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Diary This is Jan's diary. If you want to receive this diary by mail, write your mail on the contact form.
‹ Previous (11/07/2008) MONTH Next (2008-09-09)› ‹ Previous (2009-09-19 - Pakistan) COUNTRY Next (2009-10-08 - Turkey)› Iran Kerman (see on map) 13/08/2008:
We did not plan on being so many days in Kerman, but different factors have made us be almost one week. Going towards Kerman we had an electrical problem with an injector of the car, which we were a whole day trying to solve. On the other hand, Kerman was the last point from which Alexandra could return towards Tehran, Turkey and Romania, before entering the "dangerous" Pakistan, done by which the exit was also deferred a little. But the main reason was Hamed, our host from Kerman who treated us with a splendid hospitality. So at ease we found, that David and Maria caught us up on the road two days ago and we met again after saying a definitive goodbye in Tehran. We met with Hammed on Saturday in the afternoon and after walking a little through the bazaar, he invited us to a tea in a local place, talking and offering us a good dinner, we decided the day after to help fix the electrical problem of the injector and to go afterwards to eat in the adjacent town called Mahan. And it was very well that he helped us with the car because we had to visit about 10 service points that kept directing us from one to the other before one of them detected the connection that failed and fixed it. We decided to visit Mahan later , and we decided to accept the invitation of eating at the house of Reza a friend of Hammed and also one of our contacts in Kerman. He was a man that worked for the government, he seemed a good Muslim, maybe strict and his wife had the hair covered even at home, but surprised us opening a bottle of wine that he himself had produced at home. And in the afternoon, we left at last towards Mahan, visiting first the gardens of Shazdeh (or of the prince), occupying an uneven ground with two pretty buildings connected by a rank of small ponds and cascades. Afterwards Nematollah Vali, a founder poet of an order of the dervishes, we visit briefly (because they wanted to charge an excessive price for being tourists) the tomb of Nur-eddin Muslim sufís that lived ascetically and indifferent to the material possessions. On the following day Monday, Hammed took us to his company that markets pistachios. As on the previous day, Hammed did not have too much work, then most of his workers are illegal afghan immigrants and had run away in a temporary way, for some days before he had received information from a policeman that informed him about being a raid in search of illegal Afghans. Ironically, on the way to the company, Hammed complained about every day being more corruption between the policemen and the judges. Hammed showed us in the company all the machinery that he had for the procession of the pistachios explaining to us that annually they exported an average of 3000 tons of pistachios to Europe. Afterwards he invited us to eat at the house of his parents, and it is not surprising taking into account the volume of his business, his home having two big floors covered with handmade carpets and a basement with a big pool. The mother of Hammed cooked a delicious rice of a sauce of meat and vegetables, and some equally exquisite prawns that I devoured with avidity. The afternoon we spent it in his house explaining us different histories as his visit to the Mecca with the intention of discovering God, but he did not discover it, because he did not find the explanation to so many useless deaths, due to the hunger in Africa, the wars of the world, or the natural disasters, as the earthquake in the town called Bam, where on 26th of December 2003 an earthquake left 30.000 deaths. He explained this while remembering the despairing task of digging up and burying thousands of dead men, while the cd player was reproducing a song of an Iranian singer that also died during the disaster. Later, we met with another friend of Hammed also called Reza who was lodging David and Maria, our friends.The surprise was nice, we embraced and immediately the anecdotes of the last days, start to be explained, among these the verbal admonition that they received when the police stopped the private car in which they travelled because David had the arm around the shoulder of Maria. The day after we met again with David and Maria to visit together the pretty covered bazaar of Kerman, some converted Turkish baths museum and the interesting mosque of Jameh. In the afternoon we caught a taxi up to the curious museum of the holy war, where there are exposed different documents, images and junk cars compiled during the raw war of 8 years between Iraq and Iran. On the outside, there is a big levelled area with numerous tanks and 4x4 with lance missiles and a good recreation of a battlefield, including bunkers, nests of machine guns, a lake (emulating the river Shatt to the-Arab, the union of the Eufrates and Tigris) and hundreds of metres of thorny thread. The night returned and we met with Hamed and his friend Reza, which took us again to the gardens of Mahan (David and Maria had not visited them yet) and afterwards to dine again (was the only time that after a lot of insistence they accepted unwillingly for us to invite them). And today at night, after a day of rest and work, we all have met again and have gone to dine in a park stretching on the lawn, one of the few actions (together with the possibility to camp in public parks) that are allowed in Iran and are forbidden in good part of Europe. While we dined, Reza has surprised me wondering whether i believed in the theory of evolution of Darwin (or that our ancestors were monkeys), a theory that contradicted the Islamic or religious beliefs. I declared that naturally i believed, and afterwards have dared to explain (while all listened to me very interested) my vision of the history, in which during the middle age, the church or the Christianity were against the science (for example burning the heretics that opined that the earth was a planet turning around the sun), while the Islam was open to the science totally, having the best libraries, mathematicians and scientists. However, at present, according to my opinion, the Islam is closed to the science (because this contradicts some of its beliefs) while the Christianity tries to adapt to the science, so that the scientific initiative has settled in the occidental world mainly. Finally, after declaring that tomorrow we will initiate the road towards Pakistan, we have said goodbye thanking them for the great hospitality. David and Maria had agreed to travel with us, at least up to the first city of Pakistan, so, they also said goodbye. A little sad by our decision, our hosts have expressed their healthy envy for our journey, Hammed that had commented on the difficulties to travel for the Iranians, and not so alone to obtain visas, but because the familiar relations that maintain are very strong and it is difficult to break the links. That seems the exact thing that it is happening to Alexandra, which even if she has decided to follow the journey towards the "savage", a bag full of doubts keeps arising. --- In Kerman I interviewed Hammed that sais that the main problem of the world are the conflicts among religions, for example the conflicts provoked by the Taliban’s, conflicts that possibly will grow in the future. The solution would come while knowing other cultures and that all the religions have something positive, which is what he tries personally. The main problem in Iran is the economy and the lost of the Iranian culture on the part of the youth. The solution for the economics would be to invert better the natural resources that the country has. he personally tries to improve the economics of the country, improving his company. Hamed is considered happy because he has work, hobbies, friends... he would be happier improving the work. The secret of the happiness is to understand that the life changes, and that we are not in the centre of the world. Pakistan Quetta (see on map) 16/08/2008:
Part of the history was being repeated, Alexandra stole the protagonist role to the new colleagues of journey, David and Maria, while we travelled together with the autocaravan towards the border of Pakistan. In the morning, Alexandra was still shown relatively soothed and with a slightly bad but controlled humour. We stopped to visit the big citadel of Rayen, built with bricks, mud and straw, which was not affected by the earthquake of the 2003, although it was on the road to Bam. Alexandra had headache and did not visit the castle, but she had sufficient humour to cook some delicious macaronis for the four of us. We ate in the park behind the walls of the old citadel under the shadow of the trees and next we followed the journey towards the border, without stopping neither in Bam nor in any other place for the danger of kidnappings that occasionally took place in the area, in the hands of Afghan bandits. We were expecting to arrive to the city of Zahedan before getting dark, but seeing that we did not arrive, Alexandra kept becoming nervous, and more when in a mountain pass we saw that a car stopped to collect ten Afghans that were hidden behind some rocks. Finally, with the already sun gone down, we arrived to a police control where we asked whether we could park on the side to sleep protected, but surprisingly they answered us that no and that we had to go to the small village more in front. But this dusty place was full of immigrants who did not inspire too much confidence and we returned to the police control to insist of sleeping there. At first they seemed to accept our request, but they told us afterwards that they will escort us to another town where we could sleep better. In this moment Alexandra started to lose the nerves, but seeing that we could not negotiate with the strict Iranian policemen, we followed the car of police which had to escort us. But once gone out from the village, the car of the police stopped in the middle of the darkness and of the mountains, making us stop also. Out the car came about four armed policemen and an officer that seemed to mistrust us in the same way that we mistrusted him, approached. He started to make questions and even to try to enter the autocaravan, but the hysterical shouts that Alex addressed him made him give up, finally returning to the car and driving about 50 kilometres further on where another police control was and where in theory we had to sleep. But without trusting the policemen there, we suggested reaching Zahedan and the officers found it well if we waited for a different car to arrive in order to escort us. And like this we made it, and after some other suspicious stops through the path and exchanges of the cars that escorted us, we reached Zahedan, where we parked in front of a police station. Tired of so much adventure, I brought the table of the autocaravan down and I turned the seat of the driver to create a wide sufficient bed for David and Maria, and we fall asleep automatically, except Alexandra. The day after we wake up early, to cross punctually the border with Pakistan, but when we were preparing to leave, Alexandra declared that she could not hold anymore the stress of crossing borders and that she left towards her home. In front of the stunned David and Maria, I declared to her that if she made the suitcases i would not let her return, on the contrary to Istanbul or Tabriz. And convinced, Alexandra started to prepare the suitcases, but as she finished them the doubts of always started to arise and to comment that she did not wanted nor could go. But I was already tired of these situations and threatened her that if she stayed i would throw to the rubbish her adored elephant, a threat severe enough so that she decided to go out of the car once parked in front of the bus station, to buy the thicket towards Kerman and to go up on the bus after giving eachother a brief embrace and kiss. Next I went towards the autocaravan where David and Maria still waited for me amazed. Without conversing a lot, we covered the 90 kilometres from Zahedan up to the border, where we passed the troublefree Iranian formalities and Pakistan with even less problems. In fact, the Pakistani officers were some of the nicest in the world, offering us tea with milk and even inviting us to eat, and we could not refuse after situating in front of us three dishes of delicious seasoned rice. While we ate, we talked with the officers about the best point where to spend the night, then according to the information that i had about the road up to Quetta, of about 660 km, it was not in such a good state and was dangerous going during the night, for the bandits and for the closeness to Afghanistan. Anyway, the policemen informed us about some small village about 150 kilometres away, called Nokkundi and which had a customs control where we could spend calmly the night. We got out from the border without remembering that from now we had to circulate for the left, but the first car that we crossed with made us adapt immediately. We kept driving about two hours through a big desert plain, and finally reached Nokkundi, where some officers of customs stopped us. They were already waiting for us, because immediately they offered to park in their enclosure and they offered tea and after walking through the village full of lorries painted of a thousand and one colours, they invited us to dine, a delicious meat dish highly seasoned and hot. Among the officers of the border there was one that talked quite good English and immediately he started to talk about theories that we had already listened to in Iran, explaining that Osama Bin Laden was an agent of the CIA and that the Taliban’s are financed by United States, reason for which the Pakistanis hated the Taliban’s. Even, thought that the attacks of the twin towers were work of the CIA (to allow the United States of attacking the Arab countries). he also opined that the attacks of the trains of Madrid were work of the CIA, confirming me it is very easy to de-inform when the information is far. Anyway, the three of us were in silence, and we did not comment on anything either when he stated that the feminism of west was invented by the governments to gain more taxes with the work of the woman, or that the Jews were the cause of all the problems of the world. On the other hand, there was another nicer policeman that commented that the Pakistanis believed in God, which had suited them with one of the best lands of the world, with mountains, beaches, desert, forests and all the possible fruits that you can imagine, a real gift of God. We started to sleep early, to wake up early and to be able to arrive before darkening to the city of Quetta the following day, today. But this morning i have woken up at four, without being able to sleep again. Perhaps i missed Alexandra, but on another hand, her absence allowed me to dream thrilled with other possibilities for the journey, as that of stretching my stay in India to a total of four months or of painting all the autocaravan as if it were a Pakistani lorry, which are true mobile works of art. The road towards Quetta was going parallel to an omnipresent train line, crossing an infinite plain with some mountains hidden behind the distant storms of sand. At first, the asphalt was perfect, but little by little this went denting different times to give rise to tracks of sand and stone that reminded me slightly of those of the north of Kenya until finally it disappeared. In any case, David was driving different hours in my place, allowing us to arrive at dusk at the beginning of the city of Quetta. We called to the host of David and Maria and he told us about the park where we could find him, although to arrive, we had to cross all the city during more than one hour using the horn at all times to make the way among bicycles, rickshaws (tricycles), cars, buses and lorries, all of them also doing with the sound of the horns and trying to advance me from all sides. 18/08/2008:
Ulas and his father received us wonderfully, but the night that we arrive, I was too tired and I went quite early to sleep. On the following day, yesterday in the morning, Ulas offered us a good breakfast while he commented that to have guests was a blessing of God, a signal, that God was happy. We kept enjoying his company while he explained that Quetta was the capital of Balochistan, the biggest region of Pakistan, but the less populated, with a great feeling of independence or of reintegration to Afghanistan. In fact, the family of Ulas lived in some frontier village with Afghanistan, in which all the world was happy - without aiming for it - because all the world has weapons and there is no crime. However, the presence of the Taliban’s in Afghanistan, which they hate, made them immigrate to Quetta, a city that is not fully safe, where every week one or two policemen are murdered by separatist groups. Anyway, Ulas advocated for a socialist armed revolution, with Che Guevara as inspirer, a social model that according to him is in complete harmony with the real Islam. In the afternoon, after a delicious meal with minced meat and rice, Ulas accompanied us with the car up to the animated bazaar of Quetta, with mixtures of cultures and raises between its vendors and buyers, but all of them very interested in exchanging some greeting with us or to photograph them. Anyway, the few women that there were on the street were evasive with us and the majority leaving to the view only the eyes, or not even that. At night I connected to Internet from the house of Ulas and I received different messages from Alexandra explaining that she had arrived well to Tehran, but that she felt bad a lot about having left and about all the errors that she had made, because she loved me a lot. She kept explaining that she had decided to return with me, even if she had to cross all Pakistan alone in bus. And to prove to me that she had started to change she sent me a photo of her elephant washed after a year and a half of accumulating dirt (she had never wanted to wash it because she thought that its essence would be spoiled or lost). On the other hand, she also explained that she had asked her family not to pressure her to go back home, because she wanted to be with me for the moment. After reading her messages I concluded that if she dared to cross Pakistan alone, she well deserved another opportunity, anyway I asked her that she kept watch a lot and that she tries to catch a flight if there was one. Today we have caught a rickshaw and returned to the bazaar of Quetta and visited a museum without interest. In the afternoon, Ulas has come to search for us, but when we went up a man has approached the car and presented himself as member of the agency of Intelligence of Pakistan. he has identified us to all and afterwards has spent half an hour questioning Ulas on why he was lodging us without bringing his guests to the police. Finally he has released Ulas, and well frightened and explaining that he would not lodge any longer to anybody else from now on, but at night he has called his sister that works for the Unicef and she has calmed him down explaining that if the man was somebody important of whom to worry he would not have been presented that way. At night I have talked with Alexandra, which had just organised to take the bus here in a couple of days (if she did not find flight to Karachi). We have talked that we would wait her in Multan, in another city more ahead, because Quetta was quite boring and like this we could visit other places of interest on the path. Ulas, which was attentive to the adventure that would have Alexandra to keep travelling with me, explained to us that most of the marriages in Pakistan are fixed among the families, although every time there are more marriages of love. Anyway, does this word, "love", seem too much strange in this area, because on few days they have already asked us twice "what is love"?. Formerly, the fathers of the girlfriend had to deliver money and gifts to the family of the boyfriend, so that this entered to the new family, but, some families of the girlfriends are at present those that start to ask for the money, signal that the times are also changing in Pakistan. In any case, the dowry is a great problem for the poor families, who have to become indebted enormously or even be sell a kidney (literally), or perhaps otherwise, to make the daughter have an accident to take out like this a burden from the family. Multan (see on map) 24/08/2008:
David and Maria decided to keep travelling with me. On one side, now that i was alone I needed the company, a good company, because with David and Maria i get along very well, maybe because after of so much time travelling was easier to adapt to new ways of doing things and new friendships. I also felt good, because Maria likes to cook and she cooks very well, and David different times drives while I work with the computer. On the other hand, to David and Maria also seemed to like this new way of travelling, stopping at any point to eat, not worrying where they would sleep, bu always looking for a safe place; and visiting places of relative interest that in another way they would not have visited. We left Quetta in the morning, crossing the Bolan pass, famous for the numerous battles that were produced and the armies that crossed it to enter the lands of Afghanistan, among these, the British army in the years 1839 and 1878. From the Bolan pass we started to go down through a troubled and stony valley, passing the night in a police control, due to the existence of a family of bandits that fight from the mountains to recover their estates lost in the hands of the government. The day after, we followed the stretch, with the intention of visiting the ruins of the city of Mehrgarh, populated for about 5 millennia up to its extinction about 2000 years BC. Anyway, the stony path that crossed the river was in such a bad state and we did not arrive. However, we arrived at night to the ruins of Moenjodaro, the most important of Pakistan, a former city of about 40.000 inhabitants that was occupied until the year 1500BC, when for unknown causes the population decayed abruptly. In any case, in spite of its intriguing history and the extension of its ruins, which keep the square of the streets and the base of the homes made of bricks, Moenjodaro did not impress us. Much more were impressing us the visual effects that Pakistan was supplying us with during our itinerary .The landscape had passed quickly from the desert to the humid fields of rice, where the people, always nice, swarmed everywhere, the men dressing shirt and wide trousers of light colours and the women very colourful, but always with the hair covered up and the youngest with a hood on the face covering them up, looking through a woven fence. Often we crossed pretty painted lorries, full of adhesive or sculpted with wood or metal, which made me increase day by day my desires of transforming the autocaravan in the hands of a Pakistani artists. On the roads there were few private cars, but that's not why they stopped surprising us, for example one of these was loading a cow. Much more present were the bicycles, that they loaded passengers up to four or two passengers but a broken bicycle; or the motorcycles, which loaded passengers up to five (all the family). From time to time, we also had to advance enormous camels dragging wagons, small donkeys pulling carts full of bricks or cows carrying their own food. It also surprised us the deteriorated buses painted with great skill but without crystals in the windows (poor Alexandra she must have had had to catch one of these), or the tractors equally tuned and with loudspeakers with the music pointing forward. In the surroundings of the road the show also followed one another, with big ponds of brown water where big buffalos were refreshed while the children swam around them; noisy markets of fruits, fried dishes and breaded meat full of flies; dogs eating a dead cow or crows eating a dead dog; ... Anyway, there were details that I could not grasp, as the smells, David and Maria were in charge of which transmitting to me efficiently: the smell of shit, of rubbish, of sewer, of dead water, of dead hens, of on-fried dishes, of spices... although the last smell got used to define as positive most of the times. The following visit after Moenjodaro was Sukkur, a city to the edge of the river Indus that has a mosque with a minaret of bricks of 26 meters of height from which an impressive sight was enjoyed. Exactly in the other side of the Indus was found the village of Rohri, where we visited a golden mosque that possesses a hair of the beard of the prophet Mahomet. More in the north we visited the modern mosque of Bong, with quite curious artistic details, and from here we entered the province of Punjab, which started to surprise us every time with more interesting monuments. First we visit the palace Sadiq Garh, built in the 19th century and belonging to the family Abbasi, a falling family of an uncle of Mahomet that dominated the middle east more than 5 centuries, and many more in Pakistan. Afterwards, we went towards the desert of Cholistan, the same desert that is extended in Rajastan in India, up to the magnificent fort of Derawar, which also belongs to the Abbasi family. The fort is surprising, with some walls of bricks of more than thirty meters of height, a square perimeter of 1,5 kilometres and 40 enormous bastions around it. Also one, built with white marble and imitating the same lines of the mosque of the red fort in Delhi. We arrived to the fort at night and when parking in front of the mosque, a group of boys came to greet us and told us that they were assisting a three day spiritual retirement. As it already keeps being habit in Pakistan, one of them asked me if i was Muslim and in an educated way I answered that, no although i was interested in Islam. Happy for my answer, he invited me to attend one of the prayers that the boy kept translating me: "All the things in the world have a creator, as a clock has a watchmaker behind, the world has Allah as creator". Afterwards, when explaining to him that I had read the Koran, he told all the other ones that I would be a good Muslim in a near future, without me daring to contradict him. The day after, we walked the surroundings of the fort Derawar and even the other side of a lake where there were some very pretty tombs fenced also belonging to the Abbasi family, but where we also had the entry vetoed (in the same way as to the fort). Anyway, seeing that on one hand we could jump the wall and climb it afterwards again, David and I sliped in to admire the impressive mausoleums covered with ceramics of blue tonality. Mid-morning, when the sun started to burn, we left the fort towards to the town of Uch Sharif, where in the afternoon we visited the tombs of different Islamic saints, that preached the Islam through the area, one of them, with the honour of having converted the invader Genghis Kan to Islam. Some of its incredible mausoleums were destroyed, preserving though pretty details with blue-decorated pottery, and others were completely standing, with tens of pilgrims parading among the tombs inside, giving alms and revering the central tomb, always covered with clothes and ornaments of hindu aesthetics, although all the symbols were Muslim. Little later, after doing different photos to the pilgrims that continuously asked us to be photographed, a couple of musicians arrived, touching a wind instrument and another of percussion. The pilgrims started to dance uninhibited around the musicians, and even I, taken by the joy of the moment, I gave my camera to Maria to add myself surrounded by shouts in the middle of the dancing crazy rhythm. Finally, we have today visited Bahawalpur, a city with numerous palaces, that also belonged formerly to the Abbasi family but that at present is in the hands of the army, which restricts the entry. So, the main attraction that we found in Bahawalpur was the zoo, that, despite being in conditions much worse than the zoos of Europe, was much better than some of the zoos that we had visited in Africa. And meanwhile, during these days that we were travelling through the south of Pakistan, Alexandra had just been decided of returning with me, risking a lot more than what not accepted some days before, and almost without exchanging any mails, sms or calls, reported about four days ago that she had already initiated her journey towards Pakistan, that yesterday in the morning would arrive in Zahedan and today in Quetta, where for luck Ullas could host her. And from here in two days, finally i will arrive to Multan where we will join her, expecting this experience to have changed her character a little and to accept more easily the natural vicissitudes of the journey. 27/08/2008:
Alexandra arrived yesterday in the morning, tired of so many days of journey. On the contrary to what should have meant, our first meeting was not in a complete way romantic, for I was not sure if i wanted her return and i didn’t trust that Alexandra had changed the character or the illusion to follow the journey, and naturally, my coldness provoked an immediate bad humour. The following hours, we had some discussion, even threaten ourselves of separating another time, but finally today, have granted solemnly in front of David and Maria to give each other a new opportunity and the rest of day i have cheered up thinking that maybe yes, the things would be different and better from now on. On the other hand, even if I and Alexandra were blocked, the joy that Alexandra provided the family that was housing us in Multan since two nights ago, surprised me. Aqsa, her brother, the small sister and the mother had come to look for us on Sunday in the night in front of a hotel of Multan. They seemed quite rich family and half repressed by the tradition and the appearances and almost without too much secrecy told us to follow them with the autocaravan to the house of their uncles, where they made us park and after went up in their towards their home, where it seemed that we could not enter with the autocaravan because it was in a militarised area. Their father received us in the house and conversing about the country we started to break the ice. First he explained us that he was lawyer, but as the majority of lawyers in Pakistan was in strike since more than one year ago since the general Musharraf had dismissed the judges of the high court, that wanted to dismiss him. Few days ago Musharraf had resigned on the pressures of the party of Benazir Buttho (PPP), but the strike continued because this party did not want to establish new judges; these could then investigate some dark plots of the PPP. Afterwards, the father asked us which were our studies and profession in Spain. I answered that i was engineer and i had a small enterprise, but when arriving the turn of David, he answered that he was carpenter. And in the face of all of them was shown surprise, Maria answered without being asked that she worked in a restaurant. Immediately they changed subject, for the answers did not square them with the profile of traveller, especially taking into account that these works were very little remunerated in Pakistan, but indirectly, David and Maria were saying to them that in Europe the work of one was not so important and that anyone can accomplish his or her dreams, as the one of carrying out a long journey, if one is ready to make sacrifices, like saving every cent during a year, to be able to travel about four years using up less than 300€/mes between both like david and maria do. Anyway, even if the family started to appear more open, they did not seem yet in a complete way comfortable with us, so we passed quite a lot of hours in our room to intervals enjoying the air-conditioning, then, as in all Pakistan, the cuts of light were recurrent and punctual: from 17 hr to 18 hr, 21 hr to 22 hr, 23 hr to 24 hr... And during these hours, as the rest of the family, we died of heat since their ostentatious home of Austrian style seemed to retain the heat more than any other. In any case, the following day (a day before Alexandra arrived), all the family and we got up in the minibús that they had and visited some monuments of interest of the city (among these, a fort and some mausoleums), while the father explained the greatness of Multan, where his family had lived from innumerable generations. he explained us that Multan was the oldest inhabited city in the world, together with Damascus, and assured us that all the blue-decorated pottery of the area (or of the world) had its origin in Multan and that the best mangos of the world were evidently of Multan. But Alexandra arrived and despite being tired, she revolutionised the family explaining that she liked a lot some Pakistani traditions and especially the dresses of women and that she would like to buy one. On the other hand, she also made all of us laugh when she told some anecdotes of her journey, exaggerated, as always. So, with the family more open, we went in the afternoon for another round through the city and to try to find some fabrics for the dress of Alexandra and another for Maria, which had also decided with the idea about a dress. But despite going over numerous shops, they did not find any cloth that enchanted them in excess. And today in the morning we have said goodbye to the family of Aqsa and an hour later, when we already threaded the road towards Lahore they have sent a message to us explaining that they missed for us. Although it had been complicated to break the initial ice, it has been a very good experience for all, and maybe more for them, who had managed to go out for three days of their routine. Anyway, for sure that from now they would start to host many more travellers through couchsurfing and these extraordinary experiences for them will be more frequent. At night we have stopped to a gas station to sleep. While we organised the autocaravan a little, Maria has started to converse with some girls and when returning she has explained that one of the girls has told her innocently that all the Christians had to die burned. Alexandra had also explained that in the train she had met a man who argued that the Christians wanted to kill all the Muslims, but that that would not happen because before that the Muslims will kill all the Christians. I have commented that one should not forget that some Pakistanis expressed themselves this way, for in the Koran it is written exactly, even if in other chapters is also writing that has to treat with respect the Christian and Jewish. On the other hand, according to the media and the same Pakistanis, Pakistan has many Taliban’s infiltrated, who are mostly hated, because apart from killing Christians in west, they also kill many Muslims who are not radical enough or which collaborated with the government. Lahore (see on map) 04/09/2008:
During the road we made towards Lahore, the autocaravan arrived to the record of 100.000 km gone around the world and at present for this milestone, I decided to adorn it as a Pakistani lorry. Good, in fact i already had thought to do it before complying this milestone, but these 100.000 km do not stop being another reason, no? I had luck that Alexandra had returned from her journey through Iran and Pakistan changed, so on the contrary to what i would have waited from her, she also appeared thrilled with the idea about painting the car. I was also very fortunate with David and Maria that committed themselves to help me if it was necessary, and especially of meeting the family of Amina, which was lodging David and Maria for about four nights. Right the day after meeting, her brother Zulfiqar, a lover and salesman of cars, accompanied me where they painted buses. We were negotiating a good while the prices to paint the autocaravan, but I in the end discarded the option for its cost in money and time (they had to paint all the autocaravan and then repaint it artistically). Then I thought in the other decorative option amply used by buses and Pakistani lorries: the adhesives; and we went to three or four points of the big city until in the end I decided to buy the some adhesives to make some proofs with the car. The day after, me and David (Alexandra and Maria went to the bazaar to buy some cloths for themselves) started to pull out the old adhesives and to plant the new Pakistani adhesives, starting to realise that we would lack many more adhesive and that we had a lot of work ahead. At night I went with rickshaw to the bazaar to buy the second series of adhesives and the day after, the four (me, Alexandra, David and Maria) discarded the visit of the city and we dedicated all the day to keep pulling old adhesives and to plant the new ones. The following day we gave eachother a rest and visited the city and buy still more adhesive, in order to continue the following day with an exhausting day planting adhesives, leaving almost totally decorated the autocaravan. From here we had two more days of rest, and today in the afternoon finally we have added the last adhesives. The result is a wonderful autocaravan, different to the Pakistani lorries (which have 100% of the body covered up of adhesives and paints), but excellent equally. It has been a work of about 100 hours (thanks to David, Maria and Alex!) and little more than 100 euros in adhesives, a cost not excessively high to transform an autocaravan from snob to hippy. Although my mind was very occupied organising and designing the transformation that was suffering the autocaravan, i could abstract myself sufficient to enjoy the time and days that we were visiting the city of Lahore, the second biggest city of Pakistan after Karachi, with 10 million inhabitants. The first night that we spent in Lahore we visited a show of excellence, of obligatory assistance in Lahore: the sufí night that is celebrated every Thursday in the mausoleum of Baba Shah Jamal. When we arrived around 12 in the night in the small site it was totally tight of men and it was about three hours since the three musicians knocked frantically the big drums with hypnotic rhythms. As we were foreigners and had two women among us, the crowd let us sit in the first lines, on the ground, in front of the musicians and in the middle of different smokers of marihuana and hashish. The delirious rhythms followed the following hours tireless, being mixed among these, the music of a saxophone and latest of a singer that repeated some incomprehensible verses. Without feeling the crossing of the time, after about two hours, a couple of men with sticks put aside the people that occupied the space in front of the percussionists, an area that immediately was invaded for different dancing that moved violently the heads from right to left while they entered some state of ecstasy. I also tried to follow the rhythm in the same way, leaving that the drops of sweat came off for the inertia of my crazy hair, but had to stop, because i felt that the blood was accumulated at the periphery of my brain and if i continued i would enter in a mental state that i could not control. Around three, the percussionists finished the performance, but the music did not finish, because under the mausoleum, other percussionists and more dancing followed with the rhythm, but we already turned over towards home. Apart from attending the sufí night, we visited for two days the pretty city, visiting different mosques and mausoleums, among these the magnificent mosque of Badshahi, in front of the big fort of Lahore. As we go out from the mosque, we are taken by the crowds of the old town, attending and being part at the creation of an impressive jam. In spite of the big population of the city and the small streets it does not seem that there is too much traffic in Lahore (the proportion of families that possess car is probably little) although the bad driving causes numerous jams as we witnessed one: A car wanted to pass through a street where only one vehicle fits(because of other badly parked cars), but could not pass because in front he had a queue of cars in the contrary direction and neither was able to pass because of the first. But the first, instead of going behind to leave space for the other ones, insisted to keep trying to pass until other cars arrived from behind making impossible that any of them could move away. The created jam took more than one hour to melt. But this type of jams also pass in the streets of double lanes (or triple), because when the traffic remains slightly retained, some cars start to advance the free rank, occupying the contrary lane. But in the other meaning it happens the same, so that suddenly two ranks of cars in contrary meaning face each other without possibility to go ahead or to move away. For me it is strange that these Islamic societies that are so altruistic (as for hospitality and charity) are so egoistical in the driving. If they had a little patience, letting the cars from the other direction pass, they should only wait 10 minutes, but they do not want for anybody to pass before them or in front and so they prefer creating a jam of one or two hours. It is a pity that the Koran does not dictate any norm of behaviour to the steering wheel, because then, all the world in the Islamic countries would live much better. In any case, in Lahore we had the opportunity of running into different people, with whom we exchanged reflections more interesting than those of the traffic. Amina introduced us one night with a group of friends, and during the road to the restaurant Muhammad explained us that in Pakistan, few terrorists occupy the covers of the journals leaving most of the Pakistanis, that do not share at all these ideas, in silence. When asking about the finances of the talibanes, Muhammad answered that the smuggling of the opium (contrary to the Koran), but also some interested country in destabilising Pakistan, and another time rose the name of US. Anyway, Muhammad also admitted to me that before, all the bad things that happened in Pakistan was the fault of India and now of America (United States). Once arrived to the restaurant, the friends of Amina started to talk and to make jokes about the marriages that are aranged, explaining that if he does not find a good match, he expects his parents to find a good girl, or even, could compare which of the two girls was better (his girlfriend or the proposal of his parents). The following night Nabeel was the one who invited us to dine, and we maintained other interesting conversations, and some common to the previous night, explaining with reference to the aranged marriages, that there are very few divorces, for the families choose the best beaus from psychological and physical profiles. With reference to the talibans, he did not appear too optimistic, opining that these could take the control of some regions of Pakistan, because the talibanes are infiltrating every time more in the society. The penultimate day in Lahore, we left the autocaravan almost completely decorated and went to the border of Wagah between Pakistan and India, where since 1948 (a year later of the partition between India and Pakistan) the pompous military ceremony of the descent of the flag and the closing of the border is celebrated daily. The Indian side was bursting with people chorusing cheers < India Hindustan zinabad, similar to the Pakistani side Pakistan zinabad, which was much emptier due to the Ramadan that had started about two days ago. Ramadan is celebrated in the ninth month of the Muslim calendar, during which the Koran was revealed to the angel Gabriel, who later transmitted it to the prophet Mahoma. During the thirty days that Ramadan lasts, all the Muslims refrain from eating, drinking, smoking, or practicing sex, from the dawn up to the setting of the sun, in order to show patience, sacrifice and humility. In Lahore it seemed that the follow-up was major, with the majority of shops and work shops closed, but with the people trying to stay fresh in the shadow ,to sweat the minimum and to pass less thirst, the main enemy when Ramadan falls in summer (the Muslim calendar is lunar and a year Ramadan is shorter, therefore, every year happens 11 days before according to the solar calendar). We, by education, tried to eat and to drink secretly, although often the people invited us to drink or to eat in spite of them fasting. But not all the world fasted in Lahore, it surprised us to observe next to a mosque some vendors who smoked and drank concealed. On the other hand, when returning from Wagah through the deserted roads (when the sun had set, all the world was drinking and eating) the two only boys who attended us in a gas station told us that they were Christian, and after cheering up that we were also, made a signal of contempt for the Muslims. --- In Lahore I interviewed Amina that considered that the main problem of the world is the poverty. The governments should facilitate more education to solve the poverty. she personally collaborates in an ONG to improve the education of the country. The main problem of Pakistan is the lack of energy, which affects the work and the house life (with constant cuts). The solution would be to build more dams, to accept help from Iran or to leave that among private investment. Amina is considered happy, because she has married recently, has good friends, work... although she would be happier with more holidays. The secret of happiness is to be happy with what you have or to have some goals that can be achived. Watch video in youtube ‹ Previous (11/07/2008) MONTH Next (2008-09-09)› ‹ Previous (2009-09-19 - Pakistan) COUNTRY Next (2009-10-08 - Turkey)› |
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