Part 6. Herat and a simple misunderstanding.

 There seemed to be just the one hotel/hostel in Herat. Now I can’t say for sure because of the local produce smoked at the hostel as a welcome from some American lads who were already staying there, but Herat seemed like a very temporary town, like one of those cowboy sets built by filmmakers for a western movie. Nothing felt permanent, the one main street that straddled the road had wooden fascias with writing on, shops, hostel, tea shop. But the buildings were just one room deep and behind them some builders rubble, broken trucks etc and then just more sand stretching to the horizon, interrupted only by the odd family house .

I went to the garage at the end of the street with the Irishman and watched him collect his pre ordered motorcycle, test it out and pay various fees before going back to the hostel. He was going to drive the northern route, through tribal country, along the various Russian borders to Mazari Sharif and then down to Kabul through the mountains. We shared a meal at the hostel and he left at first light .He seemed brave to me, camping in the wild with a valuable bike, money and belonging, in areas where bandits were common and only a couple of towns to get fuel and stores a few days apart from each other.

Stories of people never coming back from such trips were rife, but I think mostly legend and rumour. The tribesman and Mujaheddin fighters farmed poppies for opium and many cannabis fields and farms were up along the top of the country, not many tourists would be encouraged either by the Afghans, or indeed by the Russians, who didn’t want people up near their borders and military camps.

You need to remember how off grid we were, no internet, no phones, not even places with phones a lot of the time. Once you set off there’d be no contact with people, except face to face, for days or weeks on end. Many of the towns and all the villages had no mains electricity and places used petrol generators for the occasional tools or lighting, otherwise lanterns and candles provided the light and wood burners and ovens the heating. The occasional hostel would offer a ‘Post Restante’ service where you could collect mail or have a letter posted forward to people or back home, to reassure people of your existence. They were few and far between, as well as liable to loss through carelessness or theft, especially if it looked like there might be something of value, however small.

I decided that I should buy some of the legendary ‘Afghan Black’, to share and savour on the ongoing journey and asked one of the local teenagers who worked at the hostel if he could arrange it. The hostel was run by three such lads, just a smattering of English, all the services and meals, room prices etc written on cards that you’d point to. Getting them to understand that I wanted just a small piece (the equivalent of £1 worth in the UK) was difficult, but I thought he had grasped it when he pointed to the clock for 8pm to come and see him.

I spent the day drinking tea, visiting the couple of shops that were open and chatting with other travellers, getting back to the empty hostel just before 8. The boy took me to a room in the kitchen area and in it was the biggest, scariest and most proud looking tribesman. He had a rifle leaning against the wall beside him, a belt of brass ammunition shells across his chest, a pistol and a large curved knife in a scabbard on his belt. He sat on the floor and on a low table in front of him were 6 or 7, 1 kilo blocks of marijuana of different grades.

Clearly they thought I was about to set up some kind of export business, and he wasn’t best pleased with me or the hostel lad when I indicated the size of the piece that I wanted, I was genuinely frightened, almost speechless as the guy berated the lad with loud gestures. The boy said I had to buy some and I eventually got the smallest amount he was prepared to sell me, equivalent to about 4 ounces which cost me about £10, almost my whole budget for the Afghan part of my journeys but I was really pleased to leave the room in one piece.

The following day I set out on the journey to Kabul, high as a kite, with this huge piece of hashish wrapped in a muslin bag in the middle of my rucksack.

Go To Part 7 .Across Afghanistan a meeting of roads