Blog May 23, 2008 After having reported my experience in the bath which proved to be the result of an earthquake, it has since then grown into a national disaster, easily overshadowing the preparations for the Olympic Games To give an idea about the magnitude of it, here follow a few statistics of the catastrophe: 42.000 dead and 32.000 missing, over 200.000 people injured and close to a million people left homeless. A whole town has to be written off, with 80% of the buildings destroyed and the rest unsafe to live in. 400 bridges collapsed and 28.000 km of roads [View Full Entry]

---

---

May 1, 2008 According to the information in the “Lonely Planet” on China, the border with Pakistan opens on the 15th of April, sometimes later. This year the border opened on the 1st of May and I made sure to be one of the first to cross it. A few days earlier I drove the camper up from Gilgit to Sust and witnessed the first sign of awakening spring and receding winter. It wasn’t cold and I parked the car at the PTDC hotel. Hakeem was there to help me further, but I had four days to do something useful: [View Full Entry]

---

---

Seagulls and bare midriffs. I’ve made many mistakes in my life. The latest one was based on the assumption that the weather in Holland and England would be mild since the temperature was going up in Pakistan. That proved to be a wrong assumption. When in September 2006 we started our trip towards the East in the revamped Land Rover, we left behind our “European” camper, the Renault master we had bought the year before. It was a good car although underpowered with too little ground clearance to risk roads in underdeveloped countries. We left it in a garage in Holland [View Full Entry]

---

---

February 24, Islamabad It’s after the elections and after the results have been published. Only 30 to 40 % took part and scores of women were prevented from voting, although that is their constitutional right. It seems that in other parts of the country not everything went as peacefully as it did here, but even with that as a consideration it all went a lot less problematic than expected. Of course, in a country like this trouble lurks always around the corner because democracy is a word that has a foreign ring to it, like in South Africa. There the opposition [View Full Entry]

---

---

Sunday, January 27 India, Amritsar Last Friday I went to apply for my Pakistani visa. For that I needed, amongst others, a letter of introduction from the Dutch Consulate. The day before I had made an appointment and promptly at 9 am I presented myself to Mrs Cuelenaere. Yes, you read correctly: not Rita Willemse or Tanja Bakker, not even simply Mrs Culenare but Cuelenaere with two extra e’s. Sounds like a bell: Doing g g g g !! . (For English speaking readers it won’t mean very much, but for Hollanders it will). Lovely name, and very friendly lady. She [View Full Entry]

---

---

Nepal The road from the border to Kathmandu, a mere 250 km, took two days. The first 150 km has many very bad to worse patches, the second 100 km is very good except for the last 10 to 15 km which has even worse patches than the first 150 km. I took pictures of overturned busses and wrecked vehicles and the idea of traveling by public transport has become less attractive. But, having been convinced that traveling in ones own car in China is either impossible or very expensive or both, the choice is simple: to go or not to [View Full Entry]

---

---

Jan 5, Meham Left Sirsa after friendly curiosity of small numbers op pupils from high school next door had changed into blatant harassment. Like a bunch of flies they would not go away, never satisfied with what they saw but always wanting . . . what? I don’t know. What made me and the camper such an easy target for their (not so friendly) attention? Anyway, I had stayed there for 3 or 4 days after being refused access to the local tourist facility and after finding a Mr. Malik, a teacher with a quiet parking area in front of his [View Full Entry]

---

---

After a pleasant stay in South Africa where we found that, after almost three years, prices have rocketed, service provision has declined with power interruptions almost daily, and the black population has become more self-assured and therefore much easier to live with, we headed back to Pakistan. We left behind a country where deep divisions are created, politically, between a man who meant well but established an almost autocratic rule and another, who is favored by the masses notwithstanding being accused of gross corruption and rape. The latter, Zuma, will be head of the most powerful po [View Full Entry]

---

---

16 November 2007. We left the car at the camping at Islamabad and found a taxi to the airport: the 4-week visit to South Africa to see our sons and to have a break from travelling had started. Flying is not something you can dwell on extensively. The most remarkable experience was the 8-hour stopover in Abu Dhabi. Not so much the waiting and lack of proper conveniences as well as the construction of the International flight hall. It is a large shopping centre cum waiting room. There are only chairs to sit in, not to lie on, hence my remark [View Full Entry]

---

---

Loose lonies: Although Karachi is a sea harbour, there are no seagulls. Instead, there are hundreds of buzzards. Pakistan has a male dominated social order. Very few women are seen on the streets and only evenings some do their shopping. It is not generally acceptable to sit next to a woman in busses and taxis. Close to 75% of marriages are arranged and social contact before marriage is very uncommon. The Land Rovers we met all had Goodrich tyres and had experienced very few if any punctures while we, travelling along the same bad roads like in Ethiopia and Georgia, gained [View Full Entry]

---

---