Islamabad to the Iranian Border

Finally we left Islamabad for the last time and drove the now familiar M2, with it's now familiar speed cameras, to Lahore.

We couldn't find a reasonably priced hotel with good parking so returned to Regal Internet Oven, which was pleasantly cool this time.

As always it was good to chat to other tourists and luckily it was 'Sufi Thursday' which is a night-time trip to the weekly Sufi get-together. Sufism is an odd line of Islamic mysticism where they dance to drumming apparently to enter a trance-like state to be closer to God. Whirling dervishes are the same thing. Starting at midnight, the drumming was brilliant, the singing good, and the most crazy-dancing just bizarre. To get down sufi-style it appears you need to shake your head side to side as fast as possible (to the observer the face becomes blurry), while prancing around in a red dress and spinning round with arms outstretched as fast as possible. It was incredible no one got a massive slap round the face.

The next morning it was raining when we left Lahore to drive the 340km south to hot and humid Multan, where we found an OK hotel with good parking.

The following day we covered a further 460km to the city of Sukkar, the most southerly point we would visit in Pakistan.

A guy on a motorbike spotted us driving round looking for a place to stay and kindly guided us to the Royal Inn guesthouse, where they got an armed guard in to look after us for the night. Next morning the first of 12 police escorts was there ready to get us going to Quetta, the capital city of Balochistan, 410km away.

The escorts ranged from brand new hilux's with soldiers in the back, to just some guy with a taped-up old AK47 on our back seat.

Unfortunately the 1800m Bolan pass leading to Quetta was blocked by a broken down truck, with other vehicles backed up for kilometers KKH style. The usual crowd was soon surrounding the landcruiser.

Our escort at the time was an unhinged policeman on a motorbike, determined to get us through he got us stuck right in the middle of it.

After an hour and a half of waiting we were able to backtrack and take a 2km 4WD detour along the stony dry river bed in the gorge below the road.

Heading up-river and therefore up-hill in deep loose stones was no problem for the Landcruiser, but round a corner were ten or so local 2WD cars all stuck, and all running towards us with ropes in hand. After pulling three cars out we had had enough and got back on the road, continuing past brick-kiln towers smoking in the hazy distance to Quetta.

We spent two nights in the dusty frontier town at the popular Bloom Star Hotel, popular because of it's good parking and pleasant cool, green courtyard garden.

Unfortunately as it is Ramadan we didn't get to eat the spiced roast lamb that Quetta is famous for. We did however stock up on snacks for the days of the non-stop driving ahead.

Quetta is supposedly a base for the Taliban leadership, and because of Ramadan there was high security and the was army out everywhere. It is sad to see so many refugees from the fighting in Afghanistan camped out around the city, in the heat and the dust with very seemingly very little to live on.

The route from Quetta to the Iranian border runs through lawless Balochistan along the Afghan border and is quite famous for being dodgy. When we first arrived at the Islamabad campsite a French overlander had just been kidnapped and the French embassy staff were there trying to persuade the other French overlanders camped there not to take this route. Unfortunately there isn't much choice if you need to get back to Europe.

The first day was an unremarkable long hot drive to the desert to the desert town Dalbandin we had so many different escorts we lost count, and another armed guard at the hotel for the night.

We didn't leave until 8am the next day as we planned to spend the night in the border town Taftan and cross into Iran early the next day to maximise our measly 7 day transit visa. Same as yesterday we had a string of escorts.

The landscape became more desert-like the closer we got to Taftan.

Unfortunately when we got there at 1pm we were told the hotels e all closed over Ramadan due to security issues and we had to cross the border. It really was not the kind of town you would camp out in so we headed to the run-down and randomly scattered buildings that are supposed to be the Pakistani border post.

Once we found the right buildings, the Pakistani side was easy and quick, carnet and passports stamped no problems, rupees changed into rials. The Iranian side was less friendly and took about 2 hours. Customs actually wanted to look through everything in the car, an unpacking nightmare. Luckily a sachet of Alka-Seltzer seemed to make him happy and he soon gave up, waving his hand dismissively, and stamped the carnet. Meanwhile an irritating, offensive, little soldier had taken our passports to prevent us going until an escort turned up. First impressions of Iran - unfortunately not so good...