Oblast from the past
Our first day in Murghab was highly productive. Mike went on one of his early morning scouting missions, acting our his organisational dreams that we hear so much about at odd times of night and soon we were arranging a trek, proposing a jeep hire through the Wakhan valley that borders Afghanistan, touring the various beaurocratic agencies designed for the entertainment of Cyrilic-loving tourists, and phoning Andy direct from the town's soviet switchboard.
We seemed to have slipped into a package holiday. We paid up front for accomodation, jeep hire, trekking (for tax purposes, to be refered to only as hiking) and a night in a yurt. All courtesy spikey haired, wrinkly man working for a French NGO called ACTED, who seemed very suprised we were so happy to be in his town.
We were driven to get ourselves registered, irritated by the $23 fee we would be forking out. We took the charming approach, drew out our student cards, and made the police guards wet themselves as Mike poured over our phrase book and tried to explain student poverty. This didn't work, but we did each get a little hand-written and stamped reciept to present along the route for the cash.
Next came the KGB. Walking through corridors of fierce portraits, we came to the right office. Our names went in yet another book, there was no fee and we even managed to relieve them of three staples for our little reciepts.
The final stop at this red-tape theme park was the Environment office. A man with very little desk furniture demanded, quite sweetly, $1 per walker per day and spent the next ten minutes carefully copying out our "trekking" permit.
Felling very chuffed at all the paperwork we had created, we went to call Andy. There were no phone booths; calls were made directly from the exchange by a large babushka with a headset and a deskful of plugs who yelled "Murghab" down the line before handing you a handset through a trap door in the wall.
The afternoon was for recovery and our hosts at the homestay had brewed us a bath - a Russian banya.
We seemed to have slipped into a package holiday. We paid up front for accomodation, jeep hire, trekking (for tax purposes, to be refered to only as hiking) and a night in a yurt. All courtesy spikey haired, wrinkly man working for a French NGO called ACTED, who seemed very suprised we were so happy to be in his town.
We were driven to get ourselves registered, irritated by the $23 fee we would be forking out. We took the charming approach, drew out our student cards, and made the police guards wet themselves as Mike poured over our phrase book and tried to explain student poverty. This didn't work, but we did each get a little hand-written and stamped reciept to present along the route for the cash.
Next came the KGB. Walking through corridors of fierce portraits, we came to the right office. Our names went in yet another book, there was no fee and we even managed to relieve them of three staples for our little reciepts.
The final stop at this red-tape theme park was the Environment office. A man with very little desk furniture demanded, quite sweetly, $1 per walker per day and spent the next ten minutes carefully copying out our "trekking" permit.
Felling very chuffed at all the paperwork we had created, we went to call Andy. There were no phone booths; calls were made directly from the exchange by a large babushka with a headset and a deskful of plugs who yelled "Murghab" down the line before handing you a handset through a trap door in the wall.
The afternoon was for recovery and our hosts at the homestay had brewed us a bath - a Russian banya.
posted by Pete @ 3:32 pm
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