Into the Wakhan Corridor

The Wakhan Corridor seems to begin in earnest after leaving the village of Qazideh. The gravel track that serves as a road mirrors each twist and turn of the Oxus and as the evening draws on, houses on the Tajik border twinkle with light. Afghanistan is cloaked in darkness.

Every few miles the landscape of the corridor changes, often dramatically. The whim of the rives dictates where is fertile and where is barren, and where rocks, sand and morrain fall. We drove through boulder-strewn plains, rocky riverbeds interlaced with streams, dustbowls, and patchworks of lush, irrigated fields. Even in a 4x4 we could move at little more than walking pace and so there was ample time to take in the views.

September is harvest time in the Wakhan. The women's shawls and dresses are a passionate riot of colour against the golden grain and burnt brown stubble in the fields. In the distance, framing each scene, are barren grey slopes with scattered snow tips: the peaks of the Afghan Pamir.

Driving the so-called road is draining; the surface is incredibly poor and often non-existent. In the course of a morning we waded through two rivers, checking their depths and holding our breath that the water would not flood the car or carry us away downstream. In one area, a short distance past Qala e Panj, a torrent of water has swept away the road entirely and you must pay a $15-20 toll (a truly exhorbitant sum, especially by local standards) to a local farmer to cross his deeply rutted field. Once out of the mud you must then take your chances on the steep gravel ramp hacked in to the base of a decidedly unstable cliff.

Progress along the corridor is slow: 10mph is a respectable pace for the few people passing this way. You are unlikely to see another vehicle from one day to the next: the other road users come by donkey or on foot.
We stopped for lunch in an idyllic location close to the confluence of the Panj and Wakhan rivers. The valley there is wide and flat. Animals grazed on the grass and I ate my own weight in pistachio nuts whilst soaking up the sense of serenity.

The Bowels of Hell

I drove once before through the Aznob tunnel and, though I blogged about it then, I still feel the shere horror of the experience makes it worthy of another mention.
Albeit without the flames licking up around your ankles, the Aznob tunnel is the 3km mouth of hell. Semi built by the Iranians, the tunnel has been open for several years but it is still a very long way from completion. One narrow tunnel carries traffic in both directions and is also used to remove rubble generated by boring the second tunnel hat will ultimately run in parallel. Those piles of rubble extracted but not yet taken away are simply left as unlit obstacls in the obstacle course that is the carriageway.
The surface of the road is unmade and huge stretches are flooded with water,masking the po holes beneath. We crept along at a limp, still thunking against the rock more often than I'd like. We narrowly avoided the unmarked drill rig another heavy plant that appeared suddenly in the gloom, and held our collective breath each time a homicidal vehicle lurched from the darkness to swerve or overtake.
 Two thirds of the way through the tunnel we realised why completion is taking so long. Indeed, since my previous visit over a year ao it scarcely seemed to have advanced at all. The construction crew has no equipment - at least not any that is fit for the job. We passes half a dozen men digging with shovels; a second team was breaking up rocks with pick axes.
The icing on the cake, however, was the small. group of men attempting to chane one of thetunnel's ew but desperately needed lightbulbs. In the absence of a step ladder they had parked a Chinese-made digger across the road,completely blocking the traffic. We switched off the engine so as to reduce the risk of carbon monoxide poisoning and watched transfixed as the used the digger's bucket to lift two men the 10ft or so to the ceiling, enabling them to reach the bare wires.
Tajikistan is not a wealthy country - it is thepoorest of the Central Asian states - but the Aznob tunnel is still no less a national disgrace and a danger to all who drive through it or work inside it. The technology required to complete the job properly is not complicated and, as Chinese road crews across the region have shown, when properly organied this kind of project can be completed safely, cost-effectively and to a high standard. There is absoluely no excuse for this mess.