Another moment I will not forget easily was walking by a Kuchi nomads and their camels. I was leaving the town of Dowlat Yar on foot, waiting for some truck to roar by when I saw a confusing shape growing in the horizon. I could barely see, for the sun was still low. The amorphous stain rapidly changed into a more meaningful configuration: two nomads and their camels. When they get close I could see their camels were decorated with red pompoms and mirrors hanging from their heads. The rustic leather chairs they use for mounting the beasts make me think things shouldn’t have been that different 200 years before. I had left my backpack on the floor, but I soon lift and fit it, and walk by them. I feel the spiritual need to share a piece of road with some of the lasts nomads on Earth.
We exchange more smiles than words, since I don’t speak Pashto and they don’t speak Farsi or English. For the nomad, the fabulous creature was me, astonishment crew his smiles. His forehead wrinkled under his whitewashed turban. My feet, his, and the camel’s ones, beat on the dusty Afghan road the drum of a very peculiar caravan: that of a nomad towing his camel, and a modern globetrotter with a backpack and a blog… With such different lives, certain settings make me feel closer to him than to any of my non traveller friends: we both spend a huge amount of time in our lives watching the horizon, that slim line always pregnant of surprises… I regard that moment one of the most meaningful and peaceful ones.
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