Carry On Up The Khyber - 31/08/05

The Wagah border between India and Pakistan seemed rather subdued during the day, the stands that are filled with crowds of chanting patriotic Indians and Pakistanis during the day were empty, the drinks stalls closed and there were a couple of guys repainting the road markings.  I crossed into Pakistan and was confronted with nothing.  The border was deserted, just a couple of guys drinking chai and a taxi-driver waiting hopefully for a bumper fare to Lahore.  There was no bus in sight so I started to walk through the Punjab countryside, such a peaceful area that hides the history of violent massacres during the partition.  After walking a short way I found a bus and it slowly made its way into Lahore.  The bus was my first taste of Islamic Pakistan, the bus was segregated by a steel partition, the women sit in the front and the men in the back.

In Lahore I was wandering around the Mall and Charing Cross (sound familiar?) looking for somewhere to stay when I met a guy called Afzaal.  He has a guesthouse (2 rooms) way out in the Wahdat Colony, a suburb of Lahore. So I stayed there. There was also a German boy staying there, Florian who is studying Urdu, and so he started showing me around the local area that day. Culminating in a dinner of chicken n' chips.  This, I soon found out, is a Pakistan favourite.  Indeed it is tasty, a far cry from K(an't) F(ind) C(hicken).  Add to this the fact that Beef is eaten daily in Pakistan meant a welcome change to my diet from the last 6 months.

Exploring Lahore gave me my first taste of Pakistani hospitality.  Whereas in other parts of the subcontinent a foreigner on a bus or in a dhaba might be overcharged for their fare/meal/drink, here in Pakistan I have often received them for free, accompanied by a "Welcome to Pakistan!". I explored the Fort and the Badshahi Mosque, and wandered around the chaotic and labyrinthine old city.  On one evening, the day before Pakistan Independence Day, Florian and I, with another German guy, Capi, returned to the old city to seek out the dancing girls.  These are the famous prostitutes of Pakistan, the nautch girls that entertain their clients with songs, dances and poetry.  Indeed when Capi enquired he was quoted a price based on the number of songs! Unfortunately I don't know how long five songs is.  I was a little disappointed however, I was hoping to see some interesting old harems and seductive women. What we found however was a street with women sitting in the shops and standing on balconies looking exactly the same as in any other red-light district.  OK, so they were wearing salwar kameez and not a mini-skirt and PVC top but they were still caked in make-up and it was fairly obvious what they were doing there.  So we decided to leave and find a bar.  Impossible you might think in dry Pakistan where alcohol is illegal (when I crossed the border they searched my bag, looking for whiskey!). However there is a bar in Lahore, used to be called The American Club, which, on production of a passport foreigners are allowed entry. Unfortunately the bar had closed at 11pm (where did think this is, England?) so we decided to visit the 24-hour mini-golf instead.  Unfortunately the 24-hour mini-golf actually closed at 2:00am. What sort of mini-golf course is only open until 2am? The mini-cricket was also closed.  Feeling sorry for us the staff allowed us to ride a mini-scooter around a mini-track normally only for the children.  As I mentioned before, it was the eve of Independence day and it seems that this is celebrated in Pakistan by taking the silencers off of all the motorbikes, getting as many people on as possible and driving fast and crazily around town.  It is such a big problem that the newspapers were appealing for the youths to stop this practice as there is a regular death toll each year.  Add to this the cars with people hanging out of the window, waving flags and playing music and you get a scene of wonder at which one can only smile.  Because of the celebration there was also a concert in the park which we had the (mis)-fortune to witness!  Trying to get home at around 4am we were stopped by a collection of fires burning in the road, next to the petrol station of course.  It did not look as s though these people were celebrating Independence with quite the same high spirits and so we detoured and walked the last mile or so under cover of darkness by the canal bank. The next night, the 14th August which is the Independence Day, Florian and I managed to visit the American Club, although renamed Lahore International Association in the post-9/11 world.  After submitting our passports and receiving our temporary membership we were escorted into the club.  It was incredible, like an English Country Club that has been dropped into a dark corner of Lahore.  There was a wooden bar, stools, velvet upholstery, lounge areas, a patio and French doors.  The daily special was Roast Beef and Yorkshire Puddings and they were playing Thin Lizzy and Rod Stewart on the stereo, set in the mahogany unit in the corner.  There were trophies in a cabinet from golf and cricket competitions and a signed cricket bat on the mantelpiece.  After a couple of Murree beers we decided again to visit the mini-golf, and again found it closed, spurned again we settled for sharing a hookah pipe in the outdoor cafe.  It felt like a Greek holiday resort, white plastic furniture and clean patterned paving, except instead of drinking bottles of Amstel all the families were sharing hookahs, choosing from a variety of aromas.

Lahore fairground and Tower of Pakistan

All that was left in Lahore for me was to sit for a day in Afzaals paddling pool ,trying to beat the 35+ degree heat and the 90% humidity.  The range of reading material in the 'pool room' was astounding, highlighting Afzaals obsession with air-xonditioning! I leafed through the Air-conditioning home users guide, and engineering text-book, some sort of Haynes manual for air-conditioning units and also the Southwest Florida University prospectus 1987, with the Air-conditioning engineering course underlined!

Leaving Lahore, my next stop was Rawalpindi, close to the capital of Islamabad.  'Pindi itself is chaotic and fairly uninteresting but I used it as a base to make two day trips.  The first was to Islamabad.  Purpose-built in the 1950's Islamabad is very similar to Chandigarh in India.  It is big, planned and organised.  There is no life on the streets and hardly any street stalls or chai-wallahs.  The city is arranged in a grid and is full of leafy boulevards, plazas and pedestrian malls.  Evocative a South American provincial city it all looks clean but slightly decaying, the city needs a lick of paint.  Whereas Chandigarh at least had some suburbs that were more Indian and had the Rock Garden to spend some time, Islamabad did not seem to have any redeeming features, other than the embassy compound on which you have ride an embassy bus, rather like being in WaltDisneyEmbassy!
Fortunately I missed this experience!  The second day trip I made was to the Buddhist ruins of Taxila.  Now, Buddhist ruins in Pakistan is an interesting concept in itself but unfortunately these are very ruined, hardly recognisable and not particularly interesting.  More interesting was the hiking through the hills and fields between the sites and chatting to the farmers and other workers along the way.  The site cost R's200 entry and back in the town the museum is another R's200.  I therefore only visited the sites before giving a concise and coherent speech to the ticket officer at the museum on why this constituted economic racism (Pakistanis pay R's10) and I did not agree with it.  Of course this is the same all over the world, but of course I have conveyed the same to people in Mexico, India, Vietnam, wherever.

After this brief stop I head on to Peshawar.  We nearly did not get there because the bus stopped about 40km short and could not go further because the road had been closed.  It had been closed because there had been a fight over the local elections and thirty people had been shot.  Would anyone ever be shot in England over local elections? I cannot see Ian Gibson or Charles Clarke evoking the same emotion somehow.  So I did what any red-blooded Englishman would do.  I went to find a cup of tea. And some mince and tatties.  My hunger and thirst satiated I found a bus that was heading to Peshawar via the long way round. Peshawar has a formidable reputation, it's in proximity to the Afghan border and the tribal areas all around which are outside the jurisdiction of Pakistani law.  I visited the Khyber pass and gazed down on the border crossing to Afghanistan.  This required a security permit and to be accompanied by an armed guard as we drove through the tribal lands and the smugglers bazaar.  The houses in the tribal lands were massive, one of them even had honey on tap and a lake of milk.  Even in 'dry' Pakistan I am sure I could think of better things to have on tap rather than honey!  Looking down on the border I expected to feel some regret that I had abandoned my plans to visit Afghanistan.  I was pleasantly surprised not to feel this. I just had the same resolve that Brendan had when looking at China from Hong Kong. One day I will go, but not today.  After Chapli kebabs at the border town, like thick squidgy beefburgers, we returned to Peshawar and I visited a friendly Afghani in his carpet shop.  We drank tea and chatted for a long time.  He was in a Russian prison in Afghanistan for 3 years because they thought he was a spy, when in fact he was a gardener.

Khyber Pass

Later on that day I visited the gun bazaar at Darra Adam Khel.  This is definitely out of bounds for foreigners and I had to take a blacked out car through the checkpoints and pay a lot of bribes to the tribal chiefs.  I was then allowed in the bazaar, full of workshops making different parts of guns, one place making the triggers, one the barrels, one the magazines, others the stocks and other internal mechanisms.  They can copy a gun in 7 days and after that it takes two days to assemble each firearm.  The first question I was asked in this lawless and unruly place was rather surprising, a guy fiddling with a shotgun looked at me and said "Would you like a cup of tea?".  I declined politely, not wanting to ruin the image I had of the place. Another guy came in brandishing a Kalashnikov, if only he had pointed it at me and asked if I wanted chicken n' chips the Pakistan stereotype
would have been complete.  Fortunately for me he didn't but the chief then asked me how many guns I wanted to buy and if I wanted to try some weapons. So I did.  I shot the Kalashnikov, nice but a bit more clumsy than the AK-47 and M-16 I had fired in Vietnam and Cambodia.  Still a lot of fun on fully-automatic.  I then fired ten rounds from the hip with a pump-action shotgun, very clumsy, very powerful, very random. I finished off with a small chinese pistol which of course was far easier to control.

The next day I visited an Afghan refugee camp.  The son of the carpet seller took me there and I visited his family.  They gave me food and a salwar kameez to wear.  The camp was amazing, all the people were so friendly and welcoming, from the small children to the old men.  I visited some carpet factories and watched the Afghan and Uzbek refugees at work.  One family gave me a present of a handkerchief to give to Monika.  These people have hardly any possessions but they are giving me something to give to someone they have never met!  Back in Peshawar I had dinner with the carpet seller, eating on the floor of his shop with a French guy who had bought a carpet that day and who had been with me to the Khyber pass.  Again there was no talk of money or buying carpets, just a warm welcome to a visitor.

Afghan refugees

The next day I happened to be walking through the old city and I wandered into a video games arcade.  Within minutes I was playing table football and drinking tea with the locals.  They bought me a cold Pepsi and gave me the usual gentle interrogation, where am I from? what do I do? What is my name? Am I married? etc.  I was then taken to a snooker hall where I had to play a few games of snooker with various people.  One of them, Naveed, invited me to his house for drinks.  I went along and after that we visited his brothers jewellery shop.  We had lunch there, the usual giant feast of breads and various "curries".  After this Naveed told me to go to my hotel, collect my bag and come to live in his house with his family. So I did.  The strange thing for western visitors in Islamic families is that the women are kept out of sight in their own part of the house, the only evidence is the occasional giggle one hears and maybe the shadow of the girl as she retreats around the corner. This was true even in the refugee camp.  So in Naveeds house I never met his mother or sisters.  We visited his friend in his shop and I worked on the till for an hour or so, serving ice creams to the children and single cigarettes to the men and struggling to understand what they wanted in Urdu.  In the evening we went to the Army Stadium.  This the hang-out for all the upwardly mobile Peshawaris.  There is a small fairground there, some exciting rides as usual devoid of any safety standards especially the pirate ship that went all the way over (like the Tempest at Pleasurewood Hills but without the hydraulic pads holding you in place!).  There is also a range of food outlets and a giant park to sit down in and recover after the rides and dinner.

The next day we had lunch at the cousins again.  This time he made a ring for Monika in under fifteen minutes, starting with a long strip of dirty metal and carving and moulding a shiny silver ring.  I was amazed at the speed and quality of the work.  He wanted to copy my Om necklace but I gave it to him as a gift. I had to leave Peshawar and so I wanted to buy a train ticket.  Naveed however had a friend at the station who managed to get me a special discount quota of 50% in the AC carriage.  That evening we slept at Naveeds other cousins house and I had to entertain about ten people who the cousins had invited around to show their foreigner to.  I had to answer the same questions to each person, and then repeat some because they could not remember what I told them for more that 5 minutes.  By this time I had become exhausted of the hospitality. I was glad to be leaving, hoping for some peace and quiet.I left the next morning, heading for Multan.  I did not get an AC berth as it happens, the price, even at 50% was too much for me, so I was back in the economy class.  The journey was long but not uncomfortable. We passed through 'Pindi at lunchtime and stopped in Lahore for 3 hours in the evening before finally heading south for Multan.  We arrived at 4am, I got off the train and sat on the bench, trying to wake myself up.  Almost immediately a guy came up and sat next to me, "What is your good name? Which country?". I could not believe it, its 4 in the morning, and in this state of disbelief I managed to escape the conversation after a few minutes and snuck off to the 1st class waiting room, lay down on a charpoy and slept until 8am.

Looking for a hotel in the morning I was picked up by a police van.  They did not know what I was doing and so they escorted me to a hotel, the next on my list as it happens.  Once there however the police decided it was not good enough for a foreigner and tried to convince me they could take me to a place with AC, Cable TV etc.  I thanked them profusely and managed to convince them that I was allergic in some way to AC and that this place would do fine thank you very much.

Multan is a dusty and overcrowded city, similar to many on the subcontinent.  The reason I had visited was to see some Islamic shrines, which the town is famous for.  I began to explore them.  After seeing a couple of shrines, not so exciting and suddenly faced with the darker side of tourism as I had to pay"donations", I sat in the park to rest for a while.  I was joined, inevitably by a Pakistani.  he was a palmist and gave me some interesting predictions from my palm.  he then asked me to come with him to see "the real Multan" and we visited another shrine.  We received lots of gifts of sweets from the pilgrims as we sat there.  We then went for lunch but we never got there.  We stopped to meet his friend along the way suddenly we were all drinking gin.  He had got it from his friend who is a Christian, has a liquor consumption license and can buy from the Holiday Inn hotel. 
After the gin was finished he ordered a bottle of whiskey.  We retired into his back room which was full of audio tape recorders, all attached to the wall and ready to make 200 copies of any tape.  The Whiskey arrived, as did the lunch, cooked by his daughter.  After a while both himself and the palmist were very drunk and started arguing, prompting the palmist to start crying and the other guy to throw a glass against the wall.  It was his third attempt, I had stopped the first two.  He then smashed the, now empty, bottle of whiskey in his hands and blood spurted everywhere.  To apologise he had to feed each of us with his hand, unfortunately the one dripping with blood and because the palmist was still upset, we all had to feed him with our hands.  Soon after this the palmist and I left.  The guy who we had visited had not been outside of his house for six months.  His wife had left him, I was told it was because she was mad but I suspect it was because he is a drunk and a bit eccentric.  She had gone to her parents and left him with the five children. It is the children I felt sorry for, having to look after their father every day, especially the youngest one, only about three or four and so quiet and shy. I was not so drunk as they were, whilst they were necking their drinks mixed with Pepsi, I was sipping mine neat and slowly.  I had therefore had about 4 doubles, and they must have had twice as much each. Also I chewed some paan after leaving which helped and then took the palmist for a fresh banana juice before going back to his guesthouse.  He was babbling incoherently about how his father was Deputy Chief of Police in Lahore and that he would get a car, drive me all over Pakistan and take me hunting, and he knew lots of girls in Lahore.  I could extend my visa and change my flight.  In order to escape this, he probably would have made the same offer had he been sober but I was still feeling tired of all the hospitality.  I did what I thought was best and embarked on two lengthly games of Ludo with his sober friend in the next room before leaving quietly, promising to ring him soon to arrange the trip.  Needing some sort of familiarity after a crazy day I went in search of somewhere showing the cricket and the only place I could find was KFC.  So I sat there in the neon wilderness, slumped in the plastic seating watching England humiliate the Aussies again.  Only this time they did the job properly.  And walking home from KFC I was nearly run over by a motorbike that had swerved across the road.  Why had he swerved...."What is your good name?"

I left the next morning for Bahawalpur. Another chaotic, overcrowded town, this one with an interesting bazaar but also in close proximity to the ruined shrines of Uch Sharif.  I met a guy in a juice stall and he wanted to swap his necklace for my beaded one to show our friendship, which I did.  I then went to the post office and ended up staying there for over an hour, chatting with one guy about England, Czech Republic, Pakistan and everywhere.  When the conversation turned to Islam I left, pleading hunger and tiredness.  This is the only problem with these conversations, they eventually turn to religion and you cannot win in a conversation where the other person is obsessed.  They are passionate, you are not, end of story. 

Later that night I went out to buy some sweets, met a guy at the shop, he bought me a Pepsi and asked me if I was a muslim.  I said no and he asked why I was wearing a necklace with the most religious symbol of Islam on.  I told him I did not realise, that it had been a gift and I quickly took it off. Then it fell out of my pocket.

The next day I visited Uch Sahrif, the shrines were quite nice but not amazing.  The scenery was impressive though, more tropical than you would expect somewhere on the fringe of a desert to be.  It was so hot I nearly fainted and after leaving one shrine a guy offered me a ride on his motorbike.  It soon transpired that he wanted to take me all the way back to Bahawalpur, 70km away.  I declined this offer and took a bus instead, and spent the evening watching Premiership football and the cricket in a electrical goods shop.

From Bahawalpur back to Lahore, back in Afzaals house, however since both rooms were occupied I was on a charpoy on the balcony.  But as that is where I slept when I had a room anyway, it was fine.  Yesterday Florian and I visited Sozo Water park.  As with Aquatica in Kolkata it was the usual collection of rides that would not pass EU safety standards.  After we started with the one that looked most pedestrian and came off with severe cuts and bruises we decided that our plan to try the Death slide next was naive and headed for the wave pool instead.

Now I am back in Amritsar.  I enjoyed Pakstan and the people are probably the most friendly of anywhere I have been but I was somehow relieved to be back in India, it feels like a second home to me now and I seem to compare every new experience to India.  Tonight I am taking the train to Delhi and will sit it out and wait for my flight next Thursday.