PITFALLS IN PAKISTAN

THE EDITOR HARD AT WORK ON THIS EDITION IN ISLAMABADWe left Yazd early on Wednesday the 28th I would say bright & early but it was at this point that I was going down with Jan’s kebab revenge, we were now starting a four day journey across the desert to Pakistan and I picked my moment to be at one with the toilet oh joy. The first half of the day not to bad warm but manageable, then came the time for bush camp off we headed into the desert to find a spot when all of a sudden out of nowhere came this four wheel drive vehicle with armed police onboard who told us it was to dangerous to camp and to follow them back to their guard post, here in the back of beyond on the edge of a scruffy little settlement was to become our home for the night. Under the glare of their searchlight we pitched our tents and made camp, now this led to another problem the ground was to hard to dig the hole for the toilet so the police said we could use theirs, but considering I needed the toilet every hour it made for a long night, walking across to their iron gate and knocking for them to let me in, then to make it even more arduous the wind got up and Jan had to put rocks around the tent to hold it down, it was one very long night. The next morning up & away nice & early but unfortunately the police would not let us travel on our own and from this point onwards an armed escort was always with us which although it sounds quite good means you have to travel at their speed and when they reach the edge of their area wait for their replacements to arrive before we can continue, this we managed during the morning but by the afternoon everybody’s patience was wearing a little thin with the waiting around in the heat we are in temperatures of around 40 degrees most of the day on the truck, a lot different to the freezing weather of nine weeks earlier. It was while we trying to negotiate with the police somewhere to stop for lunch that the patience finally run out they had moved us from one escort to another finally ending up with this three star officer who drove down the road in front of us on his mobile phone while riding his motorbike with his helmet hooked over his mirror (he couldn’t wear it , he was on the phone he did finally put it on when he had finished his phone call some ten minutes later)after doing a circuit of the town he pulled us over and told us to wait for another escort, at this point jacko decided enough was enough and drove off leaving the policeman his mobile phone and his motorbike down the other end of the street, stopping shortly afterwards everybody managed to get something to eat and we were ready to set off back to the highway and face the consequences of giving our escort the slip. The first couple of road police checks we sailed through no problem but then as we got closer to the border we were finally pulled over and after several words between the police and Jacko our escort was reinstated and we were allowed to continue on our way to the border crossing, mind you we could have done with this last escort much earlier in the day because they went so fast we struggled to keep up, which made a change from crawling along behind a lot of the slower escorts. That night we made the border crossing complete with gun toting border police who rode on the truck for the last five kilometres having his picture taken with a lot of our group.
We spent the night at the border crossing ready to be one of the first across the next morning we pitched our tents in a dusty yard full of rubbish, stray dogs and rats my kebabs revenge was no better and a loo was preferential to a bed which was lucky because there was showers and a loo attached to the restaurant, which was good until I got up in the middle of the night and discovered it was all locked up I had to go and find a bush with all the other dogs in the compound ! If anybody’s thinking of entering or leaving Iran in the near future always use the airports the land crossings leave a lot to be desired! especially when you’re not well. The next morning it takes three hours to traverse the border, the Iranian side concrete built fairly modern a couple of small air con units providing you sit on top of them they work well, the Pakistan side is like a lean to mud hut with a bus shelter on the side only it is quicker than the Iranian side so each has its benefits.

Here we are then Pakistan, the country we’ve all been looking forward to (not) the first thing we see is the brightly coloured lorries moving scrap metal from a large scrap yard in the middle of the desert right on the border, why on earth you would put a scrap yard there, we can only assume it’s to cut up all the impounded trucks and goods from the border but it did seem strange. They inform us that we do not require a police escort as it is perfectly safe to travel in Pakistan and wish us a safe journey and off we go in temperatures of 45 degrees plus and yes I’m still not well and my best friend is the toilet. We travel on the quality roads through the desert coming across several police check points where in the blazing sun we are made to stop

and have our passenger list checked and recorded talk about a paper trail across the country, it’s while we were stopped at one of these checkpoints that we witnessed the locals leaving the road about 600 yards before the check point drive around the back of the checkpoint across the desert and then rejoin the road 600 yards further on all laden with plastic 45 gallon drums which we later heard on the news was the fuel smuggling from Iran that the authorities were struggling to control probably because the police were so busy stopping tourists and checking and rechecking their paperwork that they failed to look over their shoulder and actually stop the people who were breaking the law, oh well its same most places then! By the end of the day I was struggling with dehydration from the heat and my love of the loo and was very pleased to get to the grotty hotel at Dalbansin and get a room at least it had a fan and a bucket shower so I could recover. That evening they managed to purchase some Murriels larger this being another Muslim country it’s not freely available and ill or not after two weeks in Iran I was going to have one, at 5.5% it was very nice, apparently there were cans of the stuff as well but that was 7.5% probably a bit much for the first one in a little while especially on a dodgy stomach. After a few power cuts through the night this we are to learn is normal in Pakistan there isn’t enough power to go around so they plan in power cuts to share it about, when your fan goes off in the night you soon come to boiling point though. The next morning I actually feel the best I have done in days and put it down to the alcohol the night before no more running for the loo I can just ever so slightly relax, ready for another day on the truck our fourth in a row we are heading for Quetta, here we have two nights in a hotel and after the desert road of the past four days it will be most welcome. We get to within 15km of Quetta and think we have only about half an hour to go when we come across road works, now road works in Pakistan means that instead of digging up a bit and letting the traffic use the rest they take the bull by the horns and effectively take up the whole road for the entire repair, in this case 10 km and then start with the sub base and let the traffic use it while they build it, so driving in like quarry conditions with no right side of the road becomes the norm and it takes a further hour to do 10 km finally getting into Quetta at about 6.30 after leaving at 0800 in the morning. The Rose Bloom hotel lets us recover from the past four days of travelling, alcohol is available and is most welcome the town its self is much like the other villages we have travelled through smelly, dirty, and very busy, sewage flowing in the street is a common sight, but the people are friendly and helpful and it’s our first chance to use the internet which is at the speed of a carrier pigeon and just when you have completed your email and are about to send it there’s a power cut and you lose the lot, several people on the trip have enjoyed this moment in Pakistan. After spending a couple of days in Quetta complete with armed guard purely as a precautionary measure we understand, we are ready to head off for Peshawar, now this area of Pakistan is under tribal control and the government struggle to enforce any sort of law unfortunately for us the road that heads eastwards to Peshawar and takes about one and half days to traverse needs government permission to use because of this tribal fighting in the area, so we have to head south and then back north eastwards avoiding this area and we still have to take a police escort because they tell us this is too dangerous to travel alone, even if the escort they gave us left us on the edge of Quetta and then arriving at a police checkpoint some 50 km’s later discovered that they should still have been with us and another replacement was rustled up after a further wait. Another long day in the warm conditions and we’re looking for somewhere to stop but have to wait until the police tell us that’s it’s safe to do so, eight o’clock comes and goes and so then does a storm it goes pitch black the wind gets up that we think the roof‘s going to come off the truck and then the rain lashes down and sheet lighting lights up the sky, just what everybody needs especially Jacko our driver after twelve hours on the road, but then we pull off the road into Pakistan’s answer to the Watford gap services without the service. The place is nose to tail with brightly coloured trucks parked in mud next to a building full of truck drivers and hot food, we have as it turns out two bare rooms about 12’ x12’ in which to roll out our mats and sleep the 18 of us (snug fit), food is provided which we walk into the kitchens to pick out, the kitchen reassembles a derelict building with an open fire in the corner and an open gully in the middle which caught a few of the group out, but as we were all starving it done the trick sat there eating our food while the locals who serve and cook the food rode in and out of the room on their motorbikes as they begun or finished their shift which added to the ambience of the moment. We spent a restless hot night in our two rooms or most of it because in the early hours my kebab’s revenge got a whole new lease of life and came back with a vengeance, as in the morning I find out that both Jan & Mary have suffered the same fate and we will all be jostling for the loo on today’s leg of the journey. Off we set at eight o’clock and promptly stop and wait 30 minutes for our police escort to arrive, off we go through the desert very hot and every time you come to a town smelly, rubbish is strewn everywhere and men line the streets sitting down passing the day, ladies are very few and far between and those that are out are covered right up complete with a mesh gauze over the face, how they can tell who’s who is a complete mystery. By lunchtime both Jan And Mary are struggling with the heat and are getting badly dehydrated at the lunch stop we manage to cool them down and get some ice and liquids in so that they can continue. In the afternoon, temperatures reach 45 degrees in the truck and the roads are terrible, and what with waiting around for the police escort to change it makes for a long day that still leaves us well over 200 km’s from Peshawar by nightfall. As it’s still unsafe to camp out they find us a minster’s residence to use and we camp in the grounds complete with our guards, both Jan and me just shower and crash out not looking forward to the next days travels. Our fourth day on the road and as we get within 50 km of Peshawar the police divert us 100 km to avoid yet another dangerous area finally getting into Peshawar in the late afternoon during the rush hour, what joy a heavily congested & polluted city, the air is actually blue with the fumes from the 2 stroke tuk tuks and its stifling hot just what is required when your not feeling at your best after several days on the road. We check in to our room which has no air con but a fan which moves the hot air around, a similar idea to the fan assisted ovens back home and we both decide that medication was needed to get us both sorted out, after a word with the hotel guide who tells us that they have a wonderful hospital and brilliant doctors just around the corner and his friend Prince who used to be a doctor or was training to be a doctor he didn’t quite make it that clear would take us there in a tuk tuk. So off we go to test out the Pakistan health system and I have to say from the tuk tuk ride to the hospital where this little 2 stroke 3 wheeler which seems to have a force field around it which prevents other vehicles from somehow hitting us while we’re crossing traffic and going the wrong way down the street but we arrive safely and Prince handles our registration and initial consultation with a doctor who then directs us, Jan to the ladies ward and John and myself to the men’s ward where a further consultation including blood pressure, pulse and temperature are taken, we are all diagnosed with travellers diarrhoea, a prescription is written out & we go around the corner to buy the antibiotics and within the hour are back at the hotel taking the medication the whole process was simple, quick and cost about three pounds fifty each for the drugs very cheap and the only paperwork was for our prescription, perhaps the good old NHS could learn something from this, mind you the cleanliness at the hospital matched the rest of Pakistan so there’s a few tips they could do with as well. We spend a couple of days in Peshawar by now about half the group have gone down with the bug and we all need time to recuperate before going up to the Karakoram highway later in the week, we head off to Islamabad which is a very modern city, much cleaner and more westernised than Peshawar staying at the tourist camp site and spend a further few days resting with the temperatures still up in the forties. Well the expectations of Pakistan are certainly living up or down depending on which way you look at it for us on this trip, what with the sickness, the laptop’s keyboard has now decided that certain keys won’t function so a plug in keyboard is purchased until we can get it repaired probably in Kathmandu as we have a couple of weeks there. Anyway just as everybody’s giving up on the hole that is Pakistan, we head off up the Karakoram highway this marvellous feat of engineering

LANDSLIDE ON THE KARAKORAM

TIGHT FIT ENTERING KARIMABAD
that took 20 years to complete has the most stunning scenery and breath taking drops the further up you go, we take the truck as far as Karimabad and stay in a simple but clean little guest house with snow covered mountains in front and behind us this place is somewhere that I could easily return to for trekking in the valleys.

THE GANG AT THE CHINESE BORDER,JOHN, JANE, ROB, DOUG, PAUL, LUCINDA, JO,

KAT, CALLUM, JAN, ME, JACKO

We take a couple of jeep trips, one out onto the Bhaltar glacier, and on our second day complete the last 180 km’s up the highway to the Chinese border at Khunjerab pass we are at an altitude of 4710 metres here and in a lot of places the highway is no more than a single track stone way that has only just been cleared from the last rockfall, but everyone agrees that this part of Pakistan is truly stunning and well worth seeing, even if the Chinese are going to be widening the highway over the next few years and probably even starting on a railway next year. We actually got to step over the border and stand on Chinese soil which might be the closest we come to it as they will not let us take the truck into China now because of the earthquake and the trouble in Tibet.
We are now almost three weeks into our stay in Pakistan and are leaving tomorrow to cross the border into India, for most of us on this trip it can’t come soon enough as the repressive nature of the community in its attitude to women and the general poor hygiene is not something that we would want to hang around for, but we knew that this part of the trip was going to be tough and we’ve made it through with everybody still onboard I’m so glad we managed to do the Karakoram highway because that really is all that we have enjoyed about Pakistan, but no doubt in the future this part will provide some of the more interesting stories from the trip.

ONE TIRED TRAVELLER