Blogs from Pakistan, Asia - page 6

Our 4WD driver had come to Gilgit late on the evening we arrived. We were heading straight out the next day on a 4 day loop; out to Skardu day 1, spend day 2 there, then take 2 days to come back via the Deosai National Park with an overnight stay in Astore, a Himalayan mountain village. The road to Skardu is bad; rough and unsealed, and there’s currently a lot of construction happening to improve it, making it even slower. It took us 9 hours with maybe a half hour lunch stop to travel 168km (that’s an average speed of 19kmh…). Our driver was generally cautious but he could have gone a bit quicker, our Prado is quite old, it has no A/C, sounds rough, makes some funny noises over bumps and before the end ... read more

Just before we left NZ the people we’d organised our border pick up and trip to Islamabad with had contacted us to say they had 2 Dutch guys taking a car with driver on a 2 day journey up to Gilgit (the main city on the Karakoram Highway in the mountains) and did we want to share the cost. We’d been talking to them about hiring a 4WD and driver for a side trip from Gilgit so they knew on our rough thinking on dates were close to aligning. It’s a long journey up, even broken into 2 and the heat was going to make it tougher, so we accepted. The original plan was to depart the day after we got to Islamabad but the Dutch guys needed to delay a day and while keen to ... read more

Monday morning meant shops were open. Before moving on from Lahore we wanted to clear a couple of practicalities. Firstly we’d discovered that we need exact change for lots of things – auto-rickshaws, small shops, even the hotel didn’t have change for our big notes. There was a bank on the corner of our street so at 9am Emma took some big notes and got lots of change. The second was asking our driver to Islamabad to take us to get a SIM card. It took him a bit of asking around to find a franchise that could sell us one and when he did for some reason he had to give his details in what looked on the paper like some kind of sponsor. But we didn’t care about the hows or whys, we’d got ... read more

Border crossing days aka clean top days (it always helps to look half presentable when asking to enter a country) are always a mix of excitement and nerves about the unknown. We love crossing borders, nothing beats walking into a new country with the locals. Despite having a lot in common, India and Pakistan’s relations have been difficult since partition. When the two divided they did so along religious lines; Hindus went to India and Muslims to Pakistan. It was one of the largest human migrations ever seen, and sparked riots and violence across the region. This was followed by the Kashmir conflict and numerous other military conflicts fought between the two. They still regularly take pot shots at each other over the border. Overall their relationship has been plagued by hostility and suspicion. Since their ... read more

It's currently ten thirty at night here, or so says a battered old clock that I picked up from the floor and tried to re-hang on the wall to it's base or whatever the underside of a clock is called, on a balcony overlooking Mall Road (or some other road) currently experiencing a traffic jam with almost all the drivers honking their horns and the occasional "Jazbaati Kocha" blaring a cassette of "Hits from the Himalayas" from his van filled with people like sardines in a tin. Okay, enough mood setting. So, at 4 A.M. this morning (29 June 2017), I woke up in Islamabad and after a quick breakfast of a slice of bread slapped with Jam at my grandparents' residence, we embarked on our expedition. At 6 A.M. we were at the Islamabad - ... read more