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Published: November 2nd 2006
Pakistani Produce #1
Sign in the weapons section of the bazaar in Multan. Every decent bazaar in Pakistan has such a section, for all your dacoity and 'miscreant' requirements.....We had finally reached the Indus plain, we were really looking forward to our first glimpse of the mighty Indus and our crossing into ‘India’; well the geographical and ecological India if not the political one.
It took a long time though to descend on to the still dusty plain, where was all the lush green farmland? Eventually we found quite a big truck stop and ordered some vegetable curry and daal. Whilst we were eating a police van pulled up. They wanted us to go in their van as it was a dangerous area. Not again we thought. In our view the main problems were in Baluchistan and now behind us, and we reasoned that the unrest in the region was directed against the government/army and police not us, so being with the police might possibly be more dangerous. Anyway the police tried to take our bikes while we were still eating and kept saying, “go now” to us. We were very tired and a bit annoyed by then as we had planned a snooze after lunch. We also couldn’t really believe this was happening; our Major in Rakhni had told us the night before that once we crossed
Pakistani Produce #2
Across the street from the gun shop, you can buy flower garlands to mark your religious stature and place in one of the local shrines to a sufi saint. into Punjab the police would have no interest in us and all our problems with them would be finished.
The police told us that we could not cycle; we argued that we were on a public highway - which they denied. We pointed out that they were not stopping any other vehicles, cycles or donkeys. We wanted to speak to the senior officer by telephone or radio; they indicated that we could do this at the police station in 7 km at Sakh Sarwar. We agreed and cycled onto the police station with them following behind in their van.
At the police station we had to fill in the register and then when we explained our intention to cycle they said this would be OK, so we never managed to speak to the senior officer and try to sort out the problem, but at this point we thought that the police had changed their mind and were going to let us cycle, stay in a hotel in Dera Gazi Kahn, the next town, and cycle on the next day.
For the next 6 hours what unfolded was the most upsetting and stressful thing that has occurred on our
Sufi Shrine
The shrine of one of Multan's many saints and easily the most beautiful building in the city. entire trip. One set of police would escort us to the edge of their area, telling us they were taking us to a hotel and then the next set of police would say, “No get in van, no hotel.” Often we were standing beside rest areas and hotels, but the police prevented the hotel managers from showing us rooms. We kept asking why were not allowed to stay or to cycle and we got many different answers. The many lies that the police told us ranged from; “it was impossible to cycle because the road was bumpy”, or that there was “no bridge ahead” (when there was), to telling us about imaginary 5 star or 1 star hotels and imaginary police stations. It was a really confusing situation because almost every officer contradicted the one who was speaking to you before.
At one point we decided to try to go back to the first set of police, since they were at least vaguely listening to us and also we thought that backwards would take us out of the so called dangerous area that the police seemed intent on preventing us from staying in. When we told them we were
Floodplain
The Indus? No, its still 15km to the actual river channel. going back they actually drove their van at us and twice ran us off the road. This was really scary and only made us want to get away from these particular officers more and go back to the first police guys. In the second attempt to stop us with the van an officer leapt from the rear of the van and grabbed at the rear of my bike whilst I was moving. This damaged my luggage rack and rear light and was dangerous and nearly caused me to fall off. I was screaming “Let go, let go, what you are doing?” The officer also grabbed at one of the bags attached to the rack and this ended up hanging from the bike, causing further damage to the rack and attachments. Robin tried to defend me from what he saw as an unlawful assault by the police. He yelled, “Get away from her, stop assaulting my wife.” All 3 officers then attacked Robin with excessive force, beating him around the chest, arms and head with their hands. He was hit in the side of the chest/ribcage with the butt of a Kalashnikov. We were both extremely scared and believed these men
Britisher building
Colonial architecture, Multan. were trying to abduct/kidnap us. The 3 policemen bundled Robin into the back of the van even though he was struggling against them. I was screaming hysterically the whole time at them saying “get off him; let him go, you are going to hurt him” etc. Trucks were stopping to see what was happening, the police tried to wave them away but Robin was also yelling at the trucks “they are kidnapping me, please help, do something”. Another police van turned up and stopped the 3 officers from assaulting Robin, but when we asked for the names and identities of the officers involved all the policemen there started to laugh at us. We managed to write down as much information as possible but when they saw us doing this they got one policeman to stand in front of the license plates of their police vans to prevent us seeing them.
Eventually we managed to get to speak to a senior officer who spoke good English. However things did not improve. I asked what exactly the legal situation was and he said that we were not allowed to be there and if we refused to move we would be arrested.
Old City, Multan
Amid the hustle and bustle you can see some traditional style buidlings and maybe the numerous home-made electrical connections stealing power from the pylon in the centre. At this point, however, we had been lied to for about 4 hours and assaulted, so thought if we were arrested then we would be able to sit down and they would have to get a lawyer there to explain the situation to us properly. We never got that far anyway; because the next moment the senior officer said something and all the policemen grabbed us. They were pulling Robin one way and the bike he was sitting on the other way. I was knocked over and dragged along the ground and my bike was dragged on its side fully loaded. We could hear the panniers ripping along the ground.
As it turns out we were never arrested and basically we were abducted without legal authority by the police. At midnight that night we were dumped at a hotel in Multan, 100 km further on. We had crossed the Indus River in the back of a police van, whilst crying and asking;
“Are we arrested?”
“No.”
“Are we free?”
“No.”
Some of you reading this may think we were stupid and that we should not have questioned the police at all. Perhaps our dream
The Fort, Multan
Well, what's left of it after the good old 'Britishers' shelled the shit out of it during a dispute with the local Sikh rulers. of cycling all the way to India is stupid. Of course had we thought there really was a law restricting our movements or real danger, we would have obeyed the authorities, but it turns out that this area is not restricted at all to foreigners. After the supposed or real dangers of Baluchistan the imaginary danger these Punjabi police were inventing was obviously just that. Also our experience in Baluchistan had taught us that questioning the police and refusing to immediately obey them usually paid dividends. Had the situation in Baluchistan really seemed that threatening then we would have obeyed the police. It wasn’t. We were now in Punjab, less then 10km from the Indus River which had been our goal the entire way across the desert. The police could give us no good reason why we shouldn’t be allowed to cycle this last stretch and we were not going to back down easily having come this far. We have crossed countless mountain ranges and several deserts, persevered through icy blizzards and searing desert heat. None of this stopped us and we weren’t about to let some ridiculous Pakistani bureaucracy or misguided authority stop us either.
We spent 10
"For your protection"
An unusable bicycle, courtesy of the Punjab police force.
Amazingly the sheared off bolt end was removed without causing any further damage, with -you guessed it - a hammer! days in Multan trying to fix the bikes and also to make a complaint. Our Consul was not much help really and we have not and probably never will have a proper legal explanation of exactly which laws were broken and by whom.
In the end Robin’s bruises healed and after reading in the Pakistani newspapers about much worse assaults by the police force here we counted ourselves lucky. The bikes were fixed up but all our equipment has damage on it that is annoying. The Deputy Inspector General of Derra Gazi Kahn Police however delivered us a large bouquet of flowers!
We are still unsure of what exactly to do with our complaint since nothing has happened about the statement we made to the police after the event. I think that we will chalk this up to experience, but now I can vouch that money spent on human rights organizations here is definitely needed and money spent in a good direction. Ultimately some serious international pressure to provide democracy and basic human rights is also needed, from you-know-who. Sadly they seem more interested in supporting a corrupt military dictatorship in Pakistan. While we were in Multan recovering from
Another loaded bike
On the bund above the floodplain. The milkchurns will be used for buffalo milk. this episode President/General Musharraf was in Washington having dinner with his best buddy Bush, who in turn told the world to buy Musharraf’s new book. All happy murderers together……
We managed to be a bit touristy in Multan in the end and it was quite a different city from Quetta. We sampled the delicious Chicken Kharai; we sweated in the humid Punjabi atmosphere. The place was much busier than anywhere in Balochistan, this is not surprising Punjab, with Sindh, has the majority of Pakistan’s 150 million population. Multan is famed as a city of saints and buried in amongst the usual overcrowded maze of streets there are shrines for the historically and religiously interested to try to find, we did not. We satisfied ourselves with going to the biggest shrine, and got a good view of the sprawling flat city from the gun emplacement beside it at the fort. Whilst at the shrine we meet many nice people and one young student who was very keen to try to convert us to Islam. As with all religious people, they have found happiness and really want you to join them in it. Pakistan however really is the most dominantly Muslim
Crossing the Indus, at last.
Taken from the middle of the bridge - the river is soooo wide the banks are out of sight. country we have been in. For over a year now we have been in the Muslim world and Pakistan is the most conservative Islamic country so far. We wondered why and then remembered that the reason for this country’s existence is its religion. The religion was what cemented these very different groups of people together at the start.
Most of our time in Multan was spent waiting for telephone calls from the police or the British Consul or making phone calls. We particularly wanted permission to go back to the point of the actual abduction and to cycle across the Indus and so complete our dream. Eventually, after failing to get any answers out of the police, our Consul’s lame advice was not to return as it would “antagonise the police in that area”. Antagonise! Had we not been antagonised enough ourselves? The police also had no legal power to stop us from being in that area. So determined not to bow in to criminal bullies we got up early one morning and loaded our bikes onto a minibus to make the return trip towards Derra Gazi Kahn.
We got off the bus just short of the city
The Chenab
The second of Punjabs' five rivers. (Panj = 5, ab = water). and started cycling again from the point that we had finally been pulled off our bikes. The day was hazy and the large flood plains stretched into the distance below the road. The road itself was on a man made bund and groynes came off at regular intervals to access the farms around. Most of the farmland at that time however was underwater and we had to stop to get the binoculars out and marvel over many new Indian species of birds. We passed water buffalo perfectly content bathing in the swollen flood waters. This whole area is completely man made; the actual river channel was still 15 km away but man has spread the water out over a huge area and redirected much of it for farming in an attempt to live beside and profit from the monster being that is the Indus River. In the past the city of Derra Gazi Kahn had been completely destroyed and was moved in its entirety to its present location. Also in these parts the rivers can move even 6 km from the previous course in just one season.
We arrived at the bridge over the river channel and I noticed the policemen waving at us, happily waved back and cycled on. Robin was not so fortunate and the police managed to stop him. Here again out came the, "it’s very dangerous you cannot cycle over the bridge;" meanwhile plenty of local cyclists are going over the bridge whilst the police pay them no attention. The policeman wanted Robin to get me to come back, but at this time I was out of sight, waiting on the bridge. Then in a master piece of bullshit Robin won against the police at their own game – lying! “Haven’t you seen us before? We cycled over this bridge 3 times already this morning. We are now going back to Multan again!” This completely flummoxed the policeman and he let Robin cross. There really was no danger; the traffic was not bad at that time at all. Triumphantly we met up in the middle of the bridge and cycled on.
When the road eventually got far enough away from the river the floods waters disappeared and dry sandy scrub and a few small hills appeared but soon we were approaching the Chenab, the second great river for the day. We had a good picnic near the Chenab and arrived back in Multan, very happy, ready now to cycle on the next day towards Lahore. The police had not even noticed that we were on that road at all even though many police vans passed us.
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joy
non-member comment
I would just like to applaud your determination to not give in despite what you were up against. I lived in Murree, Pakistan for 4 years and never saw a single tourist - most likely for the very treatment and 'pakistani welcome' you were given. I was very excited to see a blog on Pakistan but then sad to read that those men haven't changed at all over the years. Good luck for the remainder of your journey!