We were wending our way across Turkmenistan, land of the legendary gold-loving ruler Turkmenbashi the Great, and a population characterized by gold teeth. We had managed to make our way to Turkmenabat, yet another city renamed in honor of the leader, and were lost.
Pete was directing, I was driving, and we were cruising around looking for the road out of town. We had stopped two or three times and asked one of the army of policemen, officials and gun-toting boy soldiers for directions, all of whom had looked at us like we were asking for a night alone with their grandmother, a bottle of Turkmenbashi Vodka, and a goat.
Giving up on official channels, we stopped to ask an ordinary gold-toothed citizen. Within seconds, the car was surrounded by at least 20 people - men, old ladies, kids on bikes, mangy dogs and melon sellers, al of whom wanted to shout their opinion as to our destination. While one onlooker drew the route in the dirt on the bonnet, another took hold of a stick and drew it in the roadside dirt. Finally, we handed one a pad and pen, and he drew what seemed like a sensible map, which we zoomed off with, happy that the crowd would probably hang around on the same street corner until next year, waiting for another lost rally team.
Ten minutes into the journey, and we had crossed the bridge, gone over the railway and were driving along a residential street, with that uneasy feeling that we were heading the wrong direction. A tight right-hand bend, and Pete suddenly shouted “Car! Car!”. Before I knew it, we had collided, the front left hand side of our poor old Fiesta bumping the right hand wing of the standard Turkmen car, a Toyota Corolla.
As far as I was concerned it was the other drivers' fault, as we were tootling long on the correct side of the road, and it was him that came careening around the corner and smacked into us.
Not so, according to him. With the passion and explosive anger that many Central Asians have (I blame Ghengis Khan's genes), he jumped out of the Corolla and began shouting at us in the sort of language that shouldn't be printed here, and even if it we didn't actually understand a word, the tone was enough for us to realize here was an unhappy bashed Turkmen in Turkmenabat.
Going for the calm and collected Englishman abroad approach, I smiled nervously, gently turned the car around as if to demonstrate I was parking, and tried to speed off. Unfortunately, the bloke's wife blocked our crafty exit, so I had to get out and face the music.
He immediately started ranting about the police, waving at his phone, spitting "policei, policei" and waving his arms about like a jumper in a washing machine.
I said “Yes, call the police. It was your fault, mate.” He clearly pretended to be calling them for some minutes. We all knew if the police got involved, judging by the fascination with bureaucracy and roadside check points, that it might take about three weeks to sort out this little bump.
After a while he gave up. Meanwhile, our car was mobbed by a crowd of literally hundreds of men, women and children, all glinting teeth and piss-taking. While they queued to write something on the car, tensions mounted between us and the other driver.
Suddenly we felt like actors in front of a non-comprehending audience, and it was boiling hot, we were getting tired, were lost, and this was the last thing we wanted to deal with. Another normal day on the rally, then.
'Unable' to contact the police, the man then started demanding money. We were waiting for this to happen. An easy, if expensive, way to resolve the situation, rather than spending ten years in a Turkmen prison with some hairy bum-loving lorry driver.
He wanted 100 dollars, a crazy amount of money in a country where petrol is less than 50 cents a liter and lunch for two is less than one dollar.
I opened my wallet to show him I didn't even have that much money on me, but he happily grabbed the 50 and the 20 dollar notes I had, jumped back in his car and drove off.
Meanwhile, we still had to deal with the swelling crowd, who were still delighting in the spectacle of two stupid, dirty Westerners crashing into their quiet neighborhood.
