Hitchhiking in an ambulance, sleeping in a mosque and meet Mara!

I left Osh and went to Uzbekistan, crossed the country in about 8 hours and crossed another border to Tajikistan to meet up with Mara in the capital, Dushanbe. But the capital is far away from the border and I didn't get up as early as I wanted, so I knew I wouldn't make it on the same day.

First things to do when crossing a border is (for me at least) getting the local currency and a SIM card. On a Sunday, the ATMs are sometimes empty and aren't refilled until Monday, so I went already on the Saturday. Well, it turns out that the ATMs close to the border were already empty on Saturday. I was able to pay the taxi driver in Uzbek currency and he took pity on me, so we tried plenty of ATMs but all were empty. Eventually, he brought me to a friend who would exchange the 50€ I had left to Tajik soms. At this point, it was already past 6 in the evening and I wasn't able to get a SIM card anymore. I found a restaurant with WiFi and got some much-needed food. Then I also figured out that there were no hostels at all in this town, only expensive hotels. Honestly, I was really frustrated at that point, especially because Max told me I would be able to exchange currency at the border and get a SIM card there. I could have also gotten the currency in Uzbekistan but decided against it since I thought I'd get some at the border. Anyway, my mood was low and so was my money. I couldn't afford 2 nights in these hotels with the 50€ I had. The sun was about to set and I decided to keep on hitchhiking, hoping to get invited to sleep somewhere. If not, I still had the hammock. As long as I escaped the city, I could sleep in there.

And it turns out, my plan worked. I got picked up within 10 minutes and had a nice, rudimentary chat with someone with a very difficult name. I remember it as 'Dracha' but that's definitely wrong. Anyway, Dracha told me he had to work a little bit and then he would go home and has a place to sleep there. I wholeheartedly agreed.

Turns out, 'some' work meant driving huge bags with fertilizer around - from 21 to 1 o'clock in the night in an Opel Astra.

These are the bags. It's ammonium nitrate, the same stuff that exploded in Beirut. But he didn't smoke and knew what he was doing. It had been a long day and I was really happy to finally get to his place!

This is where I slept that night, it was really cozy.

He had a huge house and only 3 kids, but there were more around. The picture above only displays half of them. They really liked taking pictures with me and used all sorts of funny filters.

I continued hitchhiking and eventually went with a shared taxi for the last bit of the road. When I arrived in Dushanbe, I immediately bought a SIM card and also found some ATMs that had money. Then I made my way to the hostel and finally 'really' arrived. It felt good.

Tajik people tend to glue money together. These are 5x0.2 coins to make a 1 som coin (1 som coins also exist but you usually don't need the smaller ones). 1 som is about 8 cents.

I didn't do anything during that day, I really needed a break and noticed that I started to get herpes - as always when I'm really stressed out.

Quick message:

We are hitchhiking in the Pamir mountains, there won't be internet for the next few days. I will give you a big update once I'm out.