Return to Islamabad

After leaving Skardu we drove for a couple of hours before stopping for breakfast - chai and channa (chickpea curry) at a truck-stop.

They were quite amused to see tourists there.

Pakistani trucks always look great, the drivers are rightly proud of them and spend a lot of time keeping them clean. Our dirty car always looks a disgrace in comparison.

Many trucks are dangerous works of art, the detail is amazing. Apparently they are all decorated at significant expense in a particular place in the car market in Rawalpindi. If we weren't selling the Landcruiser then we would definitely get something done, as long as it was tough-looking of course, no love-hearts or flowers.

The driving is not always the best though, later we passed a truck whose wheel had gone over the edge. Mind you, if this was India they'd be plunging to their deaths left, right and centre.

As you near the KKH there is a view of the Nanga Parbat massif where we had been trekking a few days before.

Unfortunately, back on the KKH the 205km journey from Chilas to Besham turned into a marathon 14 hour drive into the night. This section of the KKH is in really bad condition. Broken concrete, road-works and potholes drive you a bit crazy, but the biggest problem was the mandatory police escorts.

All in all six escorts, apparently for our own safety. Ironically the police and military are the targets of choice so it probably has the opposite effect.

1. Stopped at a check-post outside Chilas seven hours into the drive. We have no spare seat and they had no means of transport. They refused to allow us to continue until a suitable vehicle passed that they could commandeer. After an hour waiting in the heat a suitable car came by. Seemed to be the sergeants mate.
2. The police jumped out of the car at the next town. His mate drove ahead of us at a good locals pace, waiting for us at some points, appeared to be an unofficial escort until the next police post.
3. Flagged down by two nice policemen washing their motorbike. It backfired a lot and stopped running altogether along an isolated piece of road. They got it going again and slowly took us towards the next town.
4. The police here appear to use radios as the next ones were waiting for us. Cant remember anything interesting about this one.
5. We drove by ourselves for a while making a good pace until annoyingly we were stopped just before Pattan. A huge military convoy was preparing to move supplies south to Islamabad. Looking unusually organised, soldiers were posted everywhere along the roadsides and on top of the trucks. Disconcertingly they looked on a high state of alert, guns trained up into the hills and down into the village. After twenty minutes of waiting our escort got bored and we were told to follow three men in a Hilux and an armed guy sitting in the back.
6. By now it was dark and they let us go saying there was a car ahead waiting for us. Driving at night on the KKH has the added excitement that when blinded by oncoming trucks you really cannot see where the roadside ends and the long drop to the river begins. Especially good in the many places where sections of the road have fallen away due to subsidence. We were hoping we could sneak past the next escort in the dark but they saw us on the bridge in the next town. This one took us all the way to the front steps of the PTDC hotel in Besham, complete with flashing lights to properly announce our arrival at 22:30pm.

Although our escorts sometimes wore cool shades, they usually only had one old Kalashnikov between them. Bizarrely we were unable to ascertain exactly what the threat to us was...

The hotel wouldn't give us much of a discount so we decided to camp in the grounds which still cost us 500 rupees, the price of a room normally. The PTDC is popular with NGOs and we met an interesting ex-special-forces British guy working as a security advisor for the Red Cross. He knew lots of interesting stuff about the current security situation, it didn't make us feel any safer.

The next day as we drove south to Islamabad the altitude fell and the temperature rose. The warm air is pungent with the sweet smell of cannabis that lines the roadsides.

We took a fellow travelers' advice to return via the Murree hills. The old British Punjabi administration would retreat up here during the hot summer months. It is easy to see why - at 2200m it is cool and fresh and forested. Nowadays the Pakistani middle class head there for holidays and the roads are lined with brightly coloured plastic gimmicks for sale, like umbrellas.

Carpets and shawls are also widely available. Benazir Bhutto is a popular person to have on your carpet.

The small towns here are quite interesting, full of Pakistani tourists. The big, hungry-looking holiday-maker below is waiting impatiently for his Chappli Kebab. This Pakistani favourite is a large, deep-fried burger slapped in a naan, it is good.

Unfortunately crawling up hills in second gear and sitting in tourist traffic jams meant we didn't get back to Islamabad until dark. At least most Pakistanis have manners and drive with consideration for other road users on the winding forest roads.

Back in Islamabad we found the tourist campsite unbearably hot and humid, and nearly empty. Freddy Mercury was pleased to see us, as were the mosquitoes. Freddy is famous amongst overlanders, he is the man in charge of the campsite and is a little unbalanced.

The only traveller there was some Swiss guy with a black Troopie and, irritatingly, an Iranian visa. He left the next day at 04:00 and later that morning we were at the cursed Iranian embassy with a letter to ask for the consul's help in getting a transit visa. We waited for ages only to be told there is nothing they can do to help us, and that we should drive through Afghanistan. Extremely frustrating. Nevermind that a few weeks before an upset German couple whose dog had been run-over got a transit visa in three days. I'd get a pet dog and drive over it myself if it would get us a visa.

Punctuated by monsoon downpours we had three nights of abject misery, soaked in sweat in the tent. With yet another case of bad-stomachs we were getting up throughout the night in the mosquitoes to use the filthy campsite squatter. It is amazing, five months in India and we had maybe one significant case each. Pakistan has been a constant cycle of bad guts - ciprofloxacin is your friend here.

Eventually we had to get out of there before we broke. We found a guesthouse with air-conditioning (expensive) and stayed there for two nights, getting some sleep and ourselves back in a more positive frame of mind. The new plan is to head to the Iranian embassy in Lahore and see if they are any more helpful. Not much of a plan really, but something to do at least.