Day 165 – 170 Thurs to Tues 6 March 2007 Lahore, Pakistan - Gone in 60 Seconds

Well if there ever were any doubt about our sanity, today’s happenings have provided incontrovertible proof. I’ve just watched three Pakistani gentlemen who between them have only 3 words of English (actually make that two as ‘baksheesh’ isn’t an English word) drive off from the Lahore Holiday Inn in our BMW full of all our clothes and souvenirs, after handing me a piece of paper written almost entirely in Arabic. I’m told this is a receipt but which for all I know could be last week’s laundry list or the ingredients for a killer biryani. However it’s quite colourful and has a picture of a car transporter on it (and a BMW) and they muttered something about Karachi but whether they were setting off to drive there (its only 1250km) or whether they knew someone’s cousin there who’d give them a good price for a used X5 who can say? My confidence in them wasn’t increased when they had to stop the BMW in the middle of the road and run back to push start the pick-up they had all arrived.

I feel a little lost, and not a little stupid, with the departure of our home and source of protection from the madness of the subcontinent for so many months. Have we really been traipsing around its chaotic roads, towns and villages, mountains and deserts for over 4 months, coping with its traffic of rickshaws and donkeys, elephants and camels, overladen trucks and suicidal buses, not to mention its floods, landslides and snow bound passes? I don’t think we ever planned to stay for that long but looking on the bright side at least we won’t have to come back in a hurry.

I’m now downing a Pakistani beer, which is not bad for a teetotal country, my first in a month if you ignore the excesses of New York and BA’s complimentary business class upgrade (we even forgave them their stupid luggage policy). It’s been an exhausting 24hrs which started with checking out the road conditions to Quetta and Baluchistan after Jane said she was planning to return, but after a visit from the Dr changed to a mad round of shipping companies and insurers, transporters and airlines. Fortunately, unlike Pakistan’s eastern neighbour for whom bureaucracy and obfuscation has been elevated to an art form, reaching its apotheosis in total organisational atrophy you can actually get things done in Pakistan probably quicker and more easily than in the west. In contrast to India they will do things here without being paid first and without having applications in triplicate approved by a chain of command most of which is on leave. Today for example we’ve obtained a sim card and working local phone number, got real time road conditions reports from different parts of the country, investigated, booked and then cancelled a high speed bus to Rawalpindi, booked, paid for and actually got a seat on a flight tomorrow to Sydney, arranged marine insurance, arranged shipping to Turkey, sorted out the documentation and dispatched the car and have even found time to eat the last of the Hunza apricots.

So this is the last of the blogs for a few weeks, we will pick up the story again in Istanbul in early April – when we do an in depth investigative piece on car rebirthing in Pakistan - anyone got a car they can lend us?

Distance today - probably several hundred kms as we left it with a full tank, there's lots of relatives to visit and donuts to do on Multan Road