Quetta

For all those concerned, we left Lahore before the attacks and are now in Quetta. The plan is to head to the border on the overnight bus tomorrow.

Lahore, Part Deux

Simon writes:

In response to a pointed email from a fella known to me (and selected others) as Monty about our blog thinning out somewhat, here follows a long-winded account of our experiences of the past few days. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, I give you the best tourist destination in the world: Lahore, Pakistan. Fact.

Although a depressingly large part of our popular "culture" endeavours to suggest that everybody should aspire to become famous (I'm thinking of vacuous travesties like Big Brother, Pop Idol etc), very few people are able to feel like a genuine celebrity, still less to feel truly important and justifiably valued by complete strangers. As a foreigner in Pakistan, things are different. The hospitality and kindness of the Pakistani people is truly humbling.

The other night we were taken to a music festival courtesy of the hostel we're staying at. The place was already packed out when we arrived - hundreds of people sitting cross-legged on mats in front of a huge platform occupied by VIPs garlanded with flowers. We were ushered to the front to hastily vacated sofas, given free mineral water, soft-drinks and food and treated to the most amazing evening of Pakistani culture.

There were fiery Imams giving sermons on how to be a good Muslim and then breaking into song, an extraordinary little child that sang Sufi tunes and worked the crowd like somebody ten times his age and the opportunity for us to crowd surf (we politely declined) to the sounds of a singer/rapper accompanied by a human beat box. The whole atmosphere was sweetened by rosewater sprayed over our heads at regular intervals. Later one of Pakistan's most celebrated Sufi bands showed up to wild applause, jostling crowds and TV cameras. Eat your heart our Simon Cowell.

The whole evening was hosted by this splendid individual:

With tears in his eyes he made a welcoming speech (later translated) for us about how, no matter where we came from and no matter what religion we were, we are all brothers and sisters, we all bleed red and we are all part of one humanity.

Apart from being genuinely touching, this speech made us feel slightly less tense about the random cross-eyed bloke with a machine gun who was guarding one of the VIPs very near to us and who seemed to see no issue with jostling and pushing the crowds with one arm while holding his loaded weapon in the other (well, this is Pakistan after all!). I do have a photo of him but damn it if this sodding machine won't upload it!

Almost every night we've been in Lahore there's been a cultural treat for us to enjoy (I'm aware that this phrase sounds proper sucky but I couldn't think of anything else). There have been concerts on the roof terrace in our hostel and a wild Sufi drumming night with sweat-drenched dancers working themselves into a trance. I have video evidence.

All the while, we've always felt welcome and never felt threatened. A wander round the old city was accompanied by phrases like "Hi foreigners, hi!", "We love your people!" and "You are our guests here." This last one came from a steward at the cricket ground who let us in for free to see the first day of the test match between Pakistan and Sri Lanka yesterday. There we met "Uncle Cricket", Pakistan's most famous cricket fan who showed us his international photo album and (of course) gave us some of his food. I also had the opportunity to explain the rules of the game to an agreeable American guy from Idaho called Chad. Again, I have pictures but no way of uploading them (the ones I have managed to upload were done yesterday).

In short, people: go to Lahore! Do it!

There is but one caveat to all the legendariness (and no, I don't care that this is not a real word) that is Pakistan: the possibility of the surprisingly sudden onset of a virulent and downright explosive stomach complaint that turns one's body from a blushing grape of joy into a shriveled raisin of despair in just a few short hours. Alas, such an eventuality has come to pass. I'm convalescing...

Next up it's Quetta, Balochistan and Iran (we have the visa and the safety assurances).

More pictures:

Lahore

Simon writes:

We journeyed forth from the village of my former pedagogical employment with gladness in our hearts at the warm and friendly people we had met (and re-met) there. We then spent some time in the company of a bus conductor with an uncanny resemblance to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Actually, although he did blow his whistle unnecessarily fiercely, this comparison does him somewhat of a disservice: he was very nice to us about the storage of our oversize bags. Well. Done. Mate.

An Indian cooking course and a visit to the Dalai Lama's gaff were the main events of our brief stay in the backpacker-encrusted hangout of McLeodganj in Western Himachal Pradesh. His Holiness wasn't about unfortunately.

A couple more pointlessly noisy bus rides later and we arrived in Amritsar, the holy city of the Sikhs. These people have got this rather cool temple with a roof made out of pure gold in the middle of a lake.

The closing of the border between India and Pakistan is a spectator sport. Groups of frilly soldiers prance about like peacocks snorting, shouting and eyeballing each other while pumped-up patriots shout slogans and wave flags on either side of the gates. It's all rather bizarre, but very entertaining nonetheless.

We're now in Lahore awaiting tomorrow night's apparently legendary Sufi cultural feast that takes place every Thursday. I've got frikkin awesome pictures of the above but no way of uploading them at present. Curses!

Stepping back in time

Noelle writes:

We've just finished spending several wonderful days back in the town where Simon taught English ten years ago. We wandered around Alampur, Sujanpur and Jangal visiting with people Simon had met when he was teaching, all of whom were very excited to see him again.

It was such a refreshing break from the main tourist towns where people are constantly asking you to join their tour, buy their goods or just give them money. Instead, everyone seemed really excited to see foreigners and we were asked to join people's tables for meals to talk and into their homes for chai and a chat. We even got in a few games of cricket with the locals. I bowled Simon for a golden duck!

We couldn't stay too long though as we ran out of toilet paper which is unavailable in the area (bottled water is also quite scarce).

Delhi/Agra/Delhi

Simon writes:

Bombaby was cool. We were so busy sampling the food, the drink and the tailoring we didn't have much time to take photos.

Onwards: we're now based in Delhi and we did a long but worthwhile trip to Agra yesterday.

PHOTOS

This is me failing to come to terms with the eventual demise of my favourite t-shirt (11 years I've had this R.E.M.-themed bad boy. I had to face the fact that it had finally become too old and tatty, even for somebody as old and tatty as me):

This is Noelle looking angelic in one of her new Indian-style outfits:

This is a picture of a local boob with a quite ridiculous dress sense (he was actually combing his mullet when we first spotted him!):


This is a picture of an elephant walking along a busy Delhi overpass (nothing out of the ordinary apparently):

And finally, these are some pictures from Agra:





You'll notice that the last of these is of our web-footed friends. They were actually refused entry to the Taj Mahal complex. Ugly scenes ensued. We found them later drinking in a local rooftop bar plotting the downfall of the Indian government. Deep sigh.

Anyway, we've now got night bus tickets (we never seem to learn) to Sujanpur Tihra, which should be not far from a wee village containing a local school in which I had a brief spell as a teacher almost exactly ten years ago.

As far as we can tell there are no hotels in the area, I have nothing for anybody to remember me by (not even my R.E.M t-shirt) and I'm growing a beard that's making me look like a cross between the yeti and a crack addict. Fingers crossed somebody will recognise me and take us in...

Should be quite interesting to visit the place after so long. It probably hasn't changed as much as I have. I'm preparing to become quite emotional.

Mumbai

Simon writes:

I always said there was more to travelling in India than the acquisition of stomach complaints. It seems I was right. I love being right, it's so invigorating! To whit, we've so far seen ritual dipping and burning in Varanasi (pictures as promised at the end of this post), visited two tailors in Mumbai so that we'll be appropriately clad in Pakistan and Iran and been entertained and guided by an uber friendly Mumbaiker - a friend of a friend from London.

We've also turned down numerous offers to appear in Bollywood movies - our agents just couldn't agree terms. Actually, that's a lie. We just decided that, although it could be interesting, our packed schedule will not give us time to hang around in North Mumbai for hours on end cheering inanely and repeatedly on request.

Our packed programme before heading off to Delhi on Friday will include a visit to the parents of our London-based Mumbai saviour (Eklavya, if you're reading this, you're a star!), a big night out Mumbai stylie and a trip to Elephanta island (caves, temples, peacefulness etc).

PS: Beard update - I look like a tramp.

We made it to India!

Noelle writes:

We made it here by train and are now in Varanasi. The train ride to Varanasi was interesting to say the least. We had many people wanting to sit next to us and hear about where we're from and how they can get a working visa for England. One guy even wanted Simon to give him advice on how he should expand his computer business. Simon had a hard time trying to convince him that he doesn't know about the computer business. When I asked the same guy about his family and how many children he had he responded with "I have two children and one girl". Gives an interesting insight into how important women are here. He also wanted to discuss porn with Simon and find out if he had any good movies or photos of women.

Here in Varanasi we are enjoying the roof top restaurants and strolling by the Ganges. Our guesthouse is right near where they perform the rituals of dipping dead bodies in Ganges and then cremating them on the banks.

This morning we also had a good standoff with the monkeys outside our room. They kept coming up to the glass and baring their teeth and opening their mouths really wide against the window. So I attempted to do the same but trying to look scarier. Not such a good idea as the monkey then jumped onto the window with all fours. So glad that there is a barrier between us and them.

We're off to Bombay tomorrow. So excited!!

Photos to follow when we're in a better internet cafe...