Pakistan

Asalem Aleycom!

Thankfully, on the morning of our border crossing (after what was a very hot sticky night in the van!), we were joined by our friend Fred Flintstone again! If it wasn't for him taking us round all the different desks and pushing in for us, we would never have made it through! A truly honourable Iranian man. At nine thirty in the morning the temperature was already reaching the forties, and once again we were downing the cold water Fred insisted on buying us. About an hour and a half later we left Iran and entered Pakistan, where of course the whole process of customs and passport control began all over again. Our plan was to reach the city of Quetta (400 miles away) before dark, but by now it was already midday Pakistan time, so we were itching to get going. Customs was hilarious! We were welcomed by a very nice officer whith the words " Cup of tea and biscuits".... and then later when we'd been waiting for him to stamp our carnet for about 20mins.... "I am not wasting your time..." He reckoned we would get to Quetta by 6 o'clock no problem .. "very good roads!!" He then told us all about the muslim faith, while we drank very sweet tea. So at around one thirty we were off into Pakistan and the Boluchistan desert!

We very quickly found out what "good road" meant in Pakistan!! A good road may have some patches of tarmac, and at least one lane for both directions of traffic! On this particular 'very good road' there were places where large sand drifts had come right across the road burying it, and in one place it was impassable. At this place we had to divert off the road onto the desert to avoid it, trying not to get stuck in the sand by staying on the rocky bits. It was rather like one of the mazes you get on the back of a cereal packet! In some places large proportions of the road had been washed away, which was rather a shock when you are driving at 60mph, and all of a sudden have just a narrow 'bridge' of tarmac to cross with sharp drops on either side! There were also no road signs, and the main road quite often very deceptively turned into what looked like a quarry road dissapearing into the hills. The only indication of it being the correct way, was the amount of traffic using it.

I can't write anything about Pakistan without mentioning the trucks. Just the most spectacularly overly customised and decorated things you have ever seen. So colourful, with charms and chains hanging from them all around, and huge decorative wooden cabin surrounds that go up high above the height of the truck. At night they would look like Christmas trees for all the lights! Amazing, and must be why they go so slowly - apart from being horrendously overloaded!

So at around midnight, after a long hot day, no lunch and only having had Angel Delight and bannana for breakfast.. we arrived on the outskirts of the massive city of Quetta, with no city map, just a road name of the hotel we were aiming for. OOps!!...not ideal. We found ourselves driving around slum areas trying to find something that would give us an indication of where to go! Just as we entered the city there was a burst sewer that had pooled over the entire road, which we had to drive through like some kind of sheep dip! The smells were horrendous, but thanks to God we found the main road into the city centre, and somehow we managed to drive right into the area where the hotel was. and a friendly policeman then directed us to it just round the corner - incredible! So since it was 1am we showered and went to sleep in our van in the hotel car park without any dinner, but we'd made it!

We were advised the next day that we couldn't make it all the way to Multan as planned, because the road wasn't good. So we had to go to Sukkur, which was to the South rather than the East and was potentially going to mean staying an extra night in Pakistan! The road to Sukkur was actually not a bad road, and the scenery was quite stunning driving down beautiful mountain valleys next to bright rivers. A few miles out of Quetta we were joined by police escort who were to be with us for the rest of our travels through Pakistan. They said it was their duty to keep us safe! It was much more organised than in Iran; after every few miles one police car would stop where another was waiting to take us on. The only problem was they went at their own, very slow pace, and wouldn't let us stop for anything...hmmm. Even so we made it to Sukkur before dark. But...a very big but.. when we got there they didn't stop! They took us around the city and out the other side! We mananged to stop them to ask where on earth they were taking us because once again hadn't had anything to eat since two slices of toast at breakfast, and we needed to eat and sleep. In very broken English we were told that it was too dangerous for us to stay in the city and we needed to go 20km further to the police station where we could stay the night. That sounded good to us, but three hours later we were still driving in the dark! At each changeover we would stop them and ask them where we were going, and each time they would say, "No problem, 20 kms, just follow us!!!" We eventually found out that we were going to a small town called Sadiquabad, a good part of the way to Multan! Apparently the reason was because this town is just inside the Punjab district which is meant to be a safer area for westeners than Sindh province. If they had only told us this before it would've saved so much frustration. The problem was they were all so incredibly nice and friendly about everything, but so frustrating. The escort on last shift was a crack team of special service terrorist busting agents called "The Elite Punjab Police". Their logo on the side of a battered Toyota HiLux looked a bit like a childs fireworks display, but with bullets! They took us to "the best" hotel in Sadiquabad, which looked pretty grotty, and the owner obviously was not happy to risk having westerners there, judging by the very long conversation in Urdu between him and our 5 police escorts, after which we were told, "There is no place here!". We spoke to the man who was obviously the boss of our bodyguards, and told him that we were happy to sleep in our van in the police station but whatever happened we were very tired and hungry and it was late! so that said they took us to a restaurant where we had a Pakistani feast! It was great. We weren't conspicuous at all with five heavily armed special agents accompanying us! We had great conversation with them. After dinner they insisted we look at another "best hotel". Hmmm... after seeing it we managed to pursuade them that we would like to stay in our van at the police station, as it was like home!

So we arrived at the local police station and were welcomed like celebrities by all the bemused police officers there. Another man introduced himself as a journalist for a daily Pakistani news paper, and wanted to write an article about us and our journey! so we were grilled and had our picture taken, and now probably have a whole article written about us in the Pakistani press! Simon of course had to play a song on the guitar once that was discovered by a nosy policeman, and am sure it was enjoyed immensly by the prisoners who appeared at the bars of their cells to listen and look at what the commotion was. Then we went to bed, safe and sound.

Our long tiring day had advantages as the next day we managed to make it all the way to Lahore and so were back on target with our schedule. We managed to loose our police escort though as 60mph was too fast for them and they never found us again! They couldn't have been that worried! Once again we arrived at the city with no clue where to go. We spotted a nice looking hotel on the outskirts, with secure parking and decided to ask if we could park and use their facilities, which they weren't too keen about. We asked how much a room was for a night and they replied "$150..." which is just slightly over our budget (was a nice looking hotel). We started asking about other places, when they told us to take a seat whilst they had a little private chat amongst themselves. The boss who was a very young well turned out Pakistani man, returned to us and said ..."Well I don't know what you think but if you like I will give you a room for the night for $50 dollars, because you are English, and you are my honoured guests!!" So hey presto!! We spent the night in a five star hotel as guests of the owner - amazing!! One comment he made was, "how with such a threat of terrorism can you westeners travel around so openly?" What do you say to that? "Eh... we lost our police!!!"

Lahore is no distance from India, so the next day we arrived at the border early. Once again we found that music speaks louder than words, and we ended up entertaining the customs officers and workers with guitar and singing before their day started. We were entertained in return by two or three of them who performed some fantastic Pakistani singing with drum accompaniment, and of course a cup of chai! It worked wonders, as the border officers liked us and whizzed our documents through the process early! So On into India, and we really can't believe we have go this far already. We are certainly looking forward to slowing down and recovering a bit. Overall we really enjoyed our time in Pakistan, even though we didn't get a chance to see much of it. All the people are so friendly and smiley, and despite the police presence we actually felt very safe and very welcome. The countryside was so beautiful, although we didn't see the best part - the Karakoram Highway. It was also a shame as Pakistan is total Toyota country - about 2 out of 3 cars and vans were Toyotas! There were so many Hiaces like ours, all with different modifications and customisations. We (well Simon) would have loved to have spent a while here just loading the van up with all sorts of useful things. One person explained, after the standard riducule at our lack of air conditioning, how easy and cheap it was to fit over there, and we were very tempted. Our roof rack has also broken due to too much weight bouncing around in the Boluchistan desert, and we could have got a great one there.

So I think it is one of the countries we would most like to go back to, and maybe when things have settled down a bit we will be able to really enjoy it.

Max temperature: 47 degrees C

Total distance driven: around 7500 miles