The Long Hitch Home

by Jamie Maslin

  I was gutted, a minute earlier and I might have got it. Despondent, I trudged back towards the main road, but then all of a sudden started running in a frenzy—a quarter of a mile away the truck had stopped. I couldn’t believe it and powered forwards, desperate to make it there before it took off again. Suddenly the distant form of a driver climbed down onto the road, where he began inspecting something on the side of the truck. I pushed on, waving my arms about like a lunatic while shouting to get the driver’s attention before he jumped back in. If he spotted me, then he gave no indication, continuing with whatever he was doing. By the time I reached the truck I was panting like a mad man, and hardly in the composed state of decorum required to initiate a pitch for a free ride. With an expectant smile I handed him a note. He didn’t even look at it. With an annoyed glare, some aggravated Russian dictum, and a dismissive wave of the back of his hand, he sent me packing.

  I trundled on a few hundred feet past the truck, grabbing my breath in the freezing cold while I waited for a different ride. Twenty minutes later, after raising and lowering the truck’s hydraulic dumper section several times, the driver scaled his cab, pulled off along the road, and came to a halt exactly where I stood. The passenger door swung open, and the man whom minutes earlier had been the picture of annoyance, beckoned me in with a smile. I didn’t need asking twice. By the looks of it, the old fella had experienced a pang of guilt for his earlier short-tempered reaction, and confirmed as much by pouring me a steaming cup of tea from his flask and insisting I try a few of his cookies.

  I gladly accepted and saw a bit of myself in him, having once launched into a rather uncalled for outburst at a Turkish taxi driver who, instead of taking me to the Syrian Embassy as requested, had dropped me at the American Embassy instead. After letting myself down and yelling at the poor bloke, I had ended up feeling so bad that I handed him a tip several times the cost of the ride.

  My new-found companion and I traveled together for several hours across a landscape of monotonous uniformity, broken only by the strange appearance of a giant isolated Muslim cemetery. I had seen plenty of these monumental graveyards randomly appear on the horizon in the wilds of Kazakhstan, but never was I anything other than amazed at the sheer size of them, not in surface area covered, but in the scale of the grave markers. These were nearly always proper buildings the size of small houses, often far more elegant and intricately designed than dwellings of the nearest villages, where, presumably, the relatives of the deceased who funded their construction lived—an indication, perhaps, that more importance was placed on the next life than on this. Collectively, they made up little towns of mausoleums, isolated in the middle of nowhere among the swirling desert sands; literal ghost towns of the dead.

  It was dark by the time I arrived in Aktobe, a surprisingly large city of some 250,000 people, the provincial capital of a region with the same name that sits upon huge reserves of oil and gas. Trudging through its crowded, slushy ice and snow-laden streets, I went in search of an Internet café. Having previously messaged some Aktobe couchsurfers, my priority was checking if any had responded to my request for a place to crash, but sourcing the internet proved difficult, and soon I was wandering, hopelessly lost, along rows of old Soviet-era tower blocks.

  It was time to marshal a local to my cause.

  Stopping a kindly-looking, mustachioed man in his middle years, I quickly mimed typing on a computer keyboard, accompanying it with an inquisitive, “Internet?” It did the job, and instead of just pointing me in the right direction, the man guided me well out of his way on a ten minute detour to my requested destination, where he joined me inside to converse with the staff.

  I logged on and received bad news: no one had offered me accommodation. A hotel it would have to be. A further inquiry with my newfound buddy, whose name, if I’m interpreting the scribble he wrote down for me correctly, was Cokeh, and he took me to a run-of-the-mill hotel—only its price sure as hell didn’t reflect this. The staff member working the dark and gloomy reception demanded an extortionate seventy dollars a night. Cokeh near choked on hearing this, and looked as disgusted as I was. He promptly walked me out again, and rightly too; it was way out of my league. And then occurred one of those wonderful bits of travel luck. This man, who had been a stranger just minutes before, offered me a place to stay with him—achieved by him miming sleeping, then washing his face, before finally pointing at himself, as if to say “my place.”

  I accepted immediately.

  Cokeh and I made our way through an ever increasing downfall of snow, transformed by the glow of street lamps into lazy illuminated streaks in the blackened sky, arriving at a grimy inner-city apartment block. Curiously bypassing the main entrance, we headed around the back of the tower, trudging our way through deep snow to a little padlocked metal door that looked like some sort of janitor’s store room. Furtively glancing around, after unlocking the padlock, Cokeh ushered me through a thick red drape of fabric hanging behind the door. Beyond lay a tiny windowless room, maybe eight foot by ten foot in size. A single exposed, low-watt lightbulb burned in the middle of this miniature squat, dangling from a cable in the cracked ceiling. Water and bathroom facilities came by way of bottles and a bucket.

  Quickly closing up behind us, Cokeh gestured for me to take my backpack off and sit down in a worn sofa chair. Next to no space presented itself, so I dropped my pack on top of two innocuous but sturdy-looking U-shaped metal bars, resting, a couple of inches above the ground, on two bricks. With a panicked lunge, Cokeh grabbed my pack and lifted it clear of the bars, leaving them smeared in a covering of noxious-smelling melted plastic from my backpack. The metal bars, it quickly became apparent, were elements from a crude heater, left on to keep the place warm while Cokeh was out. With the exposed elements no more than a foot or so from the disintegrating sofa chair, the place was a crazy fire hazard. I apologized and surveyed the damage: both my pack and the cover of my externally attached sleeping bag were burnt straight through. I wasn’t particularly bothered about the cover, but I’d had my trusty Berghaus backpack for thirteen years. It had served me well on every overseas trip I’d ever made, proving as tough as guts, but this was the end of the road for it now; some sewing would patch it up to get me home, but afterwards it would need decommissioning. (I would like to interject here that should the powers that be at Berghaus, care to reward my endorsement with either a backpack replacement or a nifty sponsorship deal, then I will happily accept.)

  Cokeh flicked on a radio, filled up a kettle, and brewed a couple of teas, serving both with a mountain of sugar. I’d eaten nothing but a few cookies today and was really hungry, so when he offered me some of his loaf of bread I gladly accepted. Cokeh tore off and handed me a thick wedge. We couldn’t verbally converse but much was said between us as we shared this simple meal. Gratitude and respect welled up inside me for this kind and generous man, whose warm-hearted hospitality was humbling. He didn’t have much, but what little he had he shared. Experiences like this strip away all the bullshit of life, where your wants and needs are cut perfectly in two, separated so your genuine requirements are brought sharply into focus, and everything else simply fades away. I had a hot drink, something to eat, a roof above my head and great company. No matter how strange and dingy the surroundings, it was more than enough for me, and I wouldn’t have swapped it for the sterile comfort of any hotel.

  For sleeping arrangements I was given the chair, while Cokeh used a thin mattress in the corner. I slipped into a deep and dreamless sleep.

  A sudden unexpected knock on the door jolted me to consciousness in the middle of the night. Turning on the light, Cokeh cast a worried look my way and placed a finger on his lips for quiet. We froze like dead men, our gazes going from each other to the door, staring in silent apprehension. A woman’s voice called out from the other side. Letting out a sigh of relief, Cokeh called back and opened up. In came a portly lady in a big black puffer jacket, who, after taking off her coat, quickly clambered into bed w
ith Cokeh. The light went off, and before I knew it I had drifted off once more to sleep.

  * * *

  A fresh layer of snow had fallen overnight, carpeting the world outside Cokeh’s squat with white. I waved goodbye to him at the door, and set off for the city’s outskirts. My problem lay in how to get there. Walking past faceless tower blocks and similar-looking snowy streets, it soon became apparent that I had no idea where to go. It was early morning with few people around, so when I saw two guys moving a broken down car along the road—one pushing, the other steering—I decided to assist the pusher in the hope he’d be able to point me in the right direction afterwards. He was appreciative, but, speaking no English, didn’t have a clue what I was inquiring after. For the next half an hour I walked around trying to find people to ask for directions, producing the same disappointing result.

  In the end a guide came to me without asking.

  After making an unsuccessful inquiry with an old watery-eyed babushka hobbling along the sidewalk, a modern SUV pulled up opposite.

  “Do you need help, mate?” yelled its driver, a big chunky guy in his twenties with a beaming self-satisfied grin, and warm rounded Kazakh features.

  This was more like it. I headed over and introduced myself, telling him of my predicament.

  “Jamie, I have friends getting married who I am picking up at the train station and taking to a wedding. I can take you to the road after.”

  That was good enough for me. I jumped in and off we set for the station.

  My new friend was Nurbek.

  “How long you fucking been here, mate?” he asked, in an odd mixture of Kazakh and Australian twangs.

  I told him and asked where he learned English.

  “I work with fucking Aussies, mate,” he replied.

  Nurbek explained that he mingled with ex-pat Aussie contractors working alongside him in Kazakhstan’s oil industry.

  “Do you know what the Kazakh word for sugar is? The Aussies love it, mate,” said Nurbek, laughing hard as we pulled up and parked outside the train station.

  “No,” I replied, intrigued.

  “Cunt,” he stated flatly.

  “Cunt?”

  “Yeah,” he giggled, “It’s spelt kay aye enn tee, but you say it ‘cunt.’”

  I laughed.

  Nurbek gave me a cheeky smile, “Too much cunt can rot your teeth, mate!”

  Too true.

  While we waited for his friends’ train to arrive I got to know Nurbek better, whom, it’s got to be said, had some, err, “interesting” philosophies.

  “Have you been to Japan, Jamie?” he asked.

  “No, not yet,” I replied, “but I’d like to.”

  “I think the earthquake and tsunami is God’s way of punishing the Japanese.”

  (The twin disasters had occurred about a week beforehand and were all over the news.)

  “Err, why?”

  “I look at all these Japanese websites and they’re so fucked up, mate! People masturbating into socks and school uniforms; they’re crazy!”

  I was tempted to ask him what this said about those logging on to check them out in the first place.

  Nurbek departed for the station building soon after to meet his friends, leaving me to wait in his SUV listening to some novel music—Fatboy Slim, mixed, apparently, with tribal Russian. He returned with the bride and groom, a nervous-looking young couple, neither of whom spoke English. They clambered into the back, and we were off again, this time for a house where they would get ready for the big event. Nurbek left them to themselves, and instead gave his sole enthusiastic attention to me.

  “There will be five hundred guests tonight, and special Indian dancers hired from an Indian commercial fair. You want to come?”

  It was an appealing offer, and one I wanted to accept, but uncertainty as to when the Caspian Sea cargo ship departed for Azerbaijan weighed on my mind. I thought back to Dmitriy, the trucker I met on my first day in Kazakhstan, who was heading to Azerbaijan by way of Aktau, a town on the coast of the Caspian Sea that he had said would take him nine days to reach. As things stood I was set to match his time frame, so if he had scheduled his arrival to coincide with the enigmatic cargo ship’s departure, then a day lost at the wedding, coupled with any waiting around for an Azerbaijan visa, could make all the difference; and with disastrous consequences: my Kazakhstan visa could potentially expire before the arrival of another ship. It was a difficult decision, but in the end I declined.

  Nurbek came to a stop in a residential area on the outskirts of Aktobe, made up of large, but rather run-down-looking houses, in various states of completion and upgrade, several with half-finished extensions tagged onto their sides. Standing outside one house was a small group of well wishers: men, women, young and old, all waiting for the arrival of the bride and groom. As they, and Nurbek and I, got out of the SUV, the crowd erupted into cheers, and a traditional guitarist struck up a tune and started singing.

  “He is mentioning everybody’s name, so guests will have to pay him for this respect,” explained Nurbek.

  Confetti, candies and, oddly, U.S. dollar bills were thrown over the couple as they made their way inside one of the homes. With their departure those gathered began collecting the candies and dollars off the floor. Nurbek picked up a bill for me and signed it as a memento.

  Then we were off again.

  Heading past tired infrastructure and grimy vodka factories, we made our way out to a single lane road leading west to the town of Uralsk, and the border with Russia just beyond. When there I would be closer to Vienna than Kazakhstan’s former capital and largest city, Almaty, in the southeast, giving some indication as to just how big the country is. The realization was both encouraging and demoralizing at the same time. I had hitchhiked once from the English coastal town of Dover to Vienna in a day, so I felt seriously close to home knowing how near the Austrian capital was, but unfortunately I would not be taking the most direct route there through Russia. As a British passport holder, securing a Russian visa on the move outside of the U.K. is a seriously difficult undertaking, and something I had failed to do. So, despite wanting to continue north westerly at the border, I was forced instead to plunge south by over a thousand miles—clearing Kazakhstan, the Caspian, and the Caucasus—before I could start climbing north once more.

  “Be careful near Caspian,” said Nurbek as we approached our final drop off point. “It is more dangerous than here.”

  “In what way?” I asked.

  “The people. Do not trust,” he instructed.

  “I won’t,” I replied, not really meaning it.

  As we pulled over he turned to me with a look of despondence.

  “Actually, I don’t really want to go back to wedding, too many people, but I have to—” he said, pausing as if about to deliver a punchline, “—because I’m fucking hungry, mate!”

  The food, Nurbek explained, would be superb and include a Kazakh favorite that I had yet to try—horse meat.

  “It is a very sweet meat, but it must be boiled,” he told me with a degree of insistence.

  Before bidding Nurbek farewell, I decided to ask him about the film Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, and how it had gone down in his country, with its unflattering portrayal of the populace as backward Jew and gypsy hating racists, who sleep with their sisters, eat cheese made from breast milk, have a fondness for being scrubbed down by other men, and drink urine.

  “It is stupid film,” Nurbek told me in disgust. “They film in Romania and show Romanian mountains, but we have no mountains like that in Kazakhstan!”

  And that, I thought, was priceless.

  * * *

  A day and a half on the road after leaving Aktobe, and I found myself riding in the back of an old Russian car between Atyrau and my final destination in Kazakhstan, Aktau. Although officially traveling along a “highway,” it was, in reality, the worst road I have been on in my life; nothing more than a
slushy strip of mud, cutting through another stretch of flat and empty desert, made all the more insipid by a dull and overcast gray sky. There were deep bumps, and no surface covering of any sort, forcing us to travel at a pathetic top speed of fifteen miles an hour.

  I journeyed with two middle-aged Kazakh men, one of whom, the driver, spoke English. Although grateful for the ride, I can’t say I warmed to him much; nor, it seemed, did he to me. Despite having picked me up, for some reason he took exception to me hitchhiking, as if this was somehow an inappropriate thing to do.

  “But why do you travel in this way?” he demanded of me for the umpteenth time.

  I did my best to explain the reason for my trip once more, but it fell on deaf ears.

  “It is dangerous, you should not do!”

  “So is driving without a seatbelt,” I countered—not that it convinced him to buckle up.

  On he went, lecturing me on my lack of a proper job, on not being married, on the whole concept of my trip really, and, oddly, on going to too many places—something he implied was overindulgent. It was disparagement after disparagement.

  “And where will you sleep tonight?”

  “I’ll camp out here,” I replied, gesturing to the desert.

  “What about the wolves?” he stated. “They will eat you.”

  “I’ll be okay,” I said. “I’ll be inside my tent.”

  “Oh, is it made of steel?” he laughed.

  To be honest, I didn’t have a response for that, and it made me pause for thought. Wolf pack attack was an eventuality I hadn’t really considered, and was something I had no experience or knowledge of. Images flashed across my mind of being alone on the desert steppes, hundreds of miles from the nearest town, trapped inside my tent in the dead of night, while a pack of wolves howled outside, before ripping apart the tent’s lightweight fabric. What the hell would I do? Not much beyond attempting to create enough noise to put them off an attack, or making a futile last stand with my knife before being devoured.