Letters
The drive of the Patrick Lindsay Phantom II home from India (C&SC, October) revived lots of memories, particularly because my journey – nine years later and in reverse, from Oxford to Mazar Sharif and back – was inspired by the same book, The Road to Oxiana by Robert Byron.
Our trip on what had become the ‘hippy trail’ to Katmandhu took place in the summer of 1971, during which our car’s co-owner and I celebrated our 21st birthdays – mine on the Caspian Sea and his in Herat. Our choice of vehicle is now a classic (it certainly wasn’t then): a very tired Land-rover Series IIA LWB truck-cab, bought from a dealer in west London. We added an ex-war Dept ammunition trailer to carry five jerrycans of fuel and another of water, plus luggage and camping gear. We offered seats to four other students to share costs, and one of them is now my wife!
When the Phantom did the journey, the Salang Tunnel wasn’t built, making their trip to Mazar from Kabul three hazardous days; it was opened two years later, cutting more than 60 hours from the time. It is not clear if the Royce made the full circle north to Herat – severely warned against by the British Embassy in Kabul.
Mazar was an extraordinary place. Like Kabul, in August it had a pleasant climate and the caravanserai (inn) was full of doped-out hippies lying on charpoys day and night, because sticks of hashish cost about 1d.
We also made the trip to Bamian to see the Buddhas. The journey was horrible, the dirt roads being a shock because Afghan roads were generally good, made by the Russians in the north and east, and the Americans in the west. At Bamian, we sat on the Buddha’s head – now sadly long gone – for a photo, and on our return to the Salang Pass we came across a broken-down Citroën, part of a 2CV rally from Paris. The owner begged a tow, but made the mistake of getting high and allowed his Tin Snail to use the bumper of our trailer as a rest on down hills – so we left him sobering up and disconsolate on the main road.
Kabul was lovely. The students with whom we mixed were Westernised and we saw a couple of ex-maharajah cars, but by then the market was largely finished and the two I recall were both huge American machines. The Iranians were wise to the trade, and charged significant tariffs.
On the return journey, detouring to Persepolis in southern Iran, a local crossing the road ahead suddenly did a U-turn and ran smack into the front of the Landie. Rendered unconscious, he was taken by one of our team and a local military field doctor to the neurosurgical unit in Shiraz, three hours away. I was put under arrest and went to Shiraz with a sergeant in the Landie. The magistrate didn’t want to jail an Oxford student, so handed me to the British Consul official. By then the patient was conscious, but we still had to buy a ‘pardon’ from the family for about £20.
In Istanbul, on the morning of our departure for Greece and home, I had my passport stolen. The Consulate recommended (unofficially) that I was hidden in the back under bags, and smuggled into Greece – there wasn’t time to drive to the Iranian border to get the entry stamps for my new passport. Those hours at the border and driving across no-man’s land were anxious. As instructed by HM’S representative, when the Greeks asked why there were no Turkish stamps, we shrugged and said, “Turks.” We were waved straight through. Michael Powell London