12th October Sukkur, Pakistan to Okara, Pakistan.

We left Sukkur early and found the highway with little effort. A decent night's rest didn't make Pakistan's roads or drivers more bearable. I find myself hating (not too strong a word) all other road users. Mentally, I project abuse at my road mates to maintain sanity... haha.

Richi resting on a charpoy at a roadside dhaba.

We ride on for hour after hour, undertaking and overtaking. We frequently undertake on the unmade fringe of the road. This riding is dangerous and dusty... if you undertake you might run out of verge, encounter a pedestrian, or run into rocks. We leave the main highway to travel cross country and bypass Multan. The road is a single lane road and very busy. A constant stream of trucks to tango the afternoon away with.

We regain the highway and are nearing Okara when we realise that the road ahead is blocked. We are uncertain as to what is happening.... as we get closer we realise that a huge crowd is milling around on the highway. Maybe 300 - 400 men..... some carrying sticks, all looking agitated and aggressive. I can only speculate as to what was going on.Probably an accident where a local was hurt ... or worse. We very quickly turn tail and head against the flow of traffic in the opposite direction. We leave the highway and head into the countryside. It is almost dark as we escape on unlit, unmade roads to nowhere in particular. The other guys use their GPS's to good advantage, we rediscover the highway ahead of the blockage.

As we enter Okara it is dark. Okara is not a tourist destination. We have a list of 3 hotels. We are guided to the first. "Hotel is full sir" a refrain that is all too familiar and becomes yet more familiar as the evening becomes night. After a 3rd hotel refuses to offer rooms we find ourselves in the Bazaar. Madinha Hotel is first a rate hovel. As always I am ushered forward by my fellow travellers to negotiate. We agree a rate of 1200 rupees a night. We ride our bikes into the lobby / internet cafe, using rocks and manpower to negotiate steps and narrow openings. A large crowd of youths are hanging out in the foyer. They are excited by our bikes and by nasty American porn. 

I am stressed and go to my room. My "peace" is disturbed by a visit from 4 of the hotels staff. I am informed that the owner has unilaterally renegotiated the room rates. I very quickly loose my temper. I finally scream "neh, neh, neh" at the top of my voice. My loss of control is so violent that the staff are swept away from me on a tidal wave of my anger. The staff, really no more than boys, fall over each other to get away. Minutes later senior management arrives. I am desolate and have lost the will to communicate... I listlessly hand over more ruppees, making a shit hotel that was already overpriced, a scam black hole of misery, resentment and filth.

Night panorama from Hotel Madinha

Our view as we exit the Madhina hotel the following morning. Pakistani squalour at its most glamourous..... We are maybe 100 miles from India. Jai Ho.

Okara Mileometer 

11^th October…. Karachi, Pakistan to Sukkur, Pakistan

Yesterday we relaxed in Karachi. I did some blogging, had a Pakistani haircut, withdrew some money from an International ATM….. first time we managed to find one working!  Checked out the possibility of shipping the bikes to Lahore by train or truck… and concluded that it would be a nightmare.

4 of us checked out early this morning…. Jeroen stayed in Karachi waiting for a high spec battery for his bike. We managed to leave the city and get onto the bypass within 30 minutes using the highway. As we left the city we saw people sleeping under bridges and on pavements. Outside the city there was dense smog, huge ammounts of pollution trapped by a high pressure cell.

The highway towards Lahore is a wide strip of tarmac…. No road marking as such. The road has a lot in common with Elmer the Elephant…. A patchwork of many different colours. The surface is highly polished and has been finshed with copious amounts of diesel and engine oil… a bikers favourite.

The road is very, very busy, trucks streaming from Karachi and its port toward Lahore. There are no rules of the road as such. Trucks and cars drive where they want when they want. The concept of an overtaking lane doesn’t exist.  Vehicles move across the strip of tarmac without rhyme or reason. Now that sounds ok? Add pedestrians walking down the centre of the road? Add donkey carts? Add camel drawn trailers, Add rickshaws travelling against the flow of the traffic, Add herds of 100’s of sheep being shepherded by a teenage girl, Add buffalos crossing the road….. And the road surface itself…. The tarmac has worn or melted into ruts and troughs…… you get the picture I hope.

Finally, a tricky road. I hit a traffic cone at 50mph, luckily it didn’t throw me off or wipe out one of the guys behind. This road is not Pakistans most interesting. It lies on the flood plain of and follows the path of the mighty Indus river. We dont see the river once. Concentration required constantly. A lifetimes exposure to diesel emmisions in one day.

We arrive in Sukkur around 4. We use a rickshaw driver to guide us to the best hotel in town, The Forum Inn…. “House is full sir” The manager directs us to another quality establishment. The bellboy follows us outside and insists that the “City palace Inn” is a better choice….. obviously his mate’s place. We follow the bellboy’s advice. The City Palace is OK, good wifi, and within minutes the bellboy has turned up to collect his commission ….. he helps us out by doing some beer shopping,  and makes another easy dollar.

Parking at the City Palace was in the foyer itself..... just enough room for the other guests to squeeze into the hotel.

We order some takeaway pizza. A straightforward order, from a Pizza Hut?! 30 metres from the hotel. All 3 pizzas wrong…. But edible. We drink a few cans and have a laugh about Pakistani efficiency and service.

Tomorrow Okara. This will take me within a few 100 kms of the Indian border.

Sukkur mileometer 23505

9^th October Quetta, Pakistan to Karachi, Pakistan

Our escort arrives at 7.00am sharp. Great, but Steven has overslept. We manage to leave at about 7.30. We fuel up and are on our way.

The day starts with temperatures at 12C.

The first 50-60 miles of roads were, in parts shocking. Suddenly the road has completely disappeared. It has been replaced by deep dust with a talc like consistency. As we ride through this dust, visibility is close to zero. At times it is impossible to see your front wheel… stopping is risky. Who or what will crash into you….

The day ends with temperatures that have peaked at 40C. The thermometer on my bike is very accurate. 40C means 40C. This sort of temperature is unbelieveably hot, all your senses feel 40C heat. In the desert humidity levels are very low and you don’t sweat in any conventional sense. The desert stealthily robs you of moisture without your knowledge. This heat diverts and distracts you. Mistakes become more common. After one stop I did not lock my pannier lid down properly. The lid came of at 70mph. A pair of jeans and my carnet flew….. luckily no real damage done…. And Richi who was riding behind me didn’t catch the pannier lid in the face. Martin a lost spare tyre without even realising it. Heat and riding like you stole it….. dangerous!

Minutes before we passed by......

We are very keen to reach Karachi and avoid getting stuck in a remote isolated region. We ride hard and fast hour after hour. We reach the Karachi bypass with 15 minutes of sunlight left. We are unable to locate the hotels that a Pakistani on the Karachi road told us about. We have no choice but to divert into the city centre. Karachi is home to 15,000,000.

2 of the bikes have Pakistan GPS maps. 1½ hours later they have led us close to the The Beach Luxury Hotel….. sounds great doesn’t it.  Those 1 ½ hours were fairly, very, monstrously, horrendous. The GPS maps we have are simple and guided us on the most direct route… probably the shortest… definitely the most chaotic and wild. Jeroen’s bike stops. All our bikes are making strange noises. The last petrol re-fill was obviously with tainted fuel (probably cut with kerosene)

After a further ½ an hour entailing driving the wrong way down some of the busiest roads on earth, getting separated from everyone, and coming close to disaster on numerous occaisions we arrive at the hotel.

Karachi mileometer 23191 (in excess of 430 miles covered today)

8th October Quetta, Pakistan.

During the previous night we hear gunfire from the city centre.

We attempt to leave the hotel to buy petrol but are refused exit by the hotel staff. We are not allowed out with an escort. We are told that we must visit the authorities to collect an NOC... No Objection Certificate. Seems simple enough...... Hello! this is Pakistan.

Richi and I leave the hotel in the back of Police pickup with armed guards.

In the back of a police pickup in Quetta central you feel very conspicuous. One of the cops asks me to hold his AK47, while he rolls back the canvas roof of the truck. I dont refuse ;-) 

We have a good laugh on the way to the Government office, the mood changes as the hours pass by. I don't know how many offices we visited this day... many many. At one police station we check out a notice board of Pakistan's most wanted...... for some reason Jeroen's picture is missing........

We finally left the city centre after perhaps 6 hours..... with our NOC. This permits us to move onto Karachi! For those of you unfamiliar with Pakistani geography (ha ha) this is a very backward step and takes us in completely the wrong direction by 730km, and then requires a ride of a further 1250km to reach Lahore. We are told that we are unable to proceed on our planned route because the roads have been washed away by serious flooding. Whether this is true at any level is questionable.... and when all is said and done we have semi off road bikes that can handle tough terrain..... a disappointing development, lol!

Karachi detour.... Thankyou Quetta police

The mood back at the hotel is depressed.....

Hey Ho. A few tins of Murree's drives spirits upwards. The staff at the hotel tell us that there has been a bombing in Quetta today. A bus has been blown up by a remote control bomb. A young girl dead, 15 seriously injured. Where the bus was in relation to the offices that Richi and I visited I dont know, just a couple of km I guess.... close call. Large Helicopters thrum through the night.

7^th October. Dalbandin, Pakistan to Quetta, Pakistn

We set out early. Our escort guard is on time. The Taftan to Quetta road has a big reputation. It is considered one of the most dangerous roads in the world. Bandits, Dacoits, Terrorists….. Our Levies guards take their job quite seriously. Jeroen’s bike is overheating badly, as is Jeroen. He expends a great deal of energy on abusing our guards. They soak it all up quite well, I think abusing men carrying AK47s is incautious.

Finally Jeroen discovers that his bike is carrying no coolant. It swallows up 2 litres of water. How it hasn’t seized I don’t know.

   

Desert checkpoint. The string draped across the road is the barrier.

Hay store

This youtube video gives a taste of riding in Pakistan... enjoy
(Thanks to Martin and Richi from Austria for capturing the video)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoE5ZbYU8PY

Truck art appears to be very important in Pakistan. I would compare and contract with Narrowboat folk art. It is a competitive game, gaudiest wins.

The landscape is awe inspiring. Huge moutains to either side of the plains that we ride on. We see camels on a regular basis.  From time to time we stop for fuel, food, drink and more frequently for check-posts. At every check post we have to fill in a logbook. We look over past entries and can see who has followed the same route before us.

 

As we near Quetta we climb a steep hill toward a mountain tunnel. A camel herder is driving 20 or so camels along the road to pass through the tunnel. This strikes me as being daring and skillfull.

As we exit the tunnel we drop down towards Quetta. We stop at a checkpoint. If Jeroen were a nuclear reactor… he would have gone critical, near meltdown. We are waiting a long time for our final escort. The atmosphere is tense, primarily because of Jeroen’s behaviour. Standing alongside the road probably wasn’t the safest place to be, standing alongside Jeroen, even more risky.

Our escort arrives. A truck with commandos, guns a plenty. We head down the hill and into Quetta. Quetta is medieval, there are more donkey carts than cars at points. For some reason the escort takes us through the heart of the city even though our hotel is on the outskirts. The traffic is very heavy, our progress slow. As we enter the heart of the city we are joined by more guards. Finally we are surrounded by 2 open sided buses each carrying 20 men and 2 pickups with commandos… a small army.

We discover that 2 policemen die every day in Quetta. The Pakistani state of Balochistan is very poor but has huge mineral resources. There are many Balochi’s who desire a better deal and independence…. And are willing to kill for it.

Maybe having large police escorts is reassuring but is it necessarily safer?!

Quetta mileometer 22762

6^th October Nokkundi, Pakistan To Dalbandiin, Pakistan

Jeroen’s bike needs jump starting off the Levies Pickup. A new battery has been strapped to the side of the bike. It doesn’t appear to being doing much. If Jeroen stalls or puts his sidestand down in 1st we need another jump start.

We make slow progress from checkpoint to checkpoint. The scenery is amazing. Some of the roads have a covering of fine sand, sand that is invisible until a vehicle passes over. When wheels roll over….  the sand then rises up and shimmys over the road surface. Dust devils roll across the landscape. Sometimes they cross our path… they carry leaves, paper and plastic bags.

Jeroen’s bike is now overheating.  This is a double whammy. He can’t turn the bike off at checkpoints because it won’t re-start, as a result it gets very hot!

Balochistan petrol station

We reach Dalbandin and are escorted into a Levies compound. We see another occupied jail cell…. A large painted, Pakistani truck fills some of the space inside the compound… we notice a massive gash along the underside of the truck. We imagine it has been involved in an accident. The Levies tell us that the truck has been cut open by their staff, it had been carrying 100’s of kilograms of opium in the fuel tanks and in a false floor.

We realise that we are going no further and check into Dawood  Hotel, London Road, Dalbandin. Our moods are elevated considerably by the fact that we can have a beer and that there is wifi.

I go out shopping for a sim card and to change some money. Levies guards accompany us, AK 47’s over their shoulders. Whilst at a chemist changing money…. Yes unusual…. One of the guards slaps a man around the face. It’s not clear what’s going on but it makes for an uneasy atmosphere.
The chemist money changer was a smiling assassin…..I negotiated a rate… a very poor rate at that, then when he used that rate to calculate the number of rupees I would get he rounded the amount down. I corrected him. He then counted the money out and it was short by 200 Rs, I corrected him. He then ordered us a couple of bottles of 7Up. I have a feeling this I how business is done here.

After buying a Pakistan sim card… we head back to the hotel.  The guys have ordered in a Petrol take away. A pickup arrives with a 50 gallon drum. 10 litre jugs are served to our bikes via a funnel with a cloth filter.

We have a few Pakistani beers. “Murree” beer is brewed in Pakistan for consumption by foreigners only. We order both 5% and 8% strengths. A nice evening that the Austrian lads finished off (I discovered the following morning) by smoking ganja with the hotel staff. I disapproved!

 

5^th October, Mirjaveh, Iran to Nokkundi, Pakistan

We breakfasted and are ready for our escort to the border. Of course the escort is late. We reach the border to be met by long, long queues of trucks. We zig and zag our way to the first checkpoint…. Iranian, customs clearance. We get our carnets stamped and onward. I ride on ahead and find massive crowds of people waiting for their Iranian exit stamp. I meet an old Iranian guy who appears to deal with customers relations for international tourists. He takes us through the passport control building shortcutting the assembled masses. They must have hated us…….

Pakistan! We have our passports stamped with entry stamps and then proceed to customs. The first office is efficient and friendly. The staff gather information and write it down using pen and paper. The head officers tells us he won’t bother searching our bikes.  We go to another office inside a compound wall. Cars seized by the customs officers have been placed upon the roof….. presumably as a warning! Suddenly we are directed to look at the jail cells, that had otherwise gone unoticed… Illegal migrants rush forward from the shadows, they look lifeless and crushed. One asks me if I am a Nato Soldier… because of the Camo trousers I guess. Don’t get caught passing across the border between Iran and Pakistan… the consquences are grimy and hellish.

Our last border control office processes our Carnet documents. The guy handling the task is nervous and agitated. He works at a snail’s pace and something that otherwise should have taken minutes ends up taking 2 ½ hours. Welcome to Taftan, Pakistan. As we enter Pakistani Balochistan, the sun is already plummeting. We are picked up by our first escort. West Pakistan is even more barren than Iran. There are small villages of mud brick houses. Single storey, single room dwellings that blend in colour and hue with their surroundings.

It quickly becomes apparent that we will make little progress before nightfall.  As the last rays of the days sun fall to earth we are escorted into the village of Nokkundi. This village is simple beyond belief. Our destination is an old desert fort. The Pakistan security force in Balochistan are called the “Levies”.  Our Levies guards lock us inside an old clay building with towers to each corner. This is to be our resting place for the night. A large wooden pole, rammed into the earth, is used to secure the main gate, large boulders are rolled against other doors. 

Nokkundi Desert Fortress (Our resting place)

Jeroen’s bike is making a disturbing siren like noise. We are unable to work out what is wrong. He disconnects the battery and we discover the noise is coming from the battery. The battery is incredibly hot, swollen and near to exploding.

My cell, great view....

My bed ??!!??

Portrait of a Levies guard

I and Martin head into the bazaar of the village in the back of the Levies pickup. The bazaar is ancient. Donkey carts plough back and forth, barefoot, dusty children scatter about. We buy Tuc biscuits, crisps, coke and water. The village is largely unlit, in parts pitch black and intimidating.

We arrive back at the fort and eat whilst watch episodes of “The long way round” on an Ipad. The Levies are fascinated by scenes from Africa, particularly of tribal women dancing. We are told to quieten things down by 9.30. I spend the night in a jail cell, I have no sleeping bag, no mattress, just a stained quilt that the cells previous occupant has used…

An entertaining night, good camaraderie, travel close to edge.

Nokkundi mileometer 22449 (less than 90 miles covered today)