Thursday 13th October 1983
We were up at 06:00 hrs. as the bus was due to leave at 07:00 hrs. and we walked to the stop through throngs of military personnel, passed a watch tower at the corner of a military camp. We bought our tickets and settled down to wait with yet another English-speaking Iranian. Only seven seats had been bought so we had to bide our time until the bus had a full contingent, fuelled by ice cold Coca Cola vended from grubby polystyrene boxes.
At last a load of Afghani’s arrived to fill the spaces but another delay ensued as the Afghans refused to have their baggage searched and to pay the tip for the loaders to pack their baggage on the roof. It took about an hour to sort this out and we finally boarded the coach and set off on the arid dusty road to the border.
Our next delay was an army checkpoint where all the Afghans were taken off the bus with all their gear, frisked and all their bags thoroughly searched. The Iranian told us to use the term “refugee” loosely in the case of these Afghans as he said that they were smugglers of currency, drugs, gold and weapons. Indeed, they all seem to be carrying great wadges of Iranian money. The next checkpoint inspected our passports and the one after that was for Iranian nationals only.
The long dusty road finally brought us to the border and we were off-loaded at 14:00 hrs. to wait in the Iranian border compound until the office opened at 16:00 hrs. The wind whipped up the sand in our faces and a public address system kept up a steady barrage of martial music and religious monologue as we waited at this bleak outpost. Two GB Land Rovers and a GB Ford Transit van arrived, plus a Belgian car. The Afghans were herded without ceremony into what appeared to be a refugee camp, but was in fact Pakistan!
I joined the Iranian in an expensive chicken and rice meal in the tourist restaurant (500 Iranian Rials) but at least the walls, festooned with propaganda posters, kept the wind and the sand out. When the Immigration Office opened I went in with our three passports (George, Jan and mine) and was stamped out without any regard for currency control or customs checks. We moved on to the “refugee camp” which turned out to be the border town of Taftan, and found a small building which was Pakistani Immigration Control.
In this dimly lit room our passport details where entered into a huge ledger and a rubber stamp concluded the proceedings. Back in the open air a tubby, friendly-looking man rushed excitedly up to us and tried to recruit us as passengers for a minibus to Quetta. “All the buses are full”, he cried, but our Iranian companion had spotted an apparently empty bus and we eventually paid a six-seater row for the five of us on this bus.
Seedy local money changers swarmed around us from the noisy melee of the shanty town and we changed 20 U.S. dollars (borrowed from Jan) at a poor rate, as the money changers knew that the banks were closed. We got 240 Pakistani Rupees for $20 dollars.
The bus was magnificent. Every inch of this single decker Bedford was covered with patterned silver “armour” and garnished with lights, fluorescent reflectors, coloured paint and transfers. Chains hanging from the bumpers tinkled in the desert wind as our bags were loaded on to the ornate roof rack. Inside the bus was just as decorative with floral designs in dayglo colours and inset patterns behind Perspex panels.
We had the row of seats behind the driver and the rest of the bus was filled with Afghanis. Inside 8 of them occupied rows which grudgingly accommodated 6 and other packed on to the roof perched on top of the baggage. In all there were 5 passport holders and 100 Afghans on the bus!
Our next stop was at customs. “The driver knows how to handle Customs”, said our Pakistani business man friend, “they will not touch passport holders and the rest of them must chip in for a suitable bribe”. Thus we were quickly away and on to the 80 miles of rough track (now called the N40 desert highway) across the Kharan Desert.
It was pitch dark now and after about an hour we had a break at a rude “transport café” in the desert. Three mud walls topped with a woven rush roof soon became filled with squatting Afghans eating stew, while we looked up at the millions of stars in the sky. Goats and donkeys strayed in the darkness and the Pakistani businessman who was resident in Iran, who we had nicknamed “Winty” as we couldn’t pronounce his name, told us of the region’s history and of his own travels.
A second stop a while later (about midnight) gave us a chance to stretch our cramped legs and have a cup of Pakistan-style tea. Winty gave the café staff hell calling for quick service and tea without milk for Jan. These desert night stops were a treat, and we were sorry that we couldn’t tarry longer at each.
Finally, we stopped at the drivers resting place so he could sleep off the effects of his hashish cigarettes! “For 2 hours”, said Winty, but we were destined to spend 5 hours cramped up in this steel coffin fighting the urge to scream and stretch and break out into the cold desert air. I finally fell asleep with my legs stretched over the back of the driver’s seat and resting on the steering wheel. We were glad to see the sun rise the next morning!
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