lives.
Across our heads, as we arrived at the border gates, I could hear the crack of an artillery gun emplacement from the Pakistanis and the answering chatter of an Afghan machine gun as their soldiers clashed in the descending darkness of the Khyber Pass.
Poor GG, so much had happened since she took us to the airbase at Termez at 4.45 this morning, but now we were safe at last.
I put one hand on her dusty headlight. “You did fantastically well today,” I found myself saying in the latest way of things.
It had been quite a day.
Distance driven so far: 12,500 km
