TRAVERSE 23
TRAVEL - TAJIKISTAN
LEIGH WILKINS
SOMEWHERE OVER THERE
“
What do you mean somewhere over there ?”, a rhetorical question , indeed it was over there , in fact we ’ d been riding along the Afghanistan border for a couple of days , bypassing the famed Pamir Highway to follow the Wakhan Valley , the northern side of the equally famous corridor of the same name .
A number of days earlier we ’ d followed the road from Dushanbe , the capital of Tajikistan , to the town of Kulob that shares its name with the road . In doing so we ’ d missed a large section of the Pamir Highway , but it had put us closer to the border of a country that is steeped in fearful mystery that verges on hatred by the West .
By the area ’ s standards the road had been reasonably good , at least large patches of tarmac were still intact and even the feared “ Devil ’ s Arsehole ”, a tunnel of around three kilometres , unlit and poorly ventilated , didn ’ t seem too bad . Reaching the Afghan border had changed things dramatically , separated by a river , the Panj , the Tajik side seemed more modern with infrastructure being developed by the Chinese . Afghanistan had been left behind to dirt tracks and mud bricks constructions .
The Chinese are developing this area in unprecedented amounts . It ’ s all part of the colossal project colloquially known as ‘ The New Silk Road ’ or to many as the Belt And Road Initiative , a project to connect everything to China through a series of international transport corridors . A contentious issue even in my homeland of Australia where we ’ d been touched by the project .
In less than ten years the project had gone from being an ambitious plan to link east Asia with Europe and which now sees connection through Africa , Latin American and even Oceania . In many ways it ’ s a
TRAVERSE 23