Traveling from Iran (by bus and flagged down pick-up drivers under police escort due to the potential hazard of being kidnapped by Baluchistan drug runners, just the thought of this was possibly the most exciting thing to happen to us in Iran) was for me similar to the moment in the Wizard of Oz when the world suddenly turns from black and white to colour. Iran in the end sadly left me a little cold, although everything is very beautiful (places and the people) it is often very homogenous, exquisitely beautiful but same same, there is little diversity and everyone (a good 99% of the women) pretty much dresses in black, those who know me will know how much I love a bit of colour in my world.
The moment we crossed into Pakistan the world was instantly a riot of colour (and dust). After our farce of border crossing we had a long dusty wait on the Pakistan side for a bus to take us to Quetta (not so much worry from the drug runners more concern over Taliban activities drove us to public transport). I can't describe how excited I was when I saw the bus. It was truly amazing though typical of Pakistan. A lurid early 70's paint job (it was probably built then), crazy psychedelic interior, all chrome, primary colour plastics and rainbow lighting, Pakistani music issuing forth from a tape which had obviously been wound and rewound so often that the voices where slightly distorted, parcel taped up cracked windows (god knows how they didn't fall out...actually some of them had) and the most amazing Pakistani passengers in great outfits who seemed to all know each other and were clearly looking forward to some kind of social gathering on the fear and loathing disco bus. Get in! To some people this might sound like it was going to be an all night journey through hell, me I couldn't have been more thrilled or entertained.
In the end it was a great ride, though dusty and bumpy and in the night a little bit chilly. The only downside being that unlike National Express there was no toilet (probably for the best really). Now this was fine for the all male passengers getting out to pee at the side of the road but a few hours into the trip and I was in trouble. Part way along the bus stopped at a rest place, James went in and checked out the toilet said it would be fine for me to go in so off I went, I didn't even get to the boundary wall before a guy held his hand up in the universal sign for 'do not take another step lady' and said 'CHADOR'. Bearing in mind that I have just left Iran and am still wearing full hijab as I am in a Muslim country, totally covered, head, arms, ankles the lot in loose fitting, decidedly unsexy clothing, I mean it was good enough for the ayatollah who is not known for his liberal fashion sense... left me standing there with 'F*ING CHADOR!!' running through my mind as well as reminding me exactly where I was both geographically and socially. Furious, embarrassed and desperate to go to the toilet I got back on the bus for another dusty hour bumping along through the dark. Finally the bus stopped again in the middle of nowhere and the men again got out and relieved themselves in the darkness, by now not caring even if I was spotted by every passenger I jumped out to go in the distance but again I was denied and herded back onto the bus with the promise of a toilet coming soon, a further half hour passed before we reached the salvation of a truck stop with a pitch black women's compound and relief. Its stuff like that that makes me so grateful to have been lucky enough to be born in a country where gender and clothing does not generally determine your ability to access a service like a roadside cafe (except of course if you turn up naked).
Our bus stopped in the outskirts of Quetta where the bus driver let us sleep on in the parked bus until the sun came up. From there we biked across town as it was slowly awakening. It was a brilliant ride as we followed a man who guided us to the train station on his bicycle with his little boy huddled in a blanket against the early morning chill straddling the bike rack. It was a delight to watch people begin their day, the cycles, tuk tuks, painted lorries and buses not yet at dangerous proportions, people making tea in the street, washing plates in the street, generally living in the street just made it feel so alive and was a beautiful introduction to Pakistan.
In the end we caught a train from Quetta to Lahore again for safety reasons. As we couldn't get a seat in 1st class we rode in the cheapest crammed compartment there was for the next 24 hours. Despite the seats being numbered and allocated which equates to about 4 people to a bench the benches were absolutely rammed, again I was the only woman there, wedged in the corner looking out the window at the craziness that is Pakistani train stations full of vendors selling unknown foods, tea and painted goats for Eid and the craziness inside the train, pretty much the same but minus the goats.
Trains stop and start seemingly randomly along the track, people (frequently children) get on and off selling everything from boiled eggs (who knows how long ago that was done and how much money can you make selling them for a living?) to salt to rub into your eyes (not speaking a word of Urdu I have no idea what the purpose of this was but the salesman clearly delivered quite an impressive speech about the benefits and people handed over cash for the privilege).
Lahore was great, hugely filthily disgustingly chokingly polluted but amazing. Crazy to move through on a bike (beware the tuk tuks and assorted carts) or on foot, you can't walk on the pavement as they are either a) being occupied by shop stalls b) being occupied by a variety of livestock c) being occupied by sleeping people or d) are covered in human piss and crap (hold your breath and mind your step people) so you must attempt to walk through the grid locked traffic and fumes but STILL it was amazing.
Crammed Old City streets with open drains are vibrant with life and death (chickens are slaughtered in the street whilst their worried chicken friends look on from cramped cages), entire streets are teeming with women dressed in beautiful colourful salwar kameez buying fabric and bangles. And as for the street food, it tasted great but we were both ill within about 24 hours of arriving. YUM.
And a word about livestock...it is everywhere, we were around shortly before Eid a festival in which every family slaughters an animal, Pakistan has a fair few families, as a result there were millions of decorated goats, camels and donkeys obviously no longer pulling their weight and about to cop it, EVERYWHERE. Many of the larger animals would be killed and the meat distributed to the poor.
In the Old City we kept seeing these strange items for sale on a vendors stalls, they were white with a black coating and served up in newspaper with salt. I couldn't work out what they were, was it a fruit or vegetable, did it come from the sea, was it part of an animal, what the hell was it? So I asked the vendor where it came from... a tree? the sea maybe? To which he replied, whilst fixing me with an 'I can't believe you don't know this' look and a raised hand... 'GOD', ahhh, right, that explains it then (for those who are interested I ate one and it turned out to be a water chestnut, embarrassingly I have only ever eaten them in Chinese food or out of a can, I now understand how children can come to believe that milk comes from cartons rather than cows).Other striking memories are our visit to see/hear Qwalli (devotional Urdu songs). If you ever get a chance to see musicians perform this then do. It is extremely beautiful. For us it was also great to witness culturally, no one dances, just listens except for a chosen few. The musicians themselves were so numerous that they were frequently cut off mid song and shuffled swiftly off the stage for the next group so that everyone could have a chance to perform. The musicians are showered with money throughout (albeit small denominations) and the biggest donators are given more money than they ever gave back to reshower the musicians with a flourish and a dance. Again this is a predominantly male activity but western women are accepted in. We met an American girl who had been learning tabla locally(small drums) and was in fact the first and only women to ever play Qwalli in that hall (which if you had seen such a male dominated sight would have impressed you).
We also went to what has been dubbed Sufi night. Every night in Lahore sufi's gather to dance their way to God to the accompaniment of dhol drumming. One night a week they allow westerners to come in to witness the experience (having seen it I have no idea WHY they would let us in to be a witness to such a thing but I am so glad they did). Picture the scene, we are in a walled courtyard with a burial shrine in the centre, there are small steps leading up to the shrine entrance which are fenced by a little railing which we the lucky foreigners are huddled into (women at the back for our safety, women are not allowed but yet again we are exempted) which in fact gives us possibly the best seats in the place. Radiating out from the shrine and steps across the floors crammed in like really snug sardines are literally wall to wall men sitting cross legged on the floor rolling and smoking hash like machines. These guys are smoking 5 joints at a time and i do mean at the same time, and they just keep on rolling. There is a haze of smoke hovering above the crowd that makes it seem like you are in a smoky den but in fact it is open to the air. The crowd chants, young boys (of about 9) are in there too, leading the chanting at times, the crowd always responding with a resonating AaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaLI. Two Dhol Drummers come in, the crowd is squashed back to even more impossibly cramped positions to allow them space, and room for the sufi's. The drummers are brothers, one of them is deaf and feels the vibrations of the other and they drum like nothing I have ever seen or feel I am likely to see again, fast, furious, brilliantly and perfectly, this in itself I'm sure would take you where ever you wanted to go. But not content with these amazing vibrations and serious smoking the sufi's get up and start to move, spinning and shaking, fast and furious like the drums, sweat dripping off the ends of their hair (the whirling dervishes are gentle gentle, these guys are in the mosh-pit), the nightly power cut kicks in, the lights go out but they're never stopping, on and on in the dark with the night sky for light (though its having trouble penetrating the constantly replenished cloud) they alter their state to reach god. Between the drumming, movement and the smoking I'm not sure if they are reaching god but they are definitely on a trip.
The people of Pakistan we spoke to were lovely to us, there are not too many tourists here (compared to India for example) so you get considerably less hassle and people are welcoming though they still advised us to take care and be cautious.
So there you have Pakistan, it was in fact so much more than these few experiences which culminated in our witnessing the border closing ceremony on the Pakistan side, which left me thinking 'Uncle Pakistan' was just about the coolest man on the planet, and we were only really there about a week. I'm so glad we came overland through Pakistan and will one day return hopefully when things are more peaceful.
