Subject: 1996 "It Will Be So Awful, It Will Be Wonderful" Tour -- Continued --
PART V: PAKISTAN
Well if you read the papers, you probably think of guns and drugs, communal violence, and recurrent martial law when someone mentions Pakistan. All true but there is much more. Because Pakistan is a fundamentalist Muslim country, my research has been more extensive so I can coerce the Unit into going there. In fact, Pakistan represents a microcosm of what we can expect in the third world countries on this itinerary: reasonably civilized capital city, rough outlying areas of lawlessness, remote tribal cultures where little has changed for centuries, and, best of all, stunning mountain scenery. Four great mountain ranges converge in northern Pakistan: the Hundu Kush, Pamir, Karakorem, and Great Himalaya. Plus, in the 1980s, a magnificent highway was built through these mountains to China, opening up the ancient mountain kingdoms there to tourism. It is this spectacular, high altitude route into (or out of) western China that we seek.
Our first stop will be the capital, Islamabad, to hustle for visas we couldn t get in Africa. Of course, we shall have to adhere to local religious customs. For example, to a devout Muslim, clothes that reveal flesh or the shape of the body are roughly equivalent to walking around in your underwear in the West - ridiculous on men and scandalous on women. A couple trips to a tailor in the market should provide us with sufficiently sexless garments as well as disguise the Unit from the attentions of the Pakistani males who reputedly never miss an opportunity to let you know how sexually frustrated their religion has made them. My perfect solution for the Unit is to wear a fake mustache, pretending to be a man. But, as of this writing, she is resisting which means she may have to resort to the chaddor, a veil covering her face!
Areas of particular interest in Pakistan include the cities of Peshawar and Lahore.
- Peshawar, a wild and woolly frontier town at the eastern edge of the famous Khyber pass to Afghanistan. Although the public toting of guns is now discouraged, the Pakistani government has only a tenuous hold over the local Pashtun tribes and the Afghan mujahideen rebels. Local craftsmen in nearby villages specialize in the manufacture and sale of weapons, from .22 caliber pistols to anti-aircraft guns.
Peshawar is also home to vast refugee camps of Afghans which enhances its reputation for intrigue and clan violence. It is in those camps where the game of buzkashi, a sort of rugby on horseback, is played. The objective is to move the carcass of a calf weighing between 40 and 80 pounds from one spot to another. The difficulty is that there are 20 to 40 horsemen organized into competing teams trying to do the same thing at the same time. Both teams have the same goal which means that when the carcass gets close to it, the mayhem escalates as the men whip their horses into the frenzied pack. Play is non-stop until the players are exhausted or the calf disintegrates. Rules and boundaries have meaning only if there someone to enforce them.
Colorful markets and characters should also be the norm in Peshawar and quite entertaining. To quote the Lonely Planet Survival Guide for Pakistan, the market is raucous with the shouts of vendors and mule drivers, choked with tongas, rickshaws, motorcycles, bullock carts, and a fascinating parade of Pashtun, Afghan, and Chitrali men (and a few women, anonymous in their burqas). Its meandering streets branch out into dark passages full of tiny, overstuffed shops. Merchants sip kawa - frontier-style green tea, brought by runner from the fat samovar of a nearby tea shop - and invite passing foreigners in for a cup of tea.
You can often spot a Pashtun man by the bulge in his cheek. That s nashwar, or Pashtun snuff. From a little plastic bag closed with a rubber band or a handsome tin with mirrored top (which, in idle moments, he uses to examine his mustache) he scoops a bit of the greenish-brown sludge - in fact tobacco and spices beaten to a fine pulp.
With permanently stained fingers he rolls it into a ball which he pushes inside his lower lip, afterward wiping his hands under the seat, on the bed sheet, the wall or other handy surface. His face relaxes, his eyes brighten and he begins spitting with gusto - on the floor between his knees, on your backpack, out the window into the wind. Ten minutes later the active ingredients have all osmosed into his bloodstream and he gobs the remains away or shovels them out with a finger, never losing his train of thought. The green stains on the floor of your bottom-end hotel room are his calling cards.
Old hands flick it in and out before you notice the mess; they say it revs up the heart and clears the brain. Amateurs who fail to clamp it tightly in place, thus allowing the effluent to leak into the throat, may be consumed with nausea. I doubt nashwar stands will ever replace Starbucks Coffee. A more important question, however, is will the Unit will kiss me after a sampling?
- Lahore: supposedly the cultural, educational, and artistic capital of Pakistan, famous for its mosques, mausoleums, museums, gardens, and old forts. Lahore is equally famous for ripping off budget travelers. From the Dangers and Annoyances section of the Lonely Planet guide: Hotel staff are incredibly talented at distracting even the most switched-on visitors and separating them from their money belts. Some often used tricks include spiked tea, soft drinks or cigarettes; early morning requests for passport information; two or more staff in the room at the same time; trick doors or windows through which to enter your room when you are out. By pulling out your passport you reveal where you keep your money. By giving a firm departure date you tell them when they can strike at the last minute, when you have little time to do anything about it. They may steal just a little money so you don t notice, or substitute counterfeit bills.
A true example of the above: The staff is very friendly but magicians in stealing your money and travelers checks without your knowing it. The procedure is the same: the water doesn t work in your bathroom. They (the staff) rush in and out of your room making a lot of fuss. If they don t succeed in robbing you, they enter your room later and ask you to sign a paper, that nothing has been stolen during your stay in the guesthouse. You have to write your address, passport details, etc., and while doing so, one of the staff has removed your traveller s cheques from your money belt although you may be wearing it!
Lahore is also notorious for other dangers, including drug peddlers working as police informers, tricksters impersonating police officers, and police in league with criminals. Another true story: Due to the bad reputation of Lahore, I thought it might not be safe to carry all my money with me and I left a part of my cash in the rucksack in the hotel room, closed with my padlock. Anyway once I discovered the loss, I went to the police. I finally convinced them to start some investigation and they came to the hotel. The manager committed the crime and offered me a deal. He offered me a part of my money if I would forget the whole story. The police were pleased, they said it s the best for me, because a real investigation would take two years or more and I may get nothing. So first I lost 450 DM, then I got a part of it back.
Not to worry, moms, the Unit and I are pretty savvy travelers when it comes to this sort of thing and few can match me for paranoia. The secret to survival is to make sure both of us don t lose everything at the same time. If one person loses part of his or her funds and important documents, it is not devastating because the other person has their resources as well as photocopies of everything. It also helps if you develop contingency plans in advance, another one of Mr. Paranoia s specialties. Besides we never carry that much money anyway, preferring to resupply as we go. Since major portions of this trip require using cash instead of travelers checks or credit cards, we know where to get more of the precious dollars when the need arises. So, even if the local thieves outwit us, we will not be wiped out unless they take absolutely everything right down to our underwear. Not to worry - the only place where I have heard about this occurring is Zaire although it is not clear whether road bandits, corrupt soldiers, or insurgent rebels are responsible.
By now you may be wondering how Pakistan got on the itinerary. It is the wonderful vistas of peaks, valleys, and glaciers in the north that provide an undeniable temptation for a born flatlander. Famed explorer and climber Eric Shipton called this area the ultimate manifestation of mountain grandeur. Getting to and through this area using land transport will require a tricky blend of luck and patience to cope with the uncertainties, discomforts, and possible dangers. Successfully accomplishing such an endeavor always puts other challenges or frustrations at home or at work in a more tolerable perspective. Like the Unit and I always say, nothing can be as intimidating or frightening as our first real dip in the third world, landing in Cairo, a teeming city of eleven million, at 2 AM with no reservations, no idea of where to go, and a knowledge of Arabic limited to recognizing the numbers one through ten.
Trekking in northern Pakistan is difficult because, unlike Nepal, the mountainous regions are too demanding and desolate for unsupported hiking. This means you have to carry your accommodations, food, and fuel or hire porters to do so. Since we will not have any camping gear, excursions will be limited to exploring the Gilgit and Hunza river valleys, possibly doing day hikes to nearby glaciers. Hunza is famous for its long-lived residents and I am eager to spy on their lifestyle. It is alleged that people in this remote mountain paradise, the first of several reputed Shangri-La s we hope to visit on this trip, routinely live to 120 years of age on a diet of natural fruits and grains and mineral-rich glacial water. I ll carry American cigarettes for gifts.
To give you a little historical perspective on this remote area, let me quote Jeremy Schmidt from his book, Himalayan Passage. This was a place where the various rulers and chiefs carried titles such as mir, mehtar, wazir, sultan, and khan. They wore pointed slippers, turbans, ragged beards, and anything from bald heads to pigtails. Armed with curved sabers and bandoleers of ammunition for various museum-piece firearms, they lived in warrenlike palaces of mud and stone held together by a framework of timbers and often perched on forbidding heights. Their world was one of intrigue and political rivalry, nearly as convoluted as the surrounding geography. Depending on whose report you read - or at what point in history it was written - the mountain rulers could be genial, reliable, perhaps even honorable men, or the worst sort of cutthroat, back-stabbing brigands whose only common language was the use of weapons and who spoke with each other every chance they got. We will have to somehow check references if we hire any of these people s descendants as guides.
There is also another area known as Baltistan, sometimes referred to as Little Tibet, whose capital, Skardu, at 7300 feet in elevation, is now accessible by another unforgettable road blasted from the side of a gorge. The Skardu valley is characterized by dust storms and sand dunes with arid, brown mountains hiding a dense mass of glaciers, including the Baltoro Glacier at 62 kilometers in length, and an extraordinary congregation of high mountains, including K2 which at 8611 meters (28,741 feet) is the second highest peak on earth. When the wind does not whistle down the valley, the sunlight is intensely brilliant. It is my ambition to hike about this barren place where every side valley leads upward to views of enormous, twisted glaciers, snow-clad mountains, and passes far too rugged and high for anyone but mountaineers to cross.
Of course, the prime objective for venturing into this part of the world is to bus into China on the Karakorem highway, crossing the Khunjerab Pass at 4800 meters. This is equivalent to driving around on the summit of Mt. Rainier back in Washington state! The border crossing leads to Kashgar in the autonomous region of China known as Xinjiang. Kashgar was a key oasis where east met west on the Silk Road and many traditions remain unchanged since Marco Polo passed through in the 14th century. People watching in the bazaar with its Uigur, Tajik, Kirghiz, Uzbekh, and Han Chinese merchants should be a worthwhile pastime. Other fun things to do will include sampling the local cuisines of these various cultures along with their humorous imitations of western food and interrogating other travelers about what is worth doing or possible to do along the Russian/Chinese border with or without legal visas. Picking up tips like the following from the Lonely Planet guide for China is always a good practice.
After dark, Kashgar can still be a pretty rough town. Prices you bartered down while it was still light (i.e. if you are sitting at a stall eating kebabs) mysteriously go back up to Western levels as night falls. Should you complain, the number of Uigurs around you then multiplies rapidly! Always pay as soon as you get the goods.
Copyright (c) 1995 Jet City JimBo
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