('On-line' text of)

'VIA RISHIKESH - A HITCH-HIKER'S TALE'
An account of hitch-hiking from England to Europe,
North Africa, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan & India in 1970
by Paul Mason
© Paul Mason 2006

Chapter 14

UNLIKELY PROPOSITIONS

Down the darkened lane we run, getting Yolanda away from the house of the two stoned foreigners who seem to have gotten too interested in her and most worryingly of all seem to harbour homicidal tendencies too.

'Just keep going!' I shout encouragement to the others, but I realise we all lack the stamina to keep on running for very longer.

'What are we to do? We can't keep going like this,' comes Yolanda's anguished voice from the gloom.

'We need to get the hell out of here. We've got to get away.'

I worry that we do not know the area, we are running blind, and we could easily come to a dead end.

I hear the sound of a vehicle approaching, due to lack of visibility I can barely make out whether it is a car or a truck.

'Let's try and get a lift,' I shout to the others.

So the four of us stop still, blocking the road.

To my relief the lorry stops and the driver gestures us to climb into the back of the vehicle, so we hurriedly clamber on. As we pull away I hold on as best I can, in fact we all cling on to back of the cabin for dear life as the lorry lurches and bounces as it negotiates the uneven track. The dust thrown up by the spinning tyres throw up clouds of dust that fairly fills the air. Coughing and spluttering we cover up our faces with our sleeves.

The lorry moves on at quite a pace and at the end of the long track we turn a corner and get on to a proper road. Here the driver brings us to a sudden halt calls to us. Bruised, choking and dazed we stumble back, lower ourselves on to the road and go to speak with the driver. By the light of the headlights I survey my companions who look truly comical, like extras from a Buster Keaton comedy, plastered as they are from head-to-toe with fine white dust.

The lorry driver cannot take us any further so we stand stranded, nursing our eyes and coughing incessantly. Here we are in God knows where, sore, tired and desolate in almost pitch-black darkness.

'What next?' I ask, hoping that maybe Yani can think of a way out of this dilemma.

'Go to the police?' he suggests.

'We can't go anywhere, in this darkness I can't see a thing, let's just wait for another lift. ' I answer Yani.

As we stand about waiting in the darkness, occasionally I strike a match, as by the flashes of light we are at least able to get glimpses of one another's faces, from time-to-time.

'You know, we take our eyes for granted, we've got a lot to be thankful for,' Yolanda muses. 'Think what it would be like to be blind!'

How long we wait here I don't know but it is only a matter of minutes before the lights of an approaching car brings forth a loud cheer from us all. And as luck would have it the car stops and the driver gestures for us to open the door and get in. It is a tight squeeze as the man has his wife and child with him. As we get on our way the family prove themselves exceptionally hospitable, passing us soft drinks and nuts, and chatting away excitedly, and I notice Yani in particular looks as though he thrives on the attention.

We are fortunate as lift with this the family is a long one, but I am tired and I would really prefer to be able to go to sleep somewhere. I am not at all sure of our whereabouts but I am now way past caring. We journey onward through much of the night, until eventually the car comes a halt and it becomes apparent that this is the town these people hail from, so we leave them to make their way home.

The prospect of sitting at the roadside for the rest of the night is not a big problem; at least we are out of the danger we were fleeing from.

***

The local community in the town we find ourselves in awakens early in the day and all of us are soon filing into a local chaay shop where the silver-tongued Yani quickly ingratiates himself with the owner. He makes a show of drinking his tea out of a saucer, to the applause of the other customers here, so I rather gather it is a local custom. As a young child I watched my grandfather drink his tea like this in order to cool his over-hot drink.

The teahouse also sells fresh halwa; a sweet preparation made of honey and crushed sesame seeds. Yani is full so full of praise for this and so we all tucked into a piece. I find it pleasant enough, though strangely dry and hard to swallow.

'Cigarette?' Yani asks.

Has he no money whatever, I wonder? Has he no shame?

I purchase a packet of cigarettes by the name of 'Homa' (which are actually closer in size to matches, short and thin) and these I hand around. Yani now focuses his attention on the other customers of the café.

'Pool naderi,' Yani announces.

Whisperingly he explains to me that this short phrase means simply 'I have no money'. He is lucky in getting a little cash from the locals after which he shows his willing to pay for his tea but the owner waves him away (though he does not hesitate in accepting payment from Yolanda and myself). I am beginning to have strong reservations about travelling with Yani, his patter is just too well oiled, but for the moment I decide to keep quiet about my concerns.

The day takes an upturn when a lone driver picks us all up and seems genuinely pleased to have our company. But we have not gone very far before we stop, and the driver makes it clear he has some business to sort out before we go further. As it happens he is not gone for very long, and on his return he invites us to pick some nuts from a nearby tree. Now why is it that do things taste so much better when they are picked fresh? At home we usually only had nuts at Christmas and they were usually dry and brittle, but when I crack open my first fresh walnut the contents are surprisingly warm and oily.

'Delicious, fantastic. I don't usually like nuts,' I remark.

Yolanda doesn't reply. Her mouth is too full of nuts.

I get chatting with our driver.

'Where are we?' I ask.

'Near Caspian Sea. Next we go Amol then to Babol.'

Amol and Babol! They sound to me like Biblical names and Caspian, well; 'Prince Caspian' was the name of one of C.S.Lewis's inspiring and imaginative Narnian books. I check my map and establish our location. To my surprise I find we have not actually travelled very far from Teheran. After all the travelling we have done, we must have been going around in a circle or something!

As the day wears on, the effects of our sleepless night really start to take their toll and when our lift came to an end we are all desperate to get our heads down. Yani claims that he will be able to get us all a free night's lodging in a hotel. I do not openly doubt him, preferring instead to see what tactic he intends to use.

He leads the four of us all the way to the local police station and after Yani appraises the police of our situation we are all escorted us to a local hotel who give over two rooms for our use. In truth, I would sooner have paid but clearly for the sake of the others it is better to work on the basis of 'all for one and one for all'. My feeling is that the hotelier is not that greatly enamoured with our presence, but he refrains from giving voice to his feelings.

After sprucing ourselves up a little we make ourselves a meal of bread, tomatoes and grapes after which we decide to turn in for the night.

* * *

The windows of our room are covered by wicker blinds, which are hardly sufficient to keep out the new days' sun, so none of us lie in bed for too long. When the four of us regroup I am glad to discover that the night's rest has worked wonders on us. The tension that was beginning to mar our relationships has abated somewhat.

'Do you reckon we'll make it to Meshad today?' I ask Yani.

'Sure, and we must get to the Afghan Embassy, but we might have a problem there though.'

'How's that?'

The news is that we all need visas to visit Afghanistan, which we can pick up whilst we are in Meshad, no problem. But rumour has it that the Afghans will only allow people entry who have lots of money to spend. So, apparently they require that everybody show them the equivalent of $100, which is a problem, something to reflect on ahead of time.

Our luck is not holding up so well today. Nobody seems to want to give us a lift so we split up, standing as two pairs on the roadside hoping this will give us a better chance. When nobody stops to give us a lift, Yani waves down a bus that comes speeding towards us. And when it slows to a halt he calls he up to the driver his standard lament, 'Pool naderi, pool naderi.'

The driver smiles and gestures us aboard where we sit down alongside the other passengers. We immediately become objects of attention and then of amusement. One man in particular is intent on making his presence felt.

'Pool naderi?' he asks pointing at us. We all affirm, what else can we do after Yani has told the driver we have no money?

'Pool ma dharam, pool ma dharam,' he states repeatedly gesturing with his hands the meaning being abundantly clear, he has pots of money and we don't, this seems to amuse him wildly.

By the time we the bus arrives in Meshad it is well, well after nightfall and after debating the subject we all agree that we will camp out on a patch of lawn we chance upon. But after only a short time we re-think our position and decide to deliver ourselves up once more to the police. But tonight there is no hotel offered to us, all that is available is in the prison cells.

Yani and Jorg disappear into the first cell, whilst Yolanda and I take another. The door is left unlocked and I notice that shortly after we lie down on the floor, a police officer joins us and soon falls asleep clasping a stengun tightly to his chest. I hope, wish and pray that he has correctly secured the safety catch. Though I don't exactly sleep, I lie resting and at least feel very safe here, better by far than lying out near the street, under the eyes of passers by.

* * *

When I awake it is at the break of day and I am mightily relieved to see that I am still unscathed, as I really had been concerned about the machine gun pointing at us. We do not delay at the police station and are soon up and out, but what with hunger, weariness and an overall disinclination to walk, we are all a little 'difficult' and 'prickly' with one another. We all plod along until quite suddenly Yolanda sits herself down with a bump, on the pavement, and looks up at us belligerently. We say nothing (well what is there to say?) so she bounces up again, and walks on as though nothing has happened. Like the rest of us, she has had enough and this is her way of showing it. This is the only sign she gives of her feelings. The episode takes only seconds, but it speaks volumes about what we all feel. She has been a brick and has so far endured everything with resignation, with the utmost patience. Now she is embarrassed and tries to hide her face from us.

'Let's find a chaay shop,' I suggest.

'Where else?' Yani responds affably.

Here we are in another town, sitting in another chaay shop and here we have another chance to dwell on a portrait of the Shah of Iran. I cannot fathom why every shop here seems to sport a portrait of the king. I study the photograph, the Shah has his hair swept back (in the style often associated with the actor Tony Curtis), and is pictured in uniform with a broad light blue sash across his dark high collared jacket, simply dripping with gold braid, sashes and medals. He is flanked by his attractive wife and young son.

'He divorced Soraya, his other wife, as she couldn't give him a son, only a daughter,' explains Yolanda. 'That's the Empress Farah and the boy's name is Reza.'

Reza's mother looks faintly Italian; perhaps that might explain why Yolanda knows so much about them and may explain why she is not required to obtain a visa for Iran.

'We need to get cleaned up before we go to the Afghan embassy,' I point out.

'Definitely! My face feels unreal. I'm filthy,' Yolanda admits.

'Yes, we should do that,' agrees Yani. 'I must get some money sorted out too.'

This sounds interesting, I wonder how is going to suddenly get some money?

When we track down some washing facilities, we are surprised at how modern the arrangements are, but then we find we are expected to pay.

'A sauna bath! That's a bit unexpected, I never had one of those before. I thought they only had them in Sweden,' I puzzle.

'Meet you guys back here in an hour,' Yani calls before disappearing, clearly he is going to look for somewhere to wash where he doesn't have to pay. I am thankful that he didn't expect me to pay for him (on second thoughts, maybe he did!).

We purchase some soap and shampoo and are issued with towels and wooden sandals, which we slip on before being shown in. The sauna room has hot and cold water on tap and a raised surface to recline on. I slip off the sandals only to discover the floor is heated from below and is very, very hot. Soon the temperature in the room gets unbearably high, which encourages us to get on with the business at hand. We get though a half bottle of shampoo and a whole cake of soap before satisfying ourselves we have cleansed ourselves of all the foreign matter we have accumulated whilst on the road. When we emerge from the sauna we are both squeaky clean.

We find Yani and Jorg outside so I share my enthusiasm for this new experience.

'Brilliant. You should try it. I feel really so-o-o clean. Fantastic Man.'

'Oh yeah? We cleaned up too. So, are you ready to go to the embassy?' Yani asks.

He has already sussed out whereabouts we have to go. We go in and obtain the necessary papers to apply for our visas and are soon sat in the local café filling out our forms. The embassy requires photos too, fortunately I still have kept the remainder of the strip of photos I had taken to obtain my passport.

Yani is still worried that we will have to front up a lot of hard cash at the embassy.

'Some guy says he'll lend it to us if we need it,' he informs me. I am impressed that he has already found a possible solution to this problem.

We are all in agreement that Yani and Jorg, and Yolanda and myself will visit the consulate separately.

'Let's go Yolanda, the earlier we get the forms back to them, the sooner we'll get the visas.'

Everything goes well for us with the Afghans, very smoothly, not a hint of a problem. Mind you, had they seen us a few hours ago things might have been very different! On our return to the café, I reassure Yani and he and Jorg now scuttled off.

The visas will not be ready until late afternoon so we have some time on our hands as it not even mid-day yet. Yani sets off to do some hustling and soon returns with a satisfied look on his face, so by the looks of things he has got himself a bit of money.

We all sit ourselves down in a chaay shop and attempt to order some food. To my surprise we are directed to the adjoining shops where we buy some bread, vegetables and fruit. I wondered just how irate the owner would get. To my surprise the owner of the café not only agrees to us eating our food in his shop, but he even offers us some salt and the use of a knife. Imagine being able to do something like this back in England! It would be begging for trouble.

After our improvised meal we have another surprise in store for us, Yani pulled out a pack of cigarettes and offers them around! It is such a relief to find that Yani is looking to deal with his financial problems and is apparently sorting them out. I really don't like to think that I ever buy friendship and so I much prefer to see these Yugoslav cats independent of us. Hey, with his newfound wealth Yani even starts to pay for a couple things for us - his way of balancing things out.

We hang around the chaay shop, using it as our base until it is time to go back to the embassy. In the meantime we sometimes go off for a walkabout from time to time.

We set off for the embassy again, but we are all still apprehensive whether or not we will get our visas, we need to keep our fingers well and truly crossed. But we need not have worried ourselves, all our passports are ready and waiting, complete with transit visas, valid for a week, 'Via Islam Qala'. Only a week to get across Afghanistan, we can but try!