50 in the shade (if you can find any)

Yes, that's right, I didn't know temperatures went that high, but they do, in Pakistan in the summer, and I rode right through the middle of it. Since the last update from Dharamsala, I've holidayed in two of the world's most notorious hotspots (Peshawar and Quetta), endured hours of police escorts, and I am now recovering in Bam from a spot of heat exhaustion (read - extreme diahorrea). I'm still travelling with T-bone, my intrepid German companion.

I would normally have steered clear of Peshawar, but I had received a strong recommendation for a tour guide there, and when I contacted the Prince he assured me that all was well. The ride from Islamabad was fairly straightforward until I got a puncture about 20km outside Peshawar. There was a big chard of metal in the tyre, so it went down pretty quick and gave me a big speed wobble at about 100kph. Fortunately there was a tyre shop about 50 metres away, so after taking the back wheel off, I paid the grand sum of 50 rupees and spared myself the trouble of changing the tube.

Pimp my bus - Peshawar style

On arriving in Peshawar, we checked in at the Rose Hotel and called the Prince, who came out to meet us with his colleague Hussain. While I was waiting for the Prince, I went across the road to a tyre shop to see if I could find a replacement inner tube (for a Transalp? Not easy...), where they told me that the Taliban had bombed an internet cafe in Peshawar earlier in the day with many casualties - I decided the situation was sufficiently hazardous for me to stay off Facebook for a few days. The Prince and Hussain arrived and they were an absolute blast, so we decided to stay in Peshawar for a couple more days so that they could give us the full tour. On the way up to their office, there was a loud bang which sounded suspiciously like a bomb blast, but the Prince assured me it was a wedding - he later fessed up that it was a bomb, but he didn't want to worry us on day one...

Local dress to help us blend in
(although the T-bone looks more like a Parisian painter???)

Fun and games with the Prince

The next couple of days were a laugh - the Prince (who really is a Prince) was a constant source of entertainment and Hussain was a constant source of political debate. We enjoyed fantastic Pashtun cuisine (i.e., meat), we visited architectural wonders, mausoleums, schools, markets...

In a 350-year old house in Peshawar

Dining out Pashtun-style

We met with the local tribal leader, which was a bit like meeting the Wizard of Oz - he was about 35 years old and his inner sanctum was like a teenager's bedroom, with posters, toys, a big TV... and lots of guns. We took the obligatory 'western tourist grinning inanely with an AK47' photographs, which will not be appearing on this blog in case I ever attain high public office and you decide to use them against me.

Is it loaded? If you have to ask...

Making bricks = donkey work

I then had to visit Islamabad again to collect my visa from the Iranian Embassy (come back at 4pm the next day - NO EXCEPTIONS!). Rather than spend another night in the dump that is the tourist campsite, T-bone and I rode up to the hill resort of Murree. It provides welcome relief from the heat of the plains, but has a big problem with touts. After being hassled by the same half dozen or so, that apparently work for every hotel in the town, I had worked up quite a temper, so it was not a good time for the local policeman to pull me over and tell me that I did not have a registration plate on the front of my motorcycle, and my bike was overloaded. After the overloading I've seen over the past few months, the reaction he got was sufficient for him to wave me on quickly...

I then embarked on the long slog across Pakistan to the Iranian border. There are three routes across to Quetta: very unsafe, unsafe, and moderately unsafe. We had originally planned to take the latter, but we figured that we could take about 200km off the journey by riding across the mountains through Lorelei (the 'unsafe' route). Unfortunately the plan came unstuck fairly quickly - we arrived in Dera Ghasi Khan to be greeted first by the traffic police, then by the real police, and finally by some shady looking 'military intelligence' in plain clothes. Our conversation did not get off to a good start - they asked me for my passport, I asked for their ID, they didn't have any... it was made clear to us that we were not to stay in DG Khan, and I was escorted back 100km to Multan. In Multan, the first two hotels I tried were 'full' (read - I don't want this Taliban-magnet in my hotel)... I finally found an overpriced room, but by that point I was beyond caring. We later found out that there was a bombing in DG Khan a couple of months ago that killed 30 people which explains why the locals were a bit twitchy...

Next day, we elected to play it safe and take the longer route to Quetta via Sukkur. Other than being extremely hot, the ride to Sukkur was fairly uneventful. In Sukkur we receieved the same 'no room at the inn' treatment from the locals and ended up paying a bit more than we would have liked (3,600R) at the Inter-Pak Hotel.

Riding through the desert

On the final 400km ride up to Quetta, we had a police escort most of the way. Other than one old Toyota pick-up that couldn't manage more than 45kph, we cruised along at about 90kph so the escorts didn't really hold us up much. They were always very polite and considerate, and we had a chai break every time we switched escorts at the end of each district (far more pleasant than the Iranian escorts - more of that later). I'm not sure how effective they'd be if we saw any trouble, but fortunately it never came to that...

My guardian angels - I feel much safer now...

This was probably the hottest day of the entire trip - in Sibi, the locals told me that this is the hottest place in Asia, and a quick check online confirmed that the maximum temperature on the day that we passed through was 50 degrees (and it felt it!). It's not too bad when you're cruising on the bike, although I managed to drink about 10 litres of water in one day.

Quetta had some pretty stern security, and really felt like it was on the edge of a war zone. We were passed by a convoy of trucks carrying new toys for the US Marines in Afghanistan - I don't know exactly what was under the tarpaulins, but I'm pretty sure that Teledyne don't make washing machines... But all in all, another friendly Pashtun town, and we stayed at the excellent Bloom Star hotel.

From Quetta, there was a gruelling 650km ride to the border at Taftan. To make things even more interesting, we heard that a group of French tourists had attempted the same trip a couple of days earlier, and were ambushed by Al Qaeda - one of them was kidnapped and is still missing. So security was stepped up even further, although I think the police were more afraid than we were (after all, nobody was going to bother kidnapping them...). This manifested itself in Taftan, the final town before the border, where we were unceremoniously dumped at the Customs House by the final police escort at dusk. We spent our final night in Pakistan sleeping rough in an unguarded truck park, deep in unfriendly territory - not the best recipe for a good night's sleep... Next stop, Iran!

Final resting place in Pakistan...