17 years ago

17 is my lucky number. This is what happened to me exactly 17 years ago, back when I was athletic and stronger, back when no one could tell me from my bicycle since we had never been separated:

I was in my 10th month for traveling by bike from Portugal to India via Norway, around the 15,000 km mark of my trip. I was in Baluchistan, the SW province of Pakistan on the underside of Afghanistan in the great valley where Alexander the Great had lost most of his army returning from India 2300 years earlier. I was traveling NE towards Quetta, the capital, with four others, 2 straight Dutch psychiatric nurses (Coen and Vincent) and a young couple from Britain (Kate and Stephen).

The Lonely Planet Guide Book for Western Asia warns travelers to stay out of this area, not to try to cross it unless with an armed police escort. It is mostly a lawless desert area filled with smugglers with machine guns slung over their shoulders fading in and out of the desert. The Pakistan military mans the occasional outpost along the one lane "highway" that runs 700 km from Taftan, the border town with Iran, to Quetta.

From Taftan to Nok Kundi there is only an unpaved trail weaving through the rock desert. The guide book offers "Places to Stay" in each town, but for Taftan its single word recommendation was "Don't." We all crossed into Pakistan the day we arrived because the visas for the two Brits were expiring. After the local smugglers were kind enough to cook us a humble dinner of fried potatoes we headed off into the desert without sufficient food or water. I had to choice but to follow them.

The trip to Nok Kundi, only 85 km, took two days because our tires kept sinking into the sand, especially mine as I wasn't riding an off-road bike. Fortunately we found a military outpost that had a good well and, in Nok Kundi, some dal, rice and fruit. From there too the road was paved, thanks to the UN, since tax monies in Pakistan are used exclusively on the rich and the military. Nok Kundi was the first town where we were pelted by stones by the town's children as we approached, a favourite sport in the area which I attributed to lack of TV or shopping malls to occupy them. We slept in police compounds for safety from thieves and kidnappers, and fortunately the police didn't rob us.

About 4 days along the distant mountains, that at first seemed to be sunken beneath the horizons on either side, had gradually closed in but the valley was still flat and wide between the ranges. And then, as if in a dream out of a French Foreign Legion film, a beautiful oasis town called Dalbandin appeared. It was so picture perfect at first we thought it must of a mirage but it wasn't. Villages we had passed through before had had a temporary feel to them but I could see the ancient history of this town in its architecture.

We found rooms in the Boys and Girls Club, an extension of the Boy Scouts organization which the Pakistanis take very seriously. We spent the evening relaxing and preparing for two long days of cycling to the next town over 150 km away. We made a large afternoon excursion to the local market place to buy supplies. While we were there we saw our first "magic" tree. It was a sort of desert-acclimatized willow and when the breeze rustled in leaves it produced the sound of running water. It held us spellbound for several minutes as it was too great of an illusion to ignore. Later, when it was dark, Vincent and Stephen inquired around and eventually bought a sheet of hash paste (ganga) for $5, enough to keep us stoned for a few weeks.

The next morning we set off. Two km outside the town we stopped while Stephen and Vincent rolled a cigarette of tobacco and hash and smoked it. That put me off, as I reminded them that it was dangerous enough in this area without being stoned out of our heads. They ignored me. At the 16 km mark, Kate let out a whoop because we reached our first sand dune. It wasn't large, maybe 100 m long and shaped like a boomerang with one arm parallel to the road and perhaps 20 m off the shoulder.

We never cycled for long as the two Brits were heavy smokers. This was as good as any place to have another break, I suppose, but then Coen climbed to the top and let out another whoop! On the other side, hidden from the highway, was another magic willow, many km from the next nearest tree. We moved around the far side to sit under it while the Brits smoked. Then Kate announced, in her privileged princess ("Fuck you if you don't like it!") way that we must spend the night sleeping under the tree.

I was pissed off enough to have to stop every half hour with or without shade to wait for she and Stephen to have their cigarettes, but we had only enough food for two days and we just covered 16 km of a 150+ km journey that we had to cover in two days. But more than just this senseless selfishness, there were somewhere between 300 and 400 holes in the sand at the base of the dune, some as close as 4 m away. Some were big enough around to stick my foot in without touching the sides and others much too small for my hand. No one said a word about them. I moved away to the far end of the dune away from the others in the offhand chance of finding my spiritual balance again. Eventually it was Vincent who came to seek out my opinion.

"Did you see those holes around the base of the dune?" he asked.
"Yeah," I nodded.
"Do you think there is anything living in them?"
"It's a sand dune. It shifts constantly so the holes would be filled in a few days if they weren't occupied."
"What would make those holes? Could they be birds."
"No. Birds wouldn't make holes in the ground. They'd make them on a cliff face and they would all be the same size."
"Do you think they are gophers?"
"No. I don't know if gophers live in this part of the world, and besides, they would have mounds of dirt outside each hole, which they don't."
"Well, do you think they are snakes?"
"Well, snakes come in all sizes and there's no mounds outside their holes. I can't imagine what else they could be."
"What kind of snakes do they have in Pakistan? Would they be poisonous?"
"Desert snakes are often poisonous. Maybe they are vipers or adders. Certainly those are poisonous."
"But they'd have to be HUGE snakes to make holes that large!"
"No doubt."
He pondered this a bit, then said, "Well, do you think they'd bother us?"
"That's very unlikely. They would avoid us because they are unfamiliar with our smell and that would make them cautious."

So, believe it or not, we all bedded down under the "magic" willow, listened to the rustle of its leaves and dreamed we were sleeping beside an idyllic stream somewhere in an English meadow. The smugglers and thieves that might have passed on the highway could not see us behind the dune. Fortunately no one had to get up to pee in the night. In the morning the desert sun rose quickly and we woke around the same time. We got up and looked around us. Kate uttered a slight gasp of astonishment and the others stood in silent amazement.

There were no snakes around us, they being night crawlers, but in the sand we saw the trails they had made all around us less than two metres away. Each hole had radiating 'squiggles' in every direction, as they had been in and out hunting all night. Some of the tracks were 20 cm (8") across and the squiggles more than a metre from side to side. Some of these snakes must have been at 4m long and weighed more than 50 kg. Any one of them could have probably killed us. Our small patch of undisturbed sand was a small island in a large span of tracks that extended a great distance in all directions. It was certainly a strange feeling that we had been tolerated as inconvenient visitors by this city of snakes and that we had survived to see something few people have seen. We soaked it in quietly while eating breakfast. As soon as we were finished we packed up and left without discussion.