Southern Pakistan

I finished my last post just before the Taftan border where i was about to enter Pakistan. In the mean time i have been traveling right through southern pakistan and ended up in amritsar. What an emotional rollercoaster it has been the past couple of weeks. So lets get started.

From Iranshahr i drove towards the Taftan border using the back roads leading me past the Taftan mountain that got me loads of beautiful sights yet again. There was a lot of wind and a bit of a sandstorm was going on when i got to the border. If i thought the nordooz border at the start of Iran was hectic and chaotic this shit was next level. There were road works going on in the border posts and i couldn't find where to go so i just joined the line where the trucks were. After a couple hours i got to passport control and immigration using my "i am the stupid foreigner look" to get people to point me in the right direction or in any direction it turned out. And sometimes officials contradicting each other on what to do. It took the full afternoon before i had exited Iran and entered Pakistan. Here i would come to my new reality for the next week. a reality were i had to surrender a big part of my freedom and listen to guards and soldiers. Not one of my strongest points. Back in Finland i met a Pakistani guy named Zain. He put me in touch with his friend Naqeeb in quetta who put me in touch with his brother working as a customs inspection officer on the Taftan border. When he asked the guards to let him take me to his home for dinner he got a big no. This was the first setback of many in terms of not being free to do as i liked. Anyways as night was falling i had to stay in the border post on the Pakistani side. To accommodate my car a forklift was brought in to get rid of other cars in the compound. The cars had no wheels anymore and the forklift couldn't drive them out of the gate with the cars on the forks sideways. So i hooked my winch to the back of the cars and the forklift pushing the front we got them out one by one. I wonder whose cars they are/were and why they were there. Either way it was good enough to convince me to never leave my car in any border.

The next morning i started my drive towards Quetta after the first escort filled his crappy car with illegally smuggled Iranian patrol. It didn't take to long to get used to driving on the left side of the road after i nearly had a collision at the very start. And i soon found out a few things about Pakistani traffic. 

-First of all the smugglers must have a really strong workers union as they managed to get rid of their night shift and mostly just operate during day time.
-Trucks are overloaded and very slow. A fair share of them are decorated to the point that the driver is practically driving blind.
Buses come in passenger and cargo versions. They are less decorated and most of them drive with Allah on the windshield and a brick on their gas pedal. I reckon buses are by far the fastest form of transportation in Pakistan as they will do 120 kmh anywhere, have the loudest horn and it is common knowledge that bus drivers don't go out of their way to shove anything in their way forcefully aside.
-Trucks are not the only thing that can be overloaded. Tractors, donkeys camels motorbikes tuktuks. anything that is capable of covering distance can and will be loaded to their breaking point.
-As for rules. Driving on the left side of the road shouldn't really be interpreted as a rule. But more as a friendly advice from the government. The same goes for overtaking on the right side. Or not using the emergency lane on the highway.
-Speaking of the highway. In rush hour the lane width is solely determined by the width of whoever or better said whatever is using the highway.
-What is a rule is that who ever manages to have the nose of their vehicle (or cattle) in front has got the opportunity to cut the other one off and thus gained himself the right of way and the one who comes to a complete stop is free to any abuse. 
-Other than that a good driver in Pakistan has the thumb on the horn the finger on the big lights and the phone in the other hand.

When i started to get low on diesel i managed to get diesel. It was a single pump in the middle of nowhere and I suspected i was getting Iranian diesel for Pakistani prices. I also didn't want to be without Pakistani cash so conveniently he also agreed to rip me off changing money. But i couldn't care less as i at least had some Pakistani money on me to buy stuff in case i needed. At one of the check posts i decided to get rid of my pile of empty water bottles. So i gave them to one of the guards who took the bottles and just dropped them on the ground. I was in awe as i was expecting him to throw it in a garbage bin or something. To my relieve another guard came and took the bottles. Luckily there was someone there who cared about littering. Or well so i thought as he threw the bottles over the fence and told to not drop any garbage inside the check post. I never thought i'd be so shocked for littering. I guess it's just the mentality here. I might as well gotten rid of my bin as using my windows as a bin would have about the same effect and it would at least save buying the garbage bags. Anyways after countless check posts and escort changes i finally made it to Dalbadin where they got me to a hotel where they forced me to pay for parking and for the restaurant bill of my guard. On the upside i was able to buy my first proper beer since i left Armenia at the start of november.

The next day started off with a bit of the same. A lot of desert, crazy driving and countles check posts and escort changes. When i got close to quetta they asked me where i was staying. I told them i had a friend in quetta. They said i couldn't visit him without getting my NOC first. So i had to stay in the police station for the night but they promised me that i would get my NOC the next day and was free to visit my friend. 

By the time i got my NOC the next day it was afternoon. So i remembered them of their promise and asked them if i could go my own way. Then their reply was that they had to escort me out of Baluchistan. So again i was stuck in the police station. I messaged Naqeeb, he was actually not in quetta himself but he asked me what i needed and i told him that i could do with my freedom and with an internet connection one way or the other. He got in touch with another friend of him called kamal who came with a 4G usb stick and a set of fresh beers. It was like a god send but i still felt trapped like an animal. Oh well atleast i would be able to go my own way once i would be out of Baluchistan. So the next day we got going towards Sukkur. Again crazy driving loads of check posts and escort changes. But at the fuel station my car wouldn't start anymore. I suspected my starter motor was fried. So we used the police vehicle to pull start me and i explained to them that i needed a place to work on my car. They told me that there was a garage in the next city. Before the next city i changed escorts and they told me it be the city after that. And this went on and on until i got sick of it. Their only worry was to drop to gora (forigner) off to the next escort and that would be their problem solved. jacobabad was the first city passed the Baluchistan border so i just sucked it up and thought that i would fix it there. To my surprise the sindh police showed up at the baloch border saying they needed to escort me to sukkur.  And that there be no garage in jacobabad. I had enough i just got the first garage in jacobabad on google maps and started driving there. Then the escort came to me and told me he knew another garage in the city so i agreed and it. When we got to the garage i asked where he was from and he told me he was from jacobabad. I had dificulty controlling my anger but i had a fried starter motor to deal with and the sun was going down. So i got the starter motor from the car. Then the garage owner said he knew just the guy to fix it. At first the escort didnt let me join the guy who was bringing my startermotor to the repair shop. But after showing my car was locked and a few pleas they agreed me to take me to this guy. He had opened my starter motor and came to the conclusion that it was burned beyond repair. he suggested to get a replacement in Sukkur. How convenient. I took the starter motor from him and started getting the rotor back in to some functional form. In the mean time i was asking if he had anything scrap laying around that might have brushes. One of his workers took the rotor from me and continued what i was doing to it. And he was speaking some urdu to the escort to which he directed me back in to the police car. It turned out we got to some guy specialized in brushes. I got the brush housing and springs from my starter motor and he got some new brushes who were to big but quickly managed to grind them down to size. Soldered them to the conductors in the housing and we went back to the starter motor repair guy. In the mean time his worker did a fantastic job to my surprise. An hour of fiddeling later and everything was back together. A quick bench test showed that it was working. By the time i mounted my starter motor in my van again it was dark but at least i could't start my van on my own power again. I was quite tiered after this but the escorts still made me drive another 2 hours until i got to the police station in Sukkur. I started cooking my food. but i couldn't finish it as i ran out of gas. One police man told me he would be able to fill it with LPG instead of propane but he soon found out the connections were different so i had to beg them to escort me to a restaurant. Here i asked them when i would finally be free of escort. They replied that i would be escorted all the way to the Indi border. This made me depressed quite a bit as i only had seen police stations so far and was completely done with their escorts and lies. My friend zain assured me that the escort was bullshit and that punjab and sindh province were completely safe. This made me question my decision to drive down to Karachi. I thought i might as well get to India as fast as possible and get my freedom back. 

The next morning i woke up and decided i was going to stick to my plan and drive south to Karachi. But this time i wasn't taking shit from anyone anymore. The day started off like previous days. More crazy driving and escort changes. Escorts that were trying to kill me by overtaking just before on comers and by the time they got to the left i was still on the right staring down the grill of that on comer. By the time i got close to the city of Larkano i told the escort that i was going to stop in larkano for getting Pakistani cash, getting my gas tank filled with anything flammable, getting my groceries. And just to take the piss i said i was going to get a spare starter motor and get helper springs mounted which i expected not to find as i hadn't seen any Mercedeses in Pakistan so far. And sure not in a small time city like Larkano. So they took me to the bank first as that was the only thing they really understood. First the bank chief told me i couldn't change dollars here but that changed instantly when i showed him fresh dollar notes. To my surprise i got a really good rate two. Then he went on to translate my todo list and write it down so that the escort could understand my plans. That was the start of a whole day adventure in Larkano. First up was my gas tank. After being directed in circles between guys who were filling LPG bottles we found that none of their connections were fitting my propane tank. What a surprise as the fittings are different just to prevent idiots to fill their propane tanks with LPG. After a while i finally got them to bring me to a hardware shop. Here i managed to buy a tank valve for LPG bottles and a Pressure reducer for LPG. Then we went on to find a black smith to get the tools to change my valve out. After a while we managed to find one that could do the job. Changed the valve. went back to the dodgy LPG bottle fillers and got my bottle filled with 4KG of LPG. Then we went for groceries. Got my meat and vegetables off the street side stands and got to the bakery for most of the other stuff. Then it was on to the carparts shop where how surprisingly they didnt have anything near the shape or size of my starter motor. I already had forgotten about the springs but when they stopped me in a street with a load of car mechanics they reminded me. The mechanic suggested to put a rubber hose around the steel of my spring.  I told him that it wasn't just for ground clearance i needed more spring travel to stop the spring from bottoming out all the time. And i showed them a picture of helper springs. Then the guy went to a big pile of car scrap. Got to similar looking springs out. We took my spring from the car twisted the two together and it actually looked quite alright. We cut the spring to the same length as my original spring and welded the top and bottom together. After doing the other one too i did a test drive and i wasn't bottoming out the springs anymore. With my todo list complete it was time to continue. By the end of the afternoon we reached Dadu and i was done for the day. So i got to the police station and camped there for the night.

The next morning i couldn't shake the feeling that i was still trapped. I even had a relative good day yesterday but i just wanted to get rid of the escort. I send naqeeb a message who put me in touch was nasseeb who lives in Karachi. I got nasseeb to send me the exact location of where i was going to meet him. When the escort arrived i said goodbye to the police men in Dadu got my van filled with diesel at the first fuel pump and continued my way to Manchar lake. I had seen pictures on the internet of a floating village on this lake and was quite interested. Just before Manchar lake i had another escort change. They told me to drive on as the next escort would be waiting just up ahead. To my surprise there was no escort waiting so i just continued to drive towards Manchar lake. I was slightly euphoric. Would i have been ditched by the escort or would they have made a mistake. Would i really be free now. I was quite nervous so i reminded myself that this is what i wanted anyways. When i got to the lake i couldn't find this floating village. I was out of internet coverage and i didn't download the photo from the internet. I couldn't make clear to the locals that i wanted to see the floating village. They just kept inviting me for thee. And before i knew the escort caught up with me again. I guess there aren't to many foreign idiots driving a big German camper van around in this part of the country. So my euphoria was out of the window. I didn't get to see the floating village and i had to follow the escort once more. Just out of protest i made them stop at some stupid castle on the way that i didn't care less about. Feeling down once more i continued following my escorts. There was just to much traffic on the road to leg it and it didn't look like they were going to leave me alone any time soon. When we got to hydrabad we passed a toll gate. The escort got me through on the side without paying as usual. They stopped and told me to slowly drive ahead as the next escort would be waiting on the road side. Before me lay a big 4 lane motorway with hardly any traffic. I decided this opportunity was to good to fuck up. So i got to the right lane and just floored it as fast as it could go. After a little while my 110 horses had propelled my 2.7 metric tonne arse to a 170kmh and i was flying down the motor way with the red and blue lights popping up in my rear view mirror accompanied by the sirens of what should have been my next escort. My adrenaline was shooting through my veins and to ease the nerves i little bit i decided to block the sirene noise by blasting the gorillaz through my stereo with feel good inc. After a little while i spotted traffic police and decided to calm down a bit. I found myself a bus that was doing a 130kmh and tailed it as close as i possibly dared to hide myself and my dutch licence plates from the cops by the roadside. I messaged nasseeb again to confirm he'd be waiting at the location. When i got to the toll gate i was anxious to pass because i knew if i would take to long the escort would close the gap and catch up with me once more. To make matters worse i saw the cars before me giving a paper ticket to the toll gate worker. I didn't have one because the cops took me passed on the side of the first toll gate. When it was my turn i apologized and told the worker my ticket had blown out of the window. I give him 500 rupies before he could ask me anything. which was twice the amount of toll. He asked me if i came from hydrabad. I said yes. He gave me back my change and opened the gate to which i floored it again. I checked my rear view mirror and no escort to be found anywhere. I done it but i wasn't in the clear yet. When i turned off the motor way into the city of Karachi i felt safer with every turn i took as i knew it would get harder and harder for them to track me down the deeper i got in to the city, I finally reached the restaurant of nasseebs friends called haseeb and bilal. They were so hospitable. They lived in the wealthy part of Karachi and hosted me in their home. Without them to flee to i would never have been able to shake the escorts. They gave me a nightly tour of Karachi as my adrenaline levels were slowly coming back to normal. What a wild day that was but i finally had my most prized possession back. My freedom!

The next day they agreed to smuggle me back into Baluchistan in their own car to visit Hingol national park. I was wearing my pakistani clothes and we got passed the checkpoints without getting stopped. We spend some time on the beach. I went for a swim and we climbed up to the base of princes of hope. A statue carved by nature over thousands of years.

After coming back later from Hingol we slept in till 12 am the next morning and went to explore lyari town. Just 5 years earlier this very place was the scene of a violent war between the Pakistani rangers and the Baloch brothers. The many bullet holes in some of the buildings around town still stand as a silent testimony. Now off duty police men were guiding me around Lyari town on motorbikes thanks to Haseeb's many contacts. We had a nice lunch and they even gave me the opportunity to fire a gun on the rooftops. Although the violence has mostly stopped after the Police operations, in Lyari town anything still goes.

The following day we went hunting for a spare starter motor in case my makeshift brushes would fail. And get some filters for the upcoming 10.000 km service of my van. Bilal joined me for the day. First we went to a Mercedes garage near their restaurant who would give us a ring later with the prices ones he had looked them up at his supplier and for the starter motor he directed us to the car parts market which is usually my favorite place of any city and Karachi was no different. First off was trying to find a place to park near the market which in our case want that big of a problem because of bilal's contacts we were welcomed to use the police car park. When hunting for a starter motor we visited many little vendors of old used stuff. No one had the motor we were looking for but one guy promised us he could find it and would test it in his shop and sell it to me. We accepted his offer and went outside again. There a strange combination of noises attracted my atention. A car alarm with a backing up sound coming from the right. When i looked over it was a forklift in police colors with a car on its pallet forks. When Bilal saw my jaw was on the floor he explained me that that was the police forklift picking up wrongfully parked cars by shoving them on its forks and hauling them off to the police station like 2 dollar toy cars. After a while i asked Bilal why we were waiting outside and not going in there to find filters. He told me we had to wait on a police men. It left me a bit puzzled but what the fuck this is Karachi so lets just wait and see. After a while a policemen in uniform showed up and they explained me that the uniform would have a significant economic advantage when buying car parts. When we got to a filter vendor i showed him the type numbers of what i needed and a guy was send off to find them while we were having a thee. After a good while the guy came back and a bit of speaking Urdu back and forth he got me the prices to which i agreed. And off he went again to return a bit later with all the filters. Before we left they wanted me to know that also thanks to the police guy we got everything at about half price. I felt a bit sorry for the shop owner but all i could do was thank everyone. The starter motor guy gave Bilal a call saying he found the right starter motor but when we got to have a look it turned out te be a slightly smaller model and he gave us another place where they might have the right one. While strolling through that part of the market we bumped in to a guy who was very proud in working on his completely busted mini that wasn't much more than an empty carcass saying it was Mr. beans car. anyways a lot of thee's later we finally found the correct motor but with a busted relay. I got the rotor and brush assembly out and told them i only needed this. They ended up giving it to me for a good 20 euro's By the time i got my starter motor back in the car it was dark and time for dinner. Then Dr. feroz  another friend of Bilal and Haseeb offered me to stay in his room in the doctor's hostel of Karachi hospital. It sounded quite funny so i accepted his offer and just see where i'd end up. They gave me a tour of the hospital and finally called it a night.

We went to gaddani ship breaking yard the next day which is the third largest in the world. It was just passed the border of Balochistan so the Haseeb and feroz smuggled me in once more. When we got there i was expecting to not be let in to the yard but the opposite turned out te be true. We were welcomed in like we were some kind of high ranking company men. End they just let us free on the yard to explore as we liked. Haseeb didn't like the idea of just going on to one of the oil tankers ourselves and when he talked to a random worker he immediately agreed to guide us around the oil tanker. There was absolutly not a single sign of any safety standards to be found. When we got on to her main deck through one of her tanks we had to watch our step not to fall 20 meters down through one of the many holes in the other tanks. He showed us the accommodations, the bridge and even the engine and steering gear rooms. The worker explained us that they were getting about 300 rupees a day for their labor witch translates to just shy of 2 euro's When we got back off the ship he invited us for a thee and food even though they barley had enough to feed themselves. And when i tried to offer him 500 rupees he refused to accept the money at first. It was inspiring to see such a generous form of hospitality and i really enjoyed that day.

The day after i spend doubting what to do as the potential job for februari had slipped i could either just continue north as planned or extend my visa and stay longer. By the time i had made my mind up to just continue, half the day had passed so i just hung around a bit, got my van ready and had a nice last pizza in Karachi.

Next morning i left for Moro as a friend of Bilal and Haseeb had some other friends there who would host me. Unlike Iran i wan't at ease enough to just camp out anywhere. On the way i checked out the necropolis in Makli and i thought about quickly checking out Keenjhar lake but ended up just driving by it as it wasn't anything special. Other than that the road was again filled with a lot a bunch of overloaded trucs and a car filled to the point it was going to topple over. By nightfall i had made it to moro where i was greated with a lovely Pakistani dinner and a nice campfire.

My hosts in moro showed me their farm in the morning and they arranged for a hunt after but by the time the farm tour was done it was almost mid day and i still had a 5 hour drive ahead of me to Rahim yar khan where Zain's friend Waqas was waiting for me. So i sadly had to leave the hunting for another time and continue my way. The drive towards Rahim yar khan was quite boring and by the time i reached it was well dark. To my surprise waqas was the ceo of a big flower mill and seed factory so there was plenty of space for me to camp on the compound. After Waqas took me for a nice dinner i was spend and ready to call it a day.

Waqas was so friendly to give me a tour of the whole seed factory and flower mill. After the tour we used the weighing bridge to just see how much my car was weighing. it was 2.755 kg with full tanks so it gained quite a few kilo's along the way. Then his brother took me to his rice factory and cotton factory. After that we visited the palace of sheikh zayed of abu dhabi. It is a massive compound and has got its own private sheikh zayed hunting ground to kill endangered birds as he likes and its own private sheikh zayed airport. When we wanted to drive through the desert off the main road we were stopped by security because sheikh zayed was going to camp somewhere in the desert outside of his palace that night. By the time i got back to my own car it was getting dark and i still had a bit to drive before i got to bahawalpur. When i arrived zain's brother junaid was waiting for me. He took me to a snooker club where we did a round of snooker and i ended the day camping outside of his friends house in bahawalpur.

The next day i found my van stuck in the sand. After hooking my winch to the electricity pole i got myself freed again and Junaid took me to the bazaar in bahawalpur. Then we went to lal suhanra national park where we also visited a black buck breeding ground. By the afternoon we got to Derawar where we visited a mosque and ended the day at a guesthouse were we had a nice bbq. 

The morning after we visited the royal graveyard and the huge Derawar fort. They are in the process of rebuilding it and some parts really stood the test of time. I also went around with my laser range finder to look for possible jumps. there was only one side i found that was 28 meters. One meter higher than my lowest jump but the landing didn't seem forgiving enough to risk such a jump so i sadly had to bail on that.

The last 2 days in pakistan i spend in Lahore. Via Zain i met Nasir who showed me around Lahore a bit and offered me to camp at the university campus. There i spend my time cleaning and sorting out my car a bit in preparation for storage. Then i drove to the Wagha attari border. I took my time as i wanted to see the sunset lowering of the flags ceremony. It is worth looking it up on google or youtube. I tried to take some pictures but you should be there to experience it. By the end of the day i made it to mrs bahndari's guesthouse in Amritsar

The next day i went out to find engine oil and a solution to my dying batteries. I went to a couple of battery vendors and one of them was claiming that they might be able to repair my batteries so i told them to go ahead and see what happens. Not very surprisingly they came back to me saying that both were completely dead. It is not that easy to find AGM batteries in India so i think ill just get 2 truck starter batteries in there and just see how long they last. But that will be something when i get back to my car. In the mean time i had managed to replace my engine oil and filters.

This marks the end of my journey for the foreseeable future. I will have to come back to take the car in and out of India somewhere during the summer to reset the 6 months in the country for the car. Perhaps ill take the excuse to do northern Pakistan for a couple of weeks. And then somewhere this autumn i will come back to travel further eastwards. For now i am flying back to Tehran on my way home as my first job wont start till the end of march and then i'll be working over the summer time. I hope you guys enjoyed reading about my adventures so far and have a good summer time you all!