Blogs from Lahore, Punjab, Pakistan, Asia

Lahore Days 1, 2 Perth to Lahore via Bangkok. Cost- AUD $652 Uneventful flights, 18 hours door to door. Note to Thai Airways- when did you get rid of your air vents? We could possibly have deflected the trillion airborne virus the guy sitting next to us for 4 hours coughing and spraying was creating. Arrival proceedings in Lahore were surprisingly efficient. Separate queue for females- bonus! Very, very short queue. Straightforward, a couple of questions and stamp, stamp of my 30 day visa (arrrgggghh- still annoyed about that!! -see trip description for details). Luggage carousel was orderly too- after last year's arrival into Dushanbe I was expecting much of the same mess but this was really efficient. Finally, at 02:00 we're in the steamy air of Lahore, 02:40 arrive at a barbed wire compound- the ... read more

Geo: 31.5497, 74.3436The drive from Islamabad to Lahore was relatively uneventful, almost missed not having the Police escort.Upon entering Lahore we promptly were stopped at a Military check point….. evidently a Cantt, which is short for Cantonment which is basically a Military Zone which means…… no foreigners can enter. So we were asked to pull over for passport check, then we were informed the Major was coming down (gee I thought we are not that important… however if he wants to meet us all well and good)….then when he arrived our passports were sent his way and I started to think things were astray.The Major was a nice chap and basically said we had entered a restricted zone and our passport Pakistan Visa had a stamp next to it forbidding us entering any Military Zone….. WTF…. ... read more

For more of my photos, or to buy my book, please visit www.nickkembel.com For this blog entry, my pictures will tell the story of my ‘see-and-do’s, but the story I will tell you will be non-illustrated for reasons that you will understand if you read below. (I should note, for the Red Light District pics, I did not 'see-and-do'. It just happened to be right in the middle of the Old City). The setting is Punjab, a fertile, prosperous and densely populated region that was divided politically with the partition of Pakistan from India in 1947. Up to a million people were slaughtered in the aftermath of the division. My story takes place in Pakistani Punjab. Islamabad and Lahore, the political and cultural capitals of Pakistan respectively, are located in this region. Few travelers pass ... read more

Dont know why all the text didnt get published! Better luck this time! Due to power cuts and slow internett this had been a whole Sundays work!!!!!!!!!! Final Fling Blog 5th July 2009 3 weeks and we will be back in England—it seems so close yet so far away! We are busy in these last weeks writing the modules for the teacher training that will take place in the last week we are here-I am getting quite quick on the key board The lap top is one of the most useful items that we brought with us -infact we should have brought 2. Much of the training is based on making the lessons in the official Punjab texts books more interesting and inter-active but I am also working on sessions about reading/book corners and making books, ... read more

seem to have got a bit of a muddle with blog!! So you will have to look at pictures on one and read the text on the other one! Must be the heat!!! ... read more