Lost for words...

Day 56, Esfhan, Extended...

Met an Iraqi staying out our hostel, talked about his home situation and the war.

He was very happy that the US had come to Iraqi and got rid of Saddam Hussien and very excited about the elections in Iraqi. Of coarse he was now keen for the US army to leave and he said things were getting better in Iraq.

Day 57, Yazd

The environment is very desert like now and although not the rolling sand dunes one images, it is dusty sand plains with little vegetation and the occasional tumble weed for company.

Rode out to Chakchak an important fire worship and temple Pilgrim site.

Day 58, Yazd

After leaving my friends in Shiraz, I felt a little lonely in Yazd. I have found this can happen when you make friends with some locals it feels great lots of questions and a few jokes and then you have to move on, and to some extent your not ready to just make new friends straight away and you miss the ones you had.

Despite all that the architecture of Yazd is amazing, the buildings are mostly of mud composition and many have tall wind towers that catch the slightest breeze and carry it into the building. The walls are often organic shapes as they are hand crafted and this makes for fascinating alleys and narrow streets with a incredible array of curves and arches and bulges.


Day 59, Shiraz,

A good ride to Shiraz, went through a town with a 4000 year old cypress tree - well I was impressed. Had late lunch picnic with some electrical engineers whom I had just met and on leaving one of them gave we an engraved knife from his home city I had only met him 15 minutes previously.

Day 60, Shiraz,

Had a big wander around town, went to the grave of Harfez famous Iranian poet,felt compelled to buy a book, not sure the poetry translates that well. Went inside a famous Muslim shrine with incredible mirror work on the interior, shouldn't really have been in there as no Muslims are not allowed, but no one questioned me maybe it is the beard!

Later that evening I may have received my divine retribution as I was swindled out of 20 dollars, but a local shark.

Day 61, Perspolis,

Amazing site and the tomb of Darius the great was incredible too. Really a wonder of the ancient world. Must have been truly fantastic in its day, if it hadn't have been for Alexander the great maybe more of it would have remained. Some Iranians are still a little bitter about this..

Stayed the night in the Mosque in the site complex. Got a good shot of the site in moonlight...

Day 62, Sirijan,

Stayed the night outside a Fire station on the street in my tent. The firemen were hilarious.

Day 63, Kerman,

Took some really beautiful mountain roads to arrive at Kerman. Really feel that although southern Iran is largely desert the mountains and landscape are incredible. Desolate, wind swept places but really fantastic to see and to travel through.

In the evening met some young guys who had just finished uni, we hatched a plan to go to the desert the next day, to a place called Kalute (Kalut).

Day 64 Kerman,

An early start, we had two cars, one went to get food for a picnic and we headed across a mountain range towards Kalute, stopped by the police en route but when they saw my lost face they waved us on. Later we stopped and one of the guys opened the boot and proudly pulled out a bottle of Scotch. One of the others turned to me and said this is why we were nervous when they stopped us, i was oblivious to all this.

Later we had a phone call from car 2, obviously no one had warned them of the police and they also had decided to bring a bottle of spirit and they too had been stopped. Unfortunately they found it and in Iran this is when you get worried. Car 2 weren't sure how serious it was weather a bribe would get them out of it or not so we carried on hoping they would join us soon.

Kalut was beautiful, this was something like you would image a desert to be. Large rolling dunes, deep sand and very hot, in fact the second hottest place on the planet after death valley in the states. Unfortunately it was all a little over shadowed by our friends misfortune in the second car.

We stayed a while I decided it would be a good place to have your ashes scattered should the need a rise and then we left. On the way back phone calls came in that everything wasn't alright and that one of the guys Mohammad, the guy I had met first was being kept in over night and would see a judge the next day... all for a small bottle of whisky.

Day 65 Bam,

Next day Mohammad saw the judge paid a fine and was released. Don't think it was fun and probably hurt his pocket more but some day he will have a good stor to tell I guess.

Met some completely insane guy in Mahane, travelling you are susceptible to meeting the strangest people.

I carried on to Bam, the road steadily became worse. As I cam towards Bam I saw a mixture of new breeze block style housing and piles of rubble. This was of coarse the site of a very bad earthquake some 5 years previously.

Stayed at a guesthouse that was in the process of being rebuilt, it had been completely flattened in the disaster and of the 13 guests at the time there were two fatalities. This has obviously deeply effected the owner, one of them had been British and riding an Enfield back to England from India. The bike mangled from the devastation now sat in a corner of the car park out the front, like a very sad memorial to the man.

Day 66 Bam,

The next day one of the the guest house owners friends took we around town and to the site of the famous citadel. This very old mud castle and city had been one of the most special sites in the whole of Iran and from photos I had seen it looked fantastic. Unfortunately the earthquake had destroyed about 80% of it. Once a bustling tourist resort now it looked like an archaeological site. People sifted through the dust, tractors removed wreckage. Rebuilding hand begun, but we joked that it would be our grand children who would one day be able to see the site in its former glory.

My guide had also been a victim of the earth quake, loosing his sister, his uncle and aunt and cousins. There had been 40,000 deaths from the quake, Bam was now only a population of 80,000.

I had never been to a site of a natural disaster as this before and whilst being very depressing, the people around me had persevered and were determined to rebuild better and be stronger.

Day 67 Iran, Pakistan Border

Along ride to the border, and I got there an hour after customs had closed. So I couldn't go through.

I put this down to the police escort that I had received. While most of these had been fairly efficient the last couple were farcical. One escort car pulled up by the side of the road to wait for the next escort car, this is how the system worked. We waited and waited, eventually a saloon pulls up and out hoped a soldier. It seems he had hitched a lift to meet us, he was my escort. He limped over to the bike, he obviously had an injury to his leg, he was unarmed and frankly looked as though he might fall over with the next gust of wind. He looked at the bike and preceded to explain that he would ride on the bike with me. Now if you have seen the bike loaded with my kit at this point you would probably have burst out laughing, I quickly made it clear this was not an option. So after a while the soldier flagged down another car and this fruit seller in a pick up became my escort with the limping unarmed soldier.

I had the same situation a little further on an unarmed guard without transport was supposed to be my escort. This time however no one would even stop for him. So I got off the bike and made out like there was a problem with it and the next car stopped and I had my escort. So i made it to the border intact if a little late.

I ended up camping a 100 meters from he gate in the car park, unescorted.

Day 68 Dalbandin

I was though the border no problem and here i was in Pakistan!

The road was straight from the border to Quetta 600km away. I would not make it by nightfall so I had to break the journey.

The road was very quiet and in places I could see on the horizon to my left Afghanistan. There was an occasdional police check point were I had to sign in.

Day 69 Quetta

Someone described it as a frontier town and that is exactly what I though you could describe it as. OK I haven't been to any before, but the mixture of faces, types of clothes, hats etc. This part of Pakistan is heavily defined by various tribes, Pashtuns, Afghans, Balochs, Sindhi. Its a big difference to Iran but quite exciting.
Actually that evening as I entered the hotel restaurant a very large boom came from outside some distance off, at first everyone including me looked a little nervous then some people were joking because it was rather like a movie, and that I was the culprit.

Day 70 Quetta

Next day I bought the local English paper and was unsurprised to read of a bomb going off in Quetta near the railway station. Someone had fired a rocket propelled grenade at a car, I decided to go down and have a look. There wasn't much to see except for a hole in a metal railing, a bent lamppost and broken glass on the ground.

On my way back I saw several bits of graffiti that were in support of the Taliban, all of a sudden the war on terror seemed to be quite close.

Strangely I wasn't frightened by this or the hype of fear that exists around Pakistan currently. Later I would be though.

I changed some money and later realised I had been fleeced by the money changer, a scam where they count out the correct amount hand it to you, you count it, then they grab it off you again and drop some of it into there lap. So having already been taken for a ride once this trip I headed back to the changing office. When I got there the changer put this hand out all sweet to shake mine and I just started shouting at him, he very quickly changed the expression on his face and puts his hand into his pocket and pulled out the missing currency. Quietly pleased and a little frightened I hastily took what I was owed and went and had a good cup of tea.

Day 71, Jacobabad

So this is were the fun began. I was told by the tourist office to head south east about 300km and then to head back up north east another 300km to get to Multan. When there is a direct road between Quetta and Multan but this is too dangerous apparently. No real reason was given.

I left Quetta taking the safer route, there is an area just north east of Quetta called Zhob and this has recently became a bit of a Taliban stronghold and unfortunately kidnappings and assassinations have become an all too common reality in Pakistan life.

Not long after leaving Quetta, I went through my first police check point and another. At this second he mentioned an escort, which his colleague dismissed.

Later I stopped for lunch, and as I finished a police pick-up pulled up, as i got ready to leave, as policeman came over and asked where I was going. I told him and he explained he was my escort. So of we headed together.

It was the usual thing, of stopping every now and then changing escort vehicles etc.

Eventually we came into Jacobabad. They took me to a hotel and I had hoped they would then leave me there but no.

Two armed police with AK47s stayed with me. They sat on the balcony next to my room keeping watch, they sat in the restaurant and had dinner with me, if I went up to my room, one of them would come too. We went to try and find an Internet and sure enough they came with me. Later they even came and sat in the room with me and watched Bollywood films loudly, until I said I was going to bed.

This must be the side to fame that sucks! For your own protection it felt more like house arrest. No one would come and talk to me as most people in Pakistan are not too keen on the police as most of them are pretty corrupt. Perhaps they were hoping I would pay them to go away!

Day 72, Bahawalpur

The next day I left Jacobabad, I had a police escort to the city limits and then I was free! It was misty in the fields and people were already at work, loading donkey drawn carts, with various crops, the countryside had a timeless feel, this was probably the way things had been done for hundreds of years.

I stopped to take a photo and my friends in blue showed up yet again.

I had been asking local people what the deal with the police escort was and no one could explain it, we were well clear of the North Western Frontier Province, where things really are a bit hairy and we were now well away from Afghanistan. Th Poilce just said it was dangerous, I started to get the oppression they just did because they enjoyed the ride. What could I do. Well I tried to do several things. Firstly I tried to out run them, but unfortunately due to my little bikes lack of power I never got to far. I though I had lost them and then there they would be again. I argued with myself that They couldn't arrest me for trying to escape, because I hadn;t done anything. Later they put me behind the escort so I couldn't out run them.

They would let me stop but as soon as someone realised I was with the police they would back off at a rate of knots. It just felt like I had lost that independent travel that was the beauty of having your own wheels.

By the end of the day I was totally fed up we were now in Punjab, generally regarded as the safest province of Pakistan and here they were still cramping my style.
I stopped and started shouting at them to leave me alone and that the whole thing was ridiculous. While they were still a little startled, I jumped on my bike and sped away. You know what I lost them! Yipee, i made it to a hotel undetected and relaxed. Later I went to reception to ask something and as I entered what you might call the lobby, there on my right was a smiling policeman. Great!

Day 73 Multan

Next morning he was still there, I had already resigned myself to play it by there rules. I obviously wasn't going to escape. They asked me what my plan was and I explained that I wanted to go and see some local sights, unfortunately when the chief security man turned up apparently this wasn't in his programme and I wasn't allowed to go. It wasn't dangerous, it just wasn't convenient for them. So i was escorted on my way to Multan.

When we got to Multan they took me to my requested hotel, getting lost beforehand. I entered and went to reception as I asked if there was a room the police filed in. Surprise, surprise there was no room!

This happened again at the next hotel, except this time, before the owner had seen the police there was room, when they came in all of a sudden there wasn't. At this point I flipped out and suddenly there was room again and finally 10 minutes later the police left. i was alone, finally.

I went up to the city fort and met some Pakistani's, it was great to finally be able to chat to people.

That is what was really frustrating about the experience with the police, it was more to do with the way the way they had dominated my thoughts over the last few days.

Day 74 Multan

Just hung out and tried to get accustomed to Pakistan... WOW what a difference to Iran. It is likely really stepping back in time... The wealth gap here is huge.

I don't really think you can appreciate what it is like to walk down the street here until you have done it for real. Words can not describe it, but I will try...

Take a road, lay it, no markings on it. Now line either side of it with sand and dirt, no pavement. Then add rows of very run down buildings, the type that might be a squat or abandoned property in England. Put an open sewer either side. Add piles of rubbish, plastic, straw, paper, cigarette buts. Then add traffic consisting of rickshaws emitting choking smoke, lots of small motorbikes, very loud consistent honking minibuses and throw in donkey and carts, horse and carts and oxen and carts and the occasional goat on the side of the road and roadkill, usually cats or dogs. Finally add the people lots of them, carrying things, collecting things, dropping things, sometimes peeing into the sewer. Layer the whole picture with a haze of smog and you almost have the picture. Its noisy, smelly but very colourful and it has quite an impact!

Tomorrow to Lahore, so we will see what that's all about...