Adventure Magazine #242

"We tend to
look up pictures
and highlights
of a country
before we go.
But time and
time again
it’s the people
that stay with
us when we
leave.”
Clockwise from above: Tom, Eddie and Jenny spread out on the road / Tom, Caroline and Andy hold the finish line banner at Karakul
Lake / Mark and Liz celebrate together / The drivers always had a smile for us runners / Caroline finishes her run across Tajikistan
the disgust of watching a goat being
slaughtered in front of us for our dinner
(surely we need to understand where
our dinner is coming from). A few got
lost in the mountains and returned
well after dark along with their sore
muscles, feet, backs, heads. But every
time there was an interaction with
the local people, those people weeks
before we’d been warned against, or a
laugh shared with the drivers who we
couldn’t communicate with before, it
made all the rest worthwhile.
We tend to look up pictures and
highlights of a country before we go
but time and time again it’s the people
that stay with us when we leave.
Especially in places like Tajikistan
where you hear warnings yet receive
treatment that is quite the opposite.
And with this trip, it’s the drivers
we remember most fondly; their
laughter, their kind body language in
the absence of words, their cooking,
their crazy driving but most of all
we remember their dancing and the
way they invited us to be part of their
culture for a few weeks.
We were close to the border and our
finish line. The drivers had done their
job, they’d managed to get us to the
end. I said to them “Thank you. It’s OK
now, you don’t have to come, we’re
finished, relax, have some tea”. Iraj,
with the basic English he had said,
“We come far together, we see the
end.” As they all stood in unison I had
to choke down a tear. We were no
longer drivers and runners. We were
no longer English or Pamir. We were
friends. We’re already planning to
come back next year to reignite this
friendship!
The runners all made it in one by
one, including one runner who’d just
had the all-clear after breast cancer
and another who didn’t know it yet
but would be diagnosed with breast
cancer on her return. Some people
had lost parents, we were all dealing
with our own stories. Each one
passed the finish line ribbon held by
the drivers who embraced them. We
embraced them back.
That night in our small homestay
you could hear the chink of vodka
glasses as we celebrated our
shared achievement and the cries of
“Tajikistan Bapesh!”
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"The runners all
made it in one by one,
including one runner
who’d just had the all
clear after breast cancer,
another who didn’t
know it yet but would
be diagnosed with
breast cancer on her
return. People who had
lost parents. All dealing
with their own story. "
32//WHERE ACTIONS SPEAK LOUDER THAN WORDS/#242 ADVENTUREMAGAZINE.CO.NZ//33