By DJ and Danny
Today we start nice and dry on a beautiful ride through the mountains along the rivers.
Dirk and Danny fill out the roof of the Landrover with a clamp, so that the door opens again… all those crooked roads take their toll.
At 12:00 we arrive at the top of a pass in the rain.
We meet 2 Dutch people there on bicycles.
In the area where we are now it has been really bad weather.
We get stranded at a mudslide and can’t go any further.
I explore it with the shovel, up to my knees…😀.
There are now more than 20 Tajiks watching how we will get through this…
Danny chooses a path, and eventually gets stuck.
A truck tows us out, we’re through! 💪🏼
But a little further on it happens again, rivers are flooded with stones and we have to make a path to get through.
We’ll have that a few more times, it’s nice to steer the Land Rover!
It is getting later and later and it is gradually getting dark.
Further on it also starts to lightning… we actually want to keep going because if we get stuck in the mountains in that heavy weather tonight, you won’t be happy either.
So just keep going to the next village!
During a mudslide, 5 cars are stuck and they ask us to tow them out.
Those guys just drive their Opel Astras as far as possible, until they get stuck and can’t go any further, and then wait for help…
After 4 cars Danny is actually done with it, but we do 1 more so that we have the space to continue driving ourselves.
Further on, a bridge has been washed away and in the dark we look for an alternative route, which is not easy,
But at one point a drunk guy walks past the Landrover swearing because his shoes are dirty… he comes off a passage!!
Together with some other classrooms, we check the path, and we can continue!
Finally we arrive in a village at 10:00 PM and we can sleep in an empty house, no running water, no beds, no food, no breakfast, but a hole in the ground…
We’re dry, so we’re not complaining…
At night we hear the noise outside again.
Today we drove 148km in 13 hours 😬, we are in Darbant and are half way to Dushanbe.
A day you will never forget!
Niet zeuren Dirk-Jan: een gat in de grond met zulke mooie mozaïeken erom heen is daar volgens mij super-de-luxe!