Raiders of the Sarhad: Being an Account of the Campaign of Arms and Bluff Against the Brigands of the Persian-Baluchi Border during the Great WarDyer, R. E. H. (Reginald Edward Harry)
History
Raiders of the Sarhad: Being an Account of the Campaign of Arms and Bluff Against the Brigands of the Persian-Baluchi Border during the Great War
Dyer, R. E. H. (Reginald Edward Harry)
World War, 1914-1918 -- Campaigns -- Middle East
We soon passed through Saindak, and, as the going was not quite as
bad on that first day as we had expected, we got farther than we had
hoped, reaching a halting place called Jujak, where there was an old
ruined sarai (rest-house) and a good spring. Here we slept out in the
open, and set off early on the following morning. Idu was greatly
impressed with the powers of the car, and began to think it could go
anywhere, scale any height, and slip through any opening, however
narrow. This was flattering to the Overland, but it led us into
future difficulties from which only great good luck extricated us.
We had intended going via Mirjawa, but Idu pointed out that there
was a much shorter way through the hills, which, he was quite
certain, the car could manage. But we were to prove once more that
the longest way round may often be the shortest way home!
The car entered the hills by a gorge which rose steeply to their
summits, and, though we had to get out occasionally and push, it
really was astonishing how well she took the inclines. But it was
when we descended that our troubles began, for, in doing so, we
entered another gorge which grew narrower and narrower, till, at
last, Allan stopped the car dead, declaring that we could go no
farther. And a glance at our route did seem to show that we had
manœuvred ourselves into a hopeless impasse.
Ahead the gorge was too narrow to allow of going on. Behind it was
so steep that the car could not back out. On the right we were
completely shut in by the high steep sides of the gorge, on the left
it looked as impassable; whilst it was quite impossible to turn!
There remained nothing for it but to dig a way out, so we set to
work, and, after working till we were wet through, managed somehow to
get the car through the wall of earth shutting us in on the left, and
out on to the open hill-side.
Idu openly expressed his disgust and disappointment with the car. He
had given her credit for being capable of doing anything and going
anywhere, and this failure to pass through "the eye of a needle"
diminished his respect for her.
There was still no direct way down the hill, and we had perforce to
go many miles out of our course, in a long hair-pin loop, to reach
anything like decent going. No one who has not attempted to take a
car over trackless hills of rough, broken surface, and filled with
blind gorges, can have any idea of the difficulties that confronted
us here, and during the greater part of our journey to Khwash.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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