Some of the signage looks as if it was done from memory. For example, speed bumps are called ‘speed breakers’, but the words are just as likely to be rendered 'spee braeker' or similar variations on a theme. Advertising signs are similarly random; one college offered an “English cresh course”, suggesting that the tutor's credentials need some checking.

Advertisements are aimed at an affluent, English-speaking upper class. This makes for poignant juxtapositions as, for example, when you see — directly above a family of five who have spent the night sleeping under a single blanket on the floor of a bus stand — an advertisement for index-linked pensions. The words on the advertisement were in English; the family of five are not the target audience.

The target audience, incidentally, is assumed to be strongly interested in educating the next generation, with ads from competing private schools crowding out practically every other kind of ad, each one claiming to work your children harder and earlier than every other. The last word on that particular mindset had to be the ad that urged the reader to “Discover the joy of making your child study.” That strikes me as a concept that would sound awkward in any language.

To keep it company, I've added another picture of an unusual atmospheric effect. This is a fallstreak hole or 'hole punch cloud', although it is less close to circular than other examples I've seen.

Update: Les Cowley of Atmospheric Optics has identified the object in the first picture as an ice halo, either a sundog or a fragment of a circular 22-degree halo.

As the image above indicates, I'm not doing so well at meeting my wordcount targets (red lines indicate shortfalls), and this despite setting up all kinds of pressure to encourage me to overcome my tendency to procrastinate: telling my friends, agreeing to talk regularly to a radio journalist about the whole business, posting a word-count widget to my blog (see above), even getting sucked into a tri-city challenge. Fortunately, in our corner we have the beautiful and poly-talented Jules, who can write an entire novel in less time than it takes most people to brush their teeth. Toronto and Chicago haven't got a chance.

If graphical illustrations of underachievement don't speak to you, About.com's fiction-writing expert has posted a photograph as part of her report on National Novel Writing Month in NYC, in which I can be seen in miniature, scratching my head in creative frustration.

And a little voice in my head says “OK, this is weird.”

The night before my host had suggested that I might like to hitch a ride up to Artush with two of his drivers who were going to pick up some trekkers. At the time, after several teacups-full of vodka, it had seemed like a good idea. Because really, with a ten-hour drive ahead of me later in the day, why wouldn't I want to get up at five o'clock and spend another five hours sitting in a truck watching the mountains go by?

I started off riding with J., a taciturn man wearing a long purple quilted coat over his faded denim suit. We had no common language at all, but he had the air of a straight shooter, business-like and courteous. He had been assigned to drive the Uaz, a squat little gray-painted vehicle that resembled a VW Bus. From the noises it made, I gathered that it wasn't any happier about getting up at five in the morning than I was.

The noise eventually started to bother J., and he yanked up the middle seat to reveal a large and impressively filthy engine which he peered at suspiciously for a moment before putting the seat back down and driving on. But a little further on, we stopped again and this time the problem could apparently no longer be ignored. "Do you mean it's not meant to sound like a tractor?" I was tempted to ask. Apparently his ears were more finely attuned to the engine than mine, and he had detected cause for concern in what sounded to me like an undifferentiated racket. He yanked the seat up and started pulling spark plugs.

My host and the second driver now appeared out of the darkness. "You will ride in the other truck", my host told me. The truck in question was an enormous GAZ, painted sky-blue with a wooden camper body on the back, complete with frayed and dingy lace curtains. Its driver was a compact little man with a beard and a Tajik pillbox hat, who everyone addressed as 'Hoji' because he had made the haj. Out of respect for his religious sensibilities, my host had hastily hidden the vodka bottle behind a curtain when he came over for supper the night before.

The Uaz might have seen better days, but the GAZ gave every sign of being on its last set of wheels. I suspected that a reluctance to start and an absolute refusal to stay in first were probably the least of its foibles.

My new chauffeur was more outgoing than J., and was determined to play the part of tour guide as well as he could. As the sun slowly lifted over the mountains, gilding the crests, he took his hands off the wheel and made an expansive, sweeping gesture that took in the peaks all around us. "Kharacho", I agreed, hoping that he wouldn't feel the need to call my attention to any more natural beauties. I was starting to get a little tired of telling people that everything was "Kharacho". Not because it wasn't, but because each time I trotted it out I found myself wishing I had enough vocabulary to allow me to make slightly more nuanced judgments and sound just a little less like the village idiot.

Our conversation, such as it was, consisted mostly of him saying something in Russian and me repeating it back. When I knew what he was getting at, I would add a 'da' to the end. If I had no clue at all, I would just repeat the words that I had been able to catch, but in a puzzled tone. This would usually result in him trying to clarify by using more words that I didn't know, so eventually I just said 'da' to everything.

The sun was well up by the time we hit a large village in a pleasant, wooded valley. My driver gestured excitedly. "Panjrud!" he exclaimed, holding up five fingers to reinforce the 'five' part of it. I'm not sure what 'rud' are, but the village had evidently been named for five of them. "Rudaki!" he went on. Then, carefully enunciated: "Ru-da-ki". This one I knew. The Tajiks are justifiably proud of Abu Abdallah Rudaki, who pretty much founded Persian poetry. Most towns have at least one street, usually the largest and most important, named after him.

The driver obviously felt that my understanding on this crucial issue couldn't be left to chance. "Rudaki!" he said again. He made a scribbling gesture in the air to indicate that Rudaki had been a scribe, stroked his chin to denote that he had been a man of mature years with a full and luxuriant beard, and cupped his hands in front of his chest to indicate either that the sage had been overflowing with piety and wisdom or that he had been the possessor of a truly spectacular rack. I nodded dutifully. "Da, Rudaki" I agreed.

A little bit beyond the village and the mausoleum of the poet ("Rudaki! Mavzole!" "Da, mavzole") the road became abruptly steeper, demanding continuous application of first gear. The driver was now literally pushing the truck up the mountain, holding the gearshift with all his strength to stop it popping out of first. It seemed the height of cruelty to me to drag this aging vehicle up a mountain side. I wondered, not for the first time, if it was going to break down entirely, completely blocking the road up to Artush and leaving us stranded.

When the road levelled out a bit, the driver abruptly stopped the truck. "Pishat" he announced, and removed all ambiguity by cupping his hands to his crotch and making a 'psssss' sound. He jumped down from the cab and headed off to relieve himself behind the truck.

The predictable happened. Once stopped, the truck had no intention of starting again. With both of us pushing, we managed to rock it forward a few feet, but the motor stubbornly refused to catch or, indeed, to give any sign of life at all. "You know, letting the engine stop when you knew that there was a good chance it wouldn't start again might not have been the most intelligent thing you could have done", I thought. Happily, I wasn't able to say as much in any language he could understand.

Desperate times call for desperate measures. Removing his suit jacket, he reached underneath the seat and came up with an enormous pair of ragged green twill pants, which he proceded to pull on over his clothes. "Well, dang it, ah reckon I'm goin' to hev to git mah truck-fixin' pants!" murmured the irreverent voice in my head.

Suitably equipped, the driver vanished underneath the truck. In a matter of moments, the engine sprang back into life. I was impressed, but I couldn't help wondering if it wouldn't have made more sense to put whatever magic thing it was that started the engine somewhere more accessible. Somewhere inside the cab would have been my choice, but that might have been too obvious.

With one hand on the gearstick, he forced the truck to climb the rest of the way in first. Somehow, the motor didn't stall, even when the gradient approached one in five, and despite ample opportunity we didn't go sliding off the loose dirt and into an adjacent ditch at any point. I felt like applauding when we finally arrived.

The Uaz had got over its earlier problems and beaten us there by a large margin. The trekkers — four fit-looking young Russians and some rather older British walkers — were already loading out their packs. They had the pinched, strained look of people who have passed a few uncomfortable nights shivering under canvas and I gathered that trekking season was well and truly over.

One of the British men stopped and looked at the GAZ.

"Looks like a Tonka toy," he said with a hint of disbelief in his voice. I shook my head.

"There's one important difference." I told him. "A Tonka toy goes if you push it."

My second encounter comes the next day, as I am trying to photograph the giant statue of Ismail Somoni that looms over prospekt Rudaki. The statue appears to have been designed by someone who drew their inspiration more from “The Lord of the Rings” than the actual history of the Samanid dynasty and I can't decide how best to capture the late king's Nazgul-defying pose given the double constraints of an insufficiently wide-angle lens and powerful backlighting.

As I tiptoe up the red marble steps towards the monument, a gray-uniformed leprechaun springs from among the flower beds, blowing his whistle and waving furiously. I make apologetic gestures and retrace my steps, but a second policeman moves to intercept me. He shakes my hand — even traffic stops in Tajikistan start with a handshake — and then grills me on my origin, purpose of visit and future plans before informing me that the monument is ‘under reconstruction’. Tajikistan, as a country, is a little economical with its signage, so this fact wasn't immediately evident. No matter. I have now been briefed, and the gray-clad minions of order will be keeping an eye on me from now on.

In truth, they have some grounds to be suspicious of me. Police in Tajikistan wear Really Big Hats, those Soviet-style peaked caps with the oversized crown that I find irresistibly comic. I have been stalking them most of the day, trying to get a shot of one of the traffic cops who, in Dushanbe at least, seem to be stationed in ones and twos in the middle of every block, doing their best to interrupt the orderly flow of traffic by pulling over every third driver. If they were to examine my camera, things might go hard with me.

After an aimless drift up and down Rudaki, I return to the gardens behind the statue of Ismail Somoni where I spend what is clearly a suspicious amount of time taking photographs of the sinking sun, fountains, mynah birds, the statue, flowerbeds and so forth. As I move towards the statue, I catch sight of my whistling nemesis from earlier, moving towards me with the determined air of a man who is preparing to deliver a stern rebuke for the offense of photographing the Kingly Posterior without due respect and decorum.

I am in no mood for it. I dart down a side-path between the flowerbeds and quicken my pace. If we wants me, he will have to play hide and seek among the roses. The gamble pays off. He loses interest, and goes off to harass a French tourist by the fountain.

But I am not out of the woods yet. I see — too late — a second cop loitering at the corner of the lawn. This one has a buzzcut and a KGB gleam in his eye. I affect an expression of benign indifference and avoid eye contact, but it is no good. He has me.

“Passaporte.” he orders. No handshake this time. He means business.

I hand over the photocopy of my passport that I keep in my camera bag. He scrutinizes it minutely.

“Amerika” he observes.

“Da, Amerika.”

“Turist?”

“Da, turist.” I concede.

“Visa!” he demands. I turn the paper over to show the photocopied visa on the other side, hoping he doesn't ask for my OVIR registration, which is back at the guesthouse.

He doesn't, because his eye has already been caught by something else. The photocopy has not only my passport and visa on it, but M's as well. He looks at her picture inquiringly.

“You baby?” he hazards.

Is she is or is she ain't my baby, I wonder.

“Wife”, I suggest, going for the least controversial option. The word apparently means nothing to him.

“Zheyna” he says. I nod. She's probably my 'zheyna', whatever that is. Whatever you say, officer.

“You girlfrien'”, he says, still hunting for exactitude.

“Yes, she's my girlfriend.” I retrieve the photocopy from him and stow it away. But he's not done yet. He says something else in Russian.

“He wants to know what you have in your bag.” says a helpful adolescent who has materialized at my elbow.

I suspect that ‘the right of the people to be secure in their persons and effects against unreasonable searches’ doesn't apply here, so I have no option but to comply. I'm not quite sure what they tell them at cop school that tourists usually carry in their bags, but for a moment I'm tempted to tell him that I'm carrying a brace of grenades and a smallish handgun. Also an ornamental dagger, four ounces of blow and a scurrilous pamphlet comparing the head of state to a turnip. I'm only tempted for a moment, though. He only needs to understand one of the words for me to be in real trouble.

“My camera.” I tell him.

“Fotoapparat” supplies my self-appointed translator. The cop wants to see the camera, and then he wants to see what's underneath it. He stops just short of making me take out the bag holding my second lens and all the accessories. At long last, he lets me go.

On my way to supper later that evening, I pass the presidential palace. The traffic cops are five deep in front of it, furiously directing blameless cars to go where they are already going — only faster — with shrill whistle blasts and great sweeps of their reflective batons. A plainclothesman with a walkie-talkie eyes me suspiciously, and I have a momentary feeling of ‘here we go again’. At the last moment, however, he thinks better of whatever he had in mind and lets me go on my way.