Tajikistan - Overwhelming hospitality

Tajikistan's rugged landscape. Photo / Rob Gray

"What will you write about today?" Idimail asked me, his young, eager eyes staring out from beneath a bushy monobrow. He had just seen me pull out the battered journal that I write in every day, and his curiosity had prompted a deluge of questions.

"I'll probably write about you, mate," I said, and his eyes opened wider with excitement.

"I'll write about how we met you in your taxi, and how you invited us to your house and introduced us to your family, and I'll write about the amazing food you've given us."

Tilting his head back, Idimail let out a loud, bizarre laugh of approval.

"That's good! Very good!"

The day had been so long that I could scarcely remember the beginning, and had lost confidence that it would ever end.

Waking early after a restless sleep on lumpy, sagging beds, our dreams interrupted by the low grumble of large trucks straining to climb a steep rise, we had a breakfast of leftover soup and began the day's journey.

The road lurched and shook its way along the banks of the Panj River, before spitting us inland near Khulob, Tajikistan. Shaken after the worst road of our trip so far, we were delayed at a checkpoint where every handshake rustled with the sound of scrunched dollar bills changing hands, before making our way into Khulob just after dark.

At times like this, when we were hot, hungry and tired, we all knew what to do: stop in a busy, crowded area that was bursting with activity, ask directions to a cheap hotel, and hope that we were befriended by a kind local in the process.

In Khulob, we chose a market area bustling with the sights and sounds of life: watermelon salesmen crouched beside their swollen products; stooped, scarved old ladies turning rotisserie chickens; men haggling, laughing, shouting; children darting under legs and between cars, their small feet kicking up dust. We came to a halt next to Idimail's taxi, in the midst of this chaos, and the chaos embraced us, focusing its energy around us.

Thankfully, Idimail could speak reasonable English, and he was eager to help. We followed his taxi down unlit streets, dodging potholes, donkeys, dogs and dazzling headlights as we weaved our way to what Idimail proudly announced as "the hotel of our city".

Unfortunately for us, the hotel was considerably out of our price range. When we confessed this to Idimail, he had a tentative solution: "Perhaps you like to visit my house? We have many rooms - maybe you come, and you see, and you like? We can do eating there, and you can sleep, or, if you not like, we can find you another hotel. What you think, my friends?"

We accepted Idimail's offer before he had even finished, and soon we were parking our bikes in a courtyard dominated by the sight of a vegetable garden in the centre, the sound of a cow in the corner, and the smell of a nearby squat toilet.

At first we appeared to be Idimail's guests, rather than guests of the family. His older brother - a strong, lean man in his mid-twenties with olive skin and eyes of obsidian - spoke sharply to Idimail in Tajik, while his mother sat aloof at a distance, a silent observer.

Despite the stilted arrival, we were soon ushered into a bare room with large padded mats on the floor, arranged around a central sheet. We were introduced to a second brother, who stumbled toward us, merrily drunk. A local policeman, he was friendlier than the first brother we had met, and his slurred laughter helped ease the mood.

"What would you like to eat?" the brothers asked, and when we did not produce a clear response, "What do you normally eat?" This was certainly not a question I wanted to answer truthfully. On the road, we ate pasta mixed diced salami and tinned vegetables. At home: my mind dreamily wandered to my mum's roast dinners and my mother-in-law's lasagne... "We'll eat whatever you usually eat."

Out came a feast: tea, coffee (these two were mixed together in a potent brew, drunk black and drowned in sugar), fresh lumpy yoghurt (sour and warm, drunk from a bowl), huge loaves of flat bread, trays of sweets, platters of sliced watermelon, and bowls of noodle soup (the tastiest we had experienced so far). We ate greedily, guilty starting while the brothers were still serving us, before they had a chance to sit down.

To our weary, dusty senses, the hospitality was almost overwhelming. Every time we finished, one of the brothers was in front of us, insistently offering more food.

Even the older brother who had earlier been so abrupt was now crying "Eat! Eat!" His piercing black eyes stared at us, devoid of even a trace of a smile, while hairy arms shoved watermelon and bitter tea-coffee into our hands. His sibling lazed happily in the corner, sleepily drunk, smiling vacantly.

It was nearly midnight when Idimail asked about my journal, and we had been engaged in a blur of stilted conversations since dinner. I desperately wanted to sleep, but it was impossible to brush him off after the generosity he had shown us.

Idimail was eighteen years old, desiring to engage with the world, and yet hindered by a Tajikistan passport that meant his opportunities were far more limited than my own.

It occurred to me that inviting us into his home - four dirty, bedraggled motorbikers from a foreign land - was Idimail's chance to travel. Through our conversations and his constant questions about our country and our lives, he was able to let his mind wander over borders he would likely never cross.

The clock had just passed 5am, and I was still firmly in sleep's hold, when Idimail crashed into our room, fresh from his first of five daily visits to the local mosque.

"Good morning!" he cried loudly, his unusual laugh echoing his greeting. None of us moved. I kept my eyelids shut.

"What do you normally eat for breakfast?" Idimail asked, and then sprang from the room before my mind could fully process the question.

"This guy's nuts!" muttered Tom, "Let's get out of here!"

An hour later, stomachs full after another incredible meal given to us by our kind-hearted friends, we were back on the road.

I blinked the last of the sleep from my eyes, and shook my head in bewilderment at the events of the last ten hours. A random encounter with a local taxi driver had led to a night I could never have predicted.

* To help Rob and his mates reach their fundraising target for the Living Hope charitable organisation in Vladivostok and for more information on their journey, click here.