You Can Do It Put Your Bac(trian Camel) Into It

Don't stop get it get it.

I have almost nothing to say about Bactria, except that going there has given me so many options regarding clever posting titles that I wish something actually interesting had happened on my time there.  I mean, I suppose once I woke up and realized the Pamirs were a non-option, I had all sorts of options available to me on my trip back to Dushanbe.  I walked towards the market where I had been dropped of and a man started hollering at me from across the street.  This is usually the best way to get my attention so I crossed and began to negotiate.  I thought he had said 300 som, but he was actually only saying  30 som, and I was just in a tizzy ready to talk him down because I had paid 70 to get there and I thought it was unreasonable.  Anyway, it turns out I was the unreasonable one and he was just trying to recoup some of his losses on his speedy trip to Dushanbe. 

Or was he?  I sat in the back seat with a young girl and there was an old man in the front.  He dropped off the young girl only a half hour into the ride and then suddenly turned off the main highway and we started travelling down a dirt road.  "Ahh, so this is where they kill me," I thought and immediately began to prepare for battle.  I put away my iPod, and secured my camera and other belongings tightly in my bag.  Then I laced up my boots and tested the amount of legroom I would require to extend my leg and boot the driver in the back of the head in order to cause enough commotion to crash the car and then leap out of it before it rolled of a cliff and exploded into flames at the base of the nearby ravine.  But then we slowed down at a bus stop outside a tiny village and woman approached and handed the old man in the front seat a baby.  They kissed, and then we were on our way, with the tiny cargo secured onboard. 

WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME?

On the way to Dushanbe we stopped at a local carwash, which was actually just the side of the road where two teenagers had buckets next to an irrigation ditch and would scoop up water and dump it on the car.  The man explained to me that he was going into the big city, and you had to have a clean, fancy car.  Who was I to disagree?  The weather was warm and things seemed to be good.  In fact, I started to think more and more what a terrible idea it would be to ever leave Dushanbe.  It had almost every conceivable comfort I needed.  Why leave?