“Our first day in Tajikistan saw us bumping and grinding our way down the Pamir Highway in a decrepit Lada driven by two young soldiers from Dushanbe. As I peered through tinted windows at the Chinese border fence cutting an arbitrary line through this expansive wilderness, I thought
it comical how, amidst the pristine snow-capped peaks and uninhabited plateau, our little car was an absurd microcosm of the modern world – the stench of tobacco smoke and vodka breath mixing with ear-splitting Uzbek techno and the soldiers’ conversations of missing their girlfriends in the capital.”