Free Full Tilt by Dervla Murphy

to do I didn’t really mind.

GHURION, AFGHANISTAN, 9 APRIL
    We left Tieabad at 6 a.m. with nineteen miles to go to the Afghan Customs, though the actual frontier is only ten miles away. The road ran through more sand desert, and lots of sand had been blown over it, which was an advantage in a way on such a rough surface. We crossed the frontier at 7.45 a.m. and whoever said the weather in Afghanistan would be ideal for cycling was wrong because even at this hour it was almost too hot. Those 150 miles I came south yesterday have made an extraordinary difference to the temperature. However, last winter remains so vivid in my mind that I am still grateful for too much sun.
    The only indication of the Persian-Afghan frontier is a seven-foot stone pillar, conspicuous from far across the desert, which lucidly announces ‘Afghanistan’. Here I stopped to photograph Roz. Three miles further on a long branch served as Customs barrier and beside it lay a very young soldier in a very ragged uniform, sound asleep with one hand on his rifle. I quietly raised the barrier for myself and continued towards the Customs and Passport Office two hundred yards ahead.
    There, no one took the slightest notice of either my kit or my passport, no uniformed officials appeared and no series of dingy, uncomfortable offices had to be visited. Instead, I was ushered into a cool, dim, carpeted room and entertained by three men who, though ignorant of any European language, made me feel welcome and at home. They all wore baggy cotton trousers and loose, cleverly embroidered shirts hanging below the knees and turbans piled high above broad, smooth brows. As we sat cross-legged, performing the ritual of tea-drinking, I felt myself being happily weaned from the twentieth century by their reposefulness.
    I was two hours at the Customs and might have been sitting there yet if another petrol truck hadn’t arrived en route from Meshed. The driver wanted to take me to Herat but after yesterday’s experience I know that the one thing more deleterious than being fried on a cycle in a desert is being rattled through a desert by truck. However, I asked the driver to take two petrol cans of water and leave them fifteen andthirty miles away on the roadside, as I couldn’t possibly carry enough water on Roz to replace the gallons of sweat lost.
    The village near the Customs – Islam Qu’ala – which I had expected to look like an East Persian village, didn’t look like anything but an Afghan village: every house was a miniature fortress, with special apertures for firing at your neighbour when there’s a feud on. At a little distance from the houses was an encampment of black goat-hair tents similar to one I had passed on the outskirts of Meshed, with a few camels lying chewing the cud beside it; it would have been good for a photo but I decided I’d like to get the ‘feel’ of the country before drawing unnecessary attention to the fact that I was about to cross forty miles of uninhabited desert.
    We arrived here at 6.30 p.m. after a most gruelling struggle; I thought nothing could be worse than Persian roads but of course Afghan roads are much, much worse. Poor Roz – how long will she survive?
    Ghurion is off the ‘main’ road so I decided to spend the night in a little tea-house at the junction, which is run by a delightful old man. I’m still working on the principle that the fewer people who know I’m around the better. (Despite myself all the fuss about the dangers of Afghanistan is having its effect on my nerves: probably a few days among the Afghans will soothe me down.)
    The tea here comes by the tea-pot, instead of by the glass as in Turkey and Persia. You get about a pint of it and a little china bowl half filled with sugar into which you pour the tea and by the time you’ve had four bowlfuls the sugar is all gone. Having seen nothing of Afghanistan but a Customs House, a desert and a tea-house, there’s no more to report till I get to