From Pakistan to India - on foot

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***Side comment about the title of last entry - I didn't know "fam-damily" was a way to say "damn family". I just thought it was a funny rhyme that people said. Under no circumstances would I refer to my lovely family as my damn family. My apologies!!***

**I was home for about 3 weeks and meant to publish this but forgot. Today I arrived in Nicaragua to visit a friend who is studying here and then we are traveling together... so stay tuned for more stories!

Instead of taking the long train journey back to India, we decided to go to Lahore (in the central/northern part of Pakistan) and cross the border by foot. We were only in Lahore for about 24 hours and didn't do a whole lot - went around the city a bit with our CS family. The museum was closed for security reasons since it is in the center part of the city where there have been problems, and supposedly the fort was closed too but we think our CSer just didn't want to drive to it. Anyway, I was a bit anxious being in the city since there had been an attack at a market in the weeks before we went, but we didn't encounter any problems.

Crossing the border was a lot less tedious than when we had gone from India to Pakistan. I think the main reason is that only foreigners can cross on foot (Indians and Pakistanis can cross by bus I believe). When we went across, there were 2 guys from Nepal but other than that, it was pretty empty except for the security workers. The Pakistani checkpoint was really clean and had all the x-ray and nice equipment. The workers were very friendly and let us look at the x-ray pictures while explaining to us what contents we have. Took a total of about an hour compared to the 15 hours or so last time when we crossed on train and stopped at the two checkpoints with about 500 other people.

When we actually crossed the border, the guards were pretty relaxed and let us take pictures - finally got a pic with each foot in a different country at the same time!!

After crossing, we waited two hours for the border closing ceremony which happens every day. People from each side (a good number of tourists on the Indian side) come to represent their country and make a big hoopla out of the whole thing. Not sure if there are usually more people on the Pakistani side, but when we went there were maybe a hundred Pakistanis and several thousand Indians. The two sides are extremely coordinated - each side has an announcer and at certain points they will say "chants" - such as just yelling Pakistan or Hindustan (India). At certain times, a guard from each side will very enthusiastically march to the border gate and they will shake hands, do some fancy steps, turn around and march back. It all lasted about an hour - music, dancing, cheering - really a fun experience 😊

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