Silent Nomad
A traveller with a camera!
home
blog
about
contact

Remains of Soviet tank in Bamiyan

I was staying in a yurt in Bamiyan which overlooked the valley where the famous Buddha statues were destroyed by the Taliban. Having done much in the valley already, I went for a walk near some farm fields where I had earlier spotted the remains of Soviet military vehicles.

Camera in hand, I managed to get some closeups of those vehicles including this T-54 tank. Moments later, a uniformed man starts shouting at me from across the field and began approaching. I watched as he got to my position. I wasn’t sure what he was saying, but he was pointing at my camera and he wasn’t letting me leave. Luckily, a farm worker saw what was happening and came over to help, and he spoke English! He translated saying that the uniformed man was police, and that he wanted to know if I had a permit to take photos. I said that I wasn’t aware of the need for permits. And then he wanted my passport. I showed him my passport, but I didn’t hand it over. As I had refused to hand over my passport, he wanted me to accompany him to the police station. I said no. Lots of shouting. A standoff.

He radioed his colleagues and soon there were several police surrounding me. And then appeared one chap shouting angrily as he walked across the field. It was the boss. Same arguments…he wasn’t going to get hold of my passport, and I wasn’t going to the police station. I said I was British, and that my friends were waiting for me nearby. So I stayed in that field answering his questions on the who, what, why and when of my journey. Anyway, it turns out that they were worried about terrorists from Pakistan, especially with the elections only a few days away. After much talking, they let me go, and I shook hands with the police chief. I was questioned several times by the security forces throughout my travels in Afghanistan, but I guess they had legitimate concerns; literally life and death.

Woman in the fields of Myanmar

We had made a very early start to the day, it was well before sunrise, for our journey to some fields near Hpa An in Myanmar. Traipsing across the fields, surrounded by the irregularity of the karst landscape, we soon reached our objective where we saw a handful of women hand-cutting the crops. Here, an older woman greeted us with a smile, perhaps somewhat surprised that we wanted to take photographs of her and her co-workers.

Girl in Padaung village

We headed up into the hills in our van, hoping to come across remote Padaung villages. The dirt track, however, proved too much for the poor vehicle, and we couldn’t proceed much further. There was a road construction crew that we had passed a few minutes earlier and we were able to negotiate the usage of one of their “tractors” that is normally used to haul raw materials.

We jumped into the back of the tractor, and upward and onward we went into the hills, following dirt tracks that we hoped would reach some interesting villages. Even the tractor found the going tough, and we had had to dismount several times to give the thing a fighting chance to negotiate through the rough terrain. Shake, rattle, and roll; sitting on solid metal was pretty uncomfortable!

After a while we were soon at our target, the tractor chugging its way into the centre of a Padaung village. The villagers informed us that we were the first foreigners they had seen since the British left Burma in 1948. I took that with a pinch of salt though. But the journey was worth it, as the village still practised many traditional techniques. This is a photo of a young schoolgirl from the village.

However, we were filled with dread of the return journey in that tractor.

But the pain of the return trip in the tractor was short lived as we, instead, soon ditched the tractor and hiked through the hills heading in a direction that we thought would lead us to a road. The hike was memorable as it enabled us to take in the wonderful scenery and interact more sociably with the people we met along the way. A good day!