In high school I played in a musical. I believe it was called Sweet Charity. Anyway, the only scene I remember is that trapped in an elevator my character was asked “Are you claustrophobic?”. “No, no, absolutely not. I just don’t like small tight places which I can’t get out of”.
I honestly believe I am not claustrophobic. “I just don’t like to be stuck in a tunnel full of diesel fumes between overloaded 30 year-old trucks”. It’s not nice. Really…
The Salang tunnel is a piece of engineering. Not that it would be well designed. The road has huge potholes, water has nowhere to escape, ventilation is practically non-existent and the weak lights are only visible when the fumes disperse at the exit. On the other hand it is built at an altitude of 3400 meters and has almost 3 km. Thus it is the 2nd highest tunnel in the world – in the 4th poorest country of the world. It is also practically the only way linking Kabul with the North - unless you want to spend 3 days on the road. The setting among high peaks of the Hinduuksh is simply spectacular so you can really feel like experiencing hell in heaven – surreal.
Interestingly it was built with the help of the Soviets in 1964 who then used it to invade Kabul in 1979 and ten years later to flee the country. Apparently, it’s hell in winter when frequent avalanches make the access to it quite dangerous. A few times an avalanche trapped people inside the tunnel and a number of them died of asphyxiation and freezing. I would be lying if I claimed that I am looking forward to experiencing it in winter – even the September trip was quite something.
One of the reasons is that Afghan drivers are quite hot headed and don’t really have any rules. Amir, our Afghan-Czech engineer told me on the way from Salang: “If I won the election here, the first thing I would do is force every driver to retake driving exams.” Theoretically, driving licenses are used here and you are supposed to have one to drive. But in reality they are just a piece of paper. The trucks are crazily overloaded and very old, climbing the road at some 15 km per hour. The corollas on the other hand race among them like if seconds mattered and one of their 7-15 passengers had to get to a hospital. Then obviously there is the underlying pride of an Afghan driver – if overtaken it’s his moral duty to do everything in his power to catch the offender. If it wasn’t so dangerous it would be quite funny. The corollas are not exactly powerful cars and above 3000 meter the engines are not working at their best either. The worst, however, are the buses.
The large bus (imagine a 30 year old Mercedes bus complete with a German “Friedrich reisen” decals and Polish plates) is quite a new addition to the roads here. Still majority of public transportation is carried out by mini-vans with a great name “Falang kuch” (apparently a distorted version of “flying coach”). Large buses are popular because they are cheap and fast. Way too fast. We were overtaken several times at over 100 km/h by a fuming honking bus. They would start overtaking anywhere anytime counting on their size as a deterrent of oncoming traffic. They never have a minor accident - only fatal ones. Lot’s of them (on my last trip from Mazar to Kabul I saw 3 completely crashed busses on the 400 km).
I read somewhere wise words of an experienced traveler: “In Afghanistan I always pray for a bad road”. I shall follow that advice. “Fortunately”, there are plenty of really bad roads here.
No comments:
Post a Comment