Sure-Footed Goat Goes Anywhere

There are four ways to get to this tiny settlement high in the mountains of Tajikistan: You can travel by foot, donkey or horse, but the fastest, most reliable way is to go by Goat.

The Goat--or Kozyol--is not the four-legged kind, but a four-wheel-drive. It is an affectionate Russian nickname for a gritty, go-anywhere, Soviet-designed jeep as reliable as it is ugly.

Its real name is even uglier, UAZ (pronounced oo-ahz), so drivers bestowed the pet name to convey its manner of jerking from one rock to another on dangerous pathways.

Legendary for their bad roads, the Soviets at least succeeded in making a decent jeep, which trundles like a tank across the toughest of terrain, from the snow-covered Siberian taiga to the wilds of Central Asia.

The Goat clambers gamely across Russian bridges consisting of two parallel logs thrown across a stream, each a smidgen wider than the tires.

In the quagmire known as the Russian spring, it almost swims through axle-deep mud, plowing ahead to villages otherwise unreachable until the sun dries out the land.

The Kozyol is popular throughout the former Soviet Union and in nearby countries such as Afghanistan, where fighters hack the roofs off Goats and use them as armored personnel carriers, capable of carrying 20 armed fighters, perched on every inch of the vehicle.

But the magic of the Kozyol is its ability to take a traveler to destinations so remote and exotic that, clambering off the rock-hard seat, it is like stepping out of a time machine.

When the road gets dicey along the rocky donkey track that meanders through the mountains to Kumrog, passengers step out and walk half a mile or so while the Goat driver goes it alone.

Driver Bobojon Saiduloyev, 33, a stranger to fear, jams eight passengers into his Goat for a hair-raising trek across scree-covered track. The motor grinds and strains, the wheels lose traction on the pebbles, while a sheer ravine gapes like eternity at anyone who dares peep out the side window.

Afterward, Saiduloyev shrugs and says he picked up his driving skills steering Soviet armored personnel carriers with no brakes, on worse roads than this one.

“I’m afraid of nothing and no one, only Allah,” he declares.

If a car’s headlights are its eyes, then the expression worn by the Kozyol is huffing determination, its radiator grille resembling teeth clenched with effort.

With its 3,500-pound steel body, the Kozyol conveys the persona of a particular type of Russian male: the bull-necked fellows who can do anything, from hauling a fridge up 16 flights of stairs to fixing a broken-down car on the side of the road in minus-20-degree weather to slaughtering a pig or a sheep if necessary.

They’re the kind of people found behind the wheel of a Goat, and they would never be convinced that in a really tight spot a Western four-wheel-drive might do as well.

In Soviet times, when citizens had to join long waiting lists to buy even the simplest car, the UAZ was out of bounds to most drivers. It was largely restricted to the military, collective farms and other government enterprises.

Those who got to drive the jeep fell in love with it, but until the mid-1990s, owning one remained an elusive dream.

Now, 50,000 of the vehicles are produced each year, and 65% are bought by private owners from throughout the former Soviet Union. UAZ is the Russian acronym for Ulyanovsk Car Factory, the plant about 500 miles east of Moscow where the Kozyol is made.

On a flat road, the Kozyol is unremarkable, though it does break down less frequently than the average Russian car and, being designed for fools, is easy to fix. It guzzles fuel, but at about $6,800 it’s much cheaper than a Western all-terrain vehicle. It is uncomfortable, but on the hardest roads, fans swear, nothing beats the Goat.

Even with nine people crammed on board, the Kozyol climbs stolidly up into the mountains, transporting its passengers to a different world that seems set just beneath the heavens.

Kumrog is a remote village of a dozen houses where the arrival of a Kozyol bearing foreign visitors is an extraordinary event.

Children stare silently with dark liquid eyes, their clothing like splashes of gaudy color against the greenery.

A bright rug is spread on the grass beneath the halo of mountains, plump white cushions are thrown down, shoes are removed, water is poured onto visitors’ hands. Delicacies are spread: flat loaves of coarse brown bread, dried white mulberries, lumps of sugar, homemade pats of butter swimming in a pond of sour cream, and a ground mulberry confection similar to marzipan.

Hospitality here is nearly a religious rite, and visitors must be wary of careless compliments, lest their host give them the shirt off his back.

The master of the house, Nurali Aliyev, 70, declares that for guests who have come so far, only one honor is high enough. So a black-and-white goat is thrown onto the back of Borka the horse and brought down to be slaughtered. Sentimental pleas to spare its life are useless.

Here, the silence is as pure as the mountain water. Then the wind sighs lightly, a donkey brays. A nightingale calls. The last bleats of the dying goat echo through the valley below.

Still warm, the liver of the goat is cut up, massaged with salt, threaded onto twigs and set over a low fire of gray ash.

As it slowly roasts, there’s a sudden commotion. The cunning horse Borka has crept onto the vegetable patch to roll deliciously on the young potato plants. Someone hurls a stone at him, and the disgraced equine is led away.

Later, as the sun begins to sink, Aliyev leads his most honored guests down the mountain track.

The visitors to Kumrog village begin descending the mountain by foot. The driver, Saiduloyev, has driven on ahead. Down below, the Kozyol is ready, its engine sputtering impatiently, waiting to take its passengers back to the ordinary world.