Trabant Trek by Dan Murdoch

Author:Dan Murdoch
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: adventure travel, travel writing, cambodia, trabant, car, journey, long way down, long way round, palin, coach, junket, backpack, student, gumball, cannonball run, rally, cambodia, laos, china, bangers, dakar. Mongol
Publisher: Andrews UK Limited 2011
Published: 2011-06-07T00:00:00+00:00

***

It may have only been a hundred or so kilometres, but it took seven hours. I shared the cabin with two local men who were alternating the driving. One was everything I’d expected of a Tajik - thin, aquiline, Iranian features and a long, slender nose, with wide, close-set eyes. The other looked whiter, more European.

They shared chewing tobacco between them the whole trip. I was told it was also mixed with heroin or opium from the mountains, but it seemed to keep them going. On their recommendation I tried a small amount and it made me feel happy but quite sick. To my alarm I was asked to move over for three hours of the descent while one of them put all his weight into holding the gear stick in second. He explained to me in charades that if he let go the transmission would pop out of second and into neutral. Then we would go straight down the mountain, he added, with some dramatic flourishes.

They were an interesting double act. One of them would ask me questions in Russian, I would answer as best I could, and the Iranian-type would trans- fer my garbled Russian message to his partner, no doubt convoluting it as much as I had done to the original question.

At one point I was presented with a glove-box-hot apple that worms had at the very least tasted. Bollocks, I thought, as I bit in - that means I have to share my Snickers.

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