Frank had heard from his team earlier in the morning. They had stayed at some hotel which sounded worse than camping in a rubbish tip & were grabbing breakfast whilst they waited for us to get through the border. We had the name of the road the hotel was on so we headed towards them.
We drove towards Osh which wasn’t too far from the border crossing. In Central Asia there aren’t too many main roads towards the major towns & their hotel was apparently on one of them. With the road name & a local landmark it couldn’t be that hard could it? We found the road without any problems, locating them was taking a bit longer. We couldn’t see the landmark Frank had been given. Just as we were getting fed up of driving at 5mph we spotted Mischief & Mayhem’s Polo parked at the side of the road.
We pulled over & parked just in front of Mischief & Mayhem’s Polo & 40% Nuts. The Tajik Rally guys were still with us so they pulled over too. We next heard Jakobus from Mischief & Mayhem & found all the guys were not far behind him. Frank was distracted looking at the Polo. He had left Jakobus & Reinhold in Uzbekistan as they went through Tajikistan. When he left them the Polo was in a pretty fair condition. It was now looking very different. Frank had heard they had some problems on the Pamir Highway & needed to fix the clutch somewhere in the mountains. Somehow I didn’t think he was expecting to find parts of the car on the roof rack. As Frank was getting over the shock of the Polo, Jakobus started it. Wow, what a noise. I’m not entirely sure what the cause was but it sounded like the exhaust was no longer part of the car. Then came the story of their journey through the Pamir’s. Looking at the cars & hearing what both teams had been through I was glad John had talked me out of Tajikistan & the Pamir Highway in Minty. The Pamir was certainly a car killer. Both Mischief & Mayhem & 40% Nuts had to replace their clutches.
As last minute fixes were being carried out on the Polo & the Micra a lady & her young child started begging for us to give them money. We ignored them & carried on doing what we were doing. As we had done this, the child who could be no more than 4 years stole a 2 litre bottle of beer from the bonnet & legged it down the road. We had seen begging in other countries but I hadn’t yet seen a child steal anything, never mind beer. We just let him carry on. He probably knew what he had pinched but we were in no position to stop him.
John & I had decided not to get any local currency. It seemed no-one had as there was only black market exchangers in a market nearby. We decided to risk it & get some money exchanged in a town further on.
We were finally on our way. We said goodbye to the Tajik Rally guys a while before so our little convoy was made up of us, Mischief & Mayhem (Frank, Jakobus, Reinhold) & 40% Nuts (Adam & Ian). We headed out of the town not really sure what to expect. Somehow we ended up in front, with Frank driving the Polo behind closely followed by Nut’s Micra. Frank was struggling to drive the Polo as the replacement clutch was on its way out but there was no way we could accidentally lose them. All we had to do was hope the local constabulary didn’t pull them over for noise pollution.
In the run up to the rally we had read bits on most of the countries we were visiting but we must have given up when reaching Kyrgyzstan. I’m glad we did as it would have spoilt the next few days.
