Free A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush by Eric Newby Page B

avenues leading to the Parq Otel were as calm and deadly as those round Bournemouth, the system became completely ludicrous. At every intersection a policeman in sola topi drooped in a coma of boredom until,galvanized into activity by our approach, he sternly blew his whistle and held up the non-existent traffic to let us pass.
    The Parq Otel was terribly sad. In the spacious modernistic entrance hall, built in the thirties and designed to house a worldly, chattering throng, there was no one. Against the walls sofas of chromium tubing, upholstered in sultry red uncut moquette, alternated with rigid-looking chairs, enough for an influx of guests, who after thirty years had still not arrived. On the untenanted reception desk a telephone that never rang stood next to a letter rack with no letters in it. A large glass showcase contained half a dozen sticky little pools that had once been sweets, some dead flies and a coat hanger.
    Besides ourselves the only other occupants of the Parq were two Russian engineers. We met them dragging themselves along the corridors from distant bathrooms in down-at-heel carpet slippers. They had gone to pieces. Who could blame them?
    While Hugh washed in one of the fly-blown bathrooms, I went to photograph the great towers. Maddened by gaping crowds, fearful of committing sacrilege, I drove the vehicle off the road on to what I took to be a rubbish dump. It turned out to be a Moslem cemetery from which there was an excellent view but the camera refused to wind the film, and as I struggled with it, the sun went down. From all sides the faithful, outraged by my awful behaviour, began to close in. Gloomily I got back into the car and drove away.
    By the time we left Herat it was dark. All night we drove over shattering roads, taking turns at the wheel, pursued by a fearful tail wind that swirled the dust ahead of us like a London fog. If it had been possible we should have lost the way, but there was only one road.
    Until midnight we had driven in spells of an hour; now we changed every thirty minutes. It was difficult to average twentymiles in an hour and trying to do so we broke two shock absorbers. It was also difficult to talk with our mouths full of dust but we mumbled at one another in desultory fashion to keep awake.
    ‘The aneroid shows seven thousand.’
    ‘I don’t care how high we are, I’m still being bitten.’
    ‘It’s something we picked up at that tea place.’
    ‘Perhaps if we go high enough they’ll die.’
    ‘If they’re as lively as this at this altitude, they’re probably fitted with oxygen apparatus.’
    Finally even these ramblings ceased and we were left each with the thoughts of disaster and bankruptcy that attend travellers in the hour before the dawn.
    The sun rose at five and the wind dropped. We were in a wide plain and before us was a big river, the Farah-Rud. As the owner of a tea-house had prophesied, the bridge was down. It was a massive affair but two arches had entirely vanished. It was difficult to imagine the cataclysm that had destroyed it.
    We crossed the river with the engine wrapped in oilskin, the fan belt removed, and with a piece of rubber hose on the exhaust pipe, to lift it clear of the water, led by a wild man wearing a turban and little else, one of the crew of three stationed on the opposite bank. In the middle the water rose over the floorboards and gurgled in our shoes.
    It was a beautiful morning; the sky, the sand and the river were all one colour, the colour of pearls. Over everything hung a vast silence, shattered when the ruffians on the other side started up a tractor.
    Because we were tired, having driven all night, we had forgotten to discuss terms for this pilotage. Now, safe on the other bank, too late we began to haggle.
    ‘This is a monstrous charge for wading a river.’ It was necessary to scream to make oneself heard above the sound of the tractor.
    ‘It is fortunate that we did not make use of the tractor,’ said the man