I thought you had the map?!

Hello from rainy Budapest. You’ve probably noticed this update has taken a while, hopefully the next one shouldn’t take as long! This update covers our week in Pakistan, after we left Lani at the Indian side of the border, and Simon, Pat and Me keep going. Enjoy!

 

India/Pakistan border: 3 March 2008

As we passed under the ceremonial arch on the Pakistan side of the border it was bit like entering the unknown. The NZ government class the whole country as an “Extreme Risk” destination, and the Aussie goverment’s advice is “Do not travel”. Now it’s fair to say the advice offered by each country’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs is always on the conservative side, that’s their job, they do it well, so you take the advice with a grain of salt and do your own research. The problem for us is that there’s a small but significant clause in each and every travel insurance policy (trust me I’ve checked them all) which says if you ignore warnings or advice issued by the government or in the mass media, you’re on your own. The hardcore explorers would scoff at this, saying if you’ve got travel insurance you’re obviously not being adventurous enough, but we have to be realistic.

So we’re not covered by travel insurance in Pakistan, but the only other options to get from India to Europe are Afghanistan (yeah right) and China (beaureucratic nightmare and hellishly expensive). We’d checked out updates from people who had been or were in Pakistan, and it sounded like it wasn’t too bad. So the decision was made that we’d cut through Pakistan as quickly as possible, and escape to the relative peace and tranquility of Iran.

We pulled into the very modern customs building on the Pakistan side of the border, only to be told there was no power, so they couldn’t process us. After 15 minutes of kicking the rugby ball around the carpark we were summoned in to get our passports stamped, and one of the customs guys suggested to Simon that they might like to search the Hilux for contraband alcohol (Pakistan is a Muslim country, so alcohol is illegal). So we thought we’d better play it safe and grab out the three Kingfisher beers that we had left in the chilly-bin, and put them on the ground next to the Hilux, before heading in to do the paperwork. Next thing we knew a very excited customs officer races in from the carpark and has some words with the superintendent, who calmy walks over to us at the counter and asks whether the beer is ours. So we say yes, and he replies in a conspiratorial tone that they’re not actually beer, they’re fruit juice, so there’s no problem and we should put them back inside the ute before anyone else notices. He then told us that three beers wasn’t nearly enough, and probed us with a glint in his eye as to whether we had any wine, or vodka, or maybe even whiskey? We didn’t quite know what to make of it at the time, as it was the first time we’ve met friendly border officials!

So having got through all of the paperwork for us and the Hilux to legally enter Pakistan, we took a left out of the border compound and drove straight back to the border. Not long after Pakistan was partitioned from the rest of India, bored border officials choreographed an elaborate and entertaining border closing ceremony, which has developed into a major tourist attraction drawing crowds of thousands of patriotic Indians and Pakistanis, and a a handful of bewildered foreigners at sunset every day.

The ceremony starts with the arrival of two squads of the tallest and most impressive specimens from each countries frontier corps, for what amounts to a 30 minute chest puffing competition. After the obligatory shake of hands between the two commanders across the border there follows some displays of lung capacity with endless shouting, guards adopting comically aggressive stances while fondling their automatic rifles and exchanging evil glares, sometimes nose-to-nose over no-mans-land, before loudly stomping off apparent disgust at the disgraceful state of the opposing soldiers.

While all this is going on the crowds in the grandstands either side of the border are chanting and firing up their troops. Our Pakistani contingent was nowhere near the size of the Indian supporters, but that’s not really surprising.

I eventually managed to spot Lani in the opposite crowd (a bit like a game of real-life Where’s Wally?).

The finale begins with the race to untie each flag (this time won convincingly by the Pakis!), before each side lowers their flag as slow as possible so it doesn’t end up lower than the other one on the way down.

After all is said and done the gates are slammed shut with gusto and the squads of soldiers march of into the dusk light.

It’s a bizarre spectacle, but highly entertaining if you’re ever in the area. With a final wave to Lani as the crowds dispersed, we headed back to the Hilux and made our way down the highway to the cultural heart of Pakistan, Lahore.

 

Lahore: 3 - 5 March 2008

Now we’ve had a lot of surprised reactions when people notice our Western Australian number plates, but it was our turn to be surprised when we pulled into the hostel in Lahore, where parked outside was a beat-up old 1962 Land Rover, with Western Australian plates! It turns out it’s owned by three German guys who are doing the same as us, but a little bit slower, and not quite as comfortably!

On the second day we were in Lahore I found myself in a dodgy little restaurant, surrounded by locals intently watching news coverage of a bombing somewhere. We only found out later that day that the bombing was barely a few kilometres from our hostel, and I think three people had been killed. Still, everyone seemed to take it in their stride, and the streets of Lahore were still packed with people getting on with their lives.

 

Lahore to Quetta: 5 - 6 March 2008

So after a couple of days soaking up the relatively cosmopolitan lifestyle in Lahore we hit the road. Pakistan highways were much more civilised than in India, and the despite what many Indians had told us, the country is much more developed. They even had speed radars, as Simon found out the hard way. Not surprisingly when the cop who pulled us over realised we were foreigners he let us off with a stern warning about “overspeed” and we were on our way. The hospitality even went as far as the highway toll booths, where we were offered tea more often than we were asked to pay.

A solid days drive took us south-west to Bahalwapur for the night, then we pushed west across the plains towards the infamous Baluchistan Desert and Quetta. About 100km out of Sukkur we were pulled over by the local police and offered an escort, which they weren’t at all insistent on, so we politely declined. They sent us off with advice to lock our doors and not to stop for anyone, which we happily followed. It was reassuring to see that every police post along the highway were obviously keeping an eye out for us, and radioing our progress ahead to the next post.

The highway across the flat plains of central Pakistan eventually took us into the hills following a river valley, and as dusk fell we wound our way into the mountains up to the city of Quetta, on the eastern edge of the Baluchistan Desert.

 

Quetta: 6 - 8 March 2008

We spent a couple of nights in Quetta, a city written off by the guidebooks as a dusty little hole of a frontier town. The description was essentially correct, but what it didn’t account for was the fact that the remote and harsh setting was balanced equally by the absolutely overwhelming hospitality. Our days there were spent wandering the streets and the bazaar, being constantly approached by locals keen to chat to us to find out where we were from and practise their English, and of course invite us to have tea!. I drove out to the “Satellite Town” one day to find an air filter for the Hilux, and ended up engaged in an intense conversation with the guy at the tyre store next door for the best part of half an hour. On the way back I was stuck in traffic trying to cross a busy intersection, but as soon as the police officer trying (mildly successfully) to control the traffic saw I was a foreigner he virtually jumped into the middle of the opposing traffic flow waving his arms maniacally to give me a chance to get across.

In the middle of the afternoon on the second day I was waiting with the Hilux at a carwash when a dude in a suit came over to me and invited me to come and sit with his boss, who was also waiting for his car to be washed, and wanted to talk to me. Slightly perturbed, thinking this sounded like a scene out of a Mafia movie (does the Taliban operate like this?!?), I wandered over. It turns out the ‘boss’ was the mayor of one of the districts surrounding Quetta (ie the area where most of the drugs from Afghanistan get smuggled through) and we sat basking in the sun drinking tea and Chiku milkshakes fetched for us from the shop over the road, waiting for our cars to be washed, chatting about life in our respective countries. It turns out his son is a minister of some description (finance I think) in the Pakistani government. Maybe I should’ve got some contact details in case I wanted to come back to Pakistan -it sounds like he’s a pretty well connected guy!

 

Quetta - Taftan (Iran border): 8 March 2008

So when the time came to move on, we made an early start for the long drive across the Pakistani half of the Baluchistan desert to Taftan, and the border with Iran. As I mentioned above the Baluchistan desert is a major drug-smuggling corridor, and I think it was in National Geographic I read that 80% of the opiates that are sold in Europe have been smuggled out of Afghanistan through the region. Progress was slow as we negotiated the single lane of dodgy pot-holed tarmac which we had to share with a constant flow of slow and heavily-laden trucks making their way to and from the only (legal) border crossing between the two countries. As the day wore on, and the desert sun got hotter, the stress levels started rising as we came to the realisation we weren’t likely to make it to the relative safety of Taftan before dark. Then almost exactly halfway across the desert, the miserable excuse for a road suddenly stopped, and was replaced by one of the most beautiful sights we’d seen in thousands of kilometres of driving. Pristine smooth tarmac, broken only by ephemeral mirages, stretched two-lanes wide, as far as we could see.

I don’t often get so verbose about tarmac, but after crossing three countries with roads ranging from poor to atrocious, seeing the quality of this road was like a gift from God (or probably Allah, given that we were in a Muslim country). 

So with the sun already making some progress towards the horizon, we wound the Hilux up to it’s top speed of 120 km/h and blasted west across the featureless desert, passing the cumbersome trucks with ease, and trying to forget the fact we were driving a conspicuously foreign vehicle across mostly uninhabited desert only 60 or so kilometres from Afghanistan! Here’s a clip from Al Jazeera about the problems the Pakistani police are having in the region on YouTube.

We finally hit Taftan about 16:30, and while we were relieved to be in ‘civilisation’ again, we were also very aware of the fact the border was closing at 17:00, and we’d been told if we got stuck there the only safe place to stay overnight in Taftan was inside the police compound, which supposedly (but not suprisingly) wasn’t a pleasant option.

We rocked up to the police office at the border and sat impatiently as the official processed our passports at Pakistani pace (ie painfully slow). Before he could stamp us out of the country he informed us we had to head to the customs depot, back at the edge of town. So one of the guards jumped in with us and showed us the way back through the dusty little town to the customs office, where we endured another excruciatingly long wait for the customs guy to process the Carnet for the Hilux. Sensing there wasn’t much progress happening, I eventually made a bee-line for the guy in charge, and with a combination of basic English and excessive hand-gestures, I made a case for our Carnet to make it’s way up from the bottom of a growing pile of truckies paperwork. Thankfully the dude took sympathy on us and he personally grabbed it out of the pile, came out to check the chassis number on the Hilux, and before we knew it we had a signed and stamped Carnet. So back to the police post, and sensing our desire to get it over and done with quickly, the official kept the small-talk to a minimum and with a flourish he stamped the passports. With barely minutes to spare we raced back to the Hilux and drove the twenty metres to the big gates, and with the guards already poised ready to slam them shut, we crossed excitedly into The Islamic Republic of Iran, supposedly one of the key members of the infamous “Axis of Evil”. This should be interesting…