A Near Miss: Truck Rides through Baluchistan
The next day we set off in convoy, sat in the truck. We opted for the rear of the truck and started in a buoyant mood, chatting rubbish and settling in on our drybags. The Uruguayans followed us. The German put up his hammock. The Uruguayan boys jumped in with us, and we all had a party. A stop for tea in a little shack in the desert saw us taking more gun photos, at the escorts instigation. We hopped back in, high on sugar and pleased with our adventures. Then the road deteriorated. It wasn’t the best to start with, but now it really took the word ‘road’ to its limits. We bounced over horizontal stripes across the metalled road, and were flung from side to side. It became impossible to sit in the back of the truck, so we stood and ‘surfed’ the bouncing, balancing on the balls of our feet for hours. The sun hit my face and turned me a pleasant shade of beetroot. I wrapped my hijab all the way round my head and c...