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‹ Previous (25/06/2008) MONTH Next (2008-08-24)› ‹ Previous (2009-09-19 - Pakistan) COUNTRY Next (2009-10-08 - Turkey)› Iran Esfahan (see on map) 25/07/2008:
At about 150 kilometres to the south of Tehran we visited Qom, a sacred city for the Muslims Shiites, where a big mosque rises up on the tomb of Fatima, the sister of the eighth Imam Reza (Shiite leader and descendant of Mohamed), that also died on Iranian lands and was buried in Mashhad. I entered the big mosque built with bricks and decorated with marvellous mosaics of porcelain, and without anybody noticing that the non Muslim me has entered up to the interior, I went for rooms full of mirrors until I arrived in front of the decorated tomb of Fatima, where the mullahs (religious men) with turbans on the head and women completely covered up in black worshiped the tomb, while watchers with plumes of colours supervised that nobody made photos in the sacred temple. After Qom we kept going down towards the south of Iran, crossing a sterile desert, with the little transparency of the air, turning the colours off and concealing the mountains in the background. Anyway, when we reached Kashan, we realised that Iran started to show us its most charming face, for in Kashan there were some pretty houses built in the eighteen and nineteen centuries. The houses, which belonged to rich traders of crafts and carpets, show the splendour with which they lived, with exquisite rooms decorated with reliefs, paints, mirrors, church windows... and with a view to intimate interior courtyards with trees and ponds. In the afternoon, we took refuge of the heat visiting the Fin gardens, with numerous channels of water where we could soak the feet, although they quarrelled me because i had the trousers raised up to the knee showing my hairy legs (In Esfahan they told me off again because i was wearing a T-shirt that showed the back when i crouched down; it is curious that to Alexandra, the most rebel with the norms of dressing no one said anything, but I already accumulate two warnings and she none). The following destination, Abyaneh, was found in the mountains and we thought to pass a night fresher than the previous ones. While we went there we could observe the strongly protected nuclear facilities of Iran with watchtowers and numerous antiaircraft defences. Anyway, by being built near a very common route, I thought that on the contrary to the American propaganda, perhaps they did not have to hide too much. Today in the morning we have visited Abyane,an old village with the houses worn out a bit and built with red clay. For the main street, apart from crossing with many Iranian tourists, we also crossed with some local woman, dressing colourful skirts that arrived only to the knees and were covered with one long veil of lighter colours. Some of the local men also distinguished themselves by dressing some wide trousers of a black material. 30/07/2008:
In the middle age, Esfahan was known as Nesf-and-Jahan (half of the world), because to visit it meant having visited half of the world, due to its beauty and to the marvels that contained. And although Esfahan was outside destroyed partially during an Afghan conquest in the eighteenth century and the new maritime routes nullified the business of the silk route and likewise of Esfahan, this city could still be considered as one of the prettiest cities of the world and undoubtedly the most beautiful of the ones visited until now in Iran. Esfahan is a calm city, with the streets shaded by the trees and numerous parks with fountains to take refuge of the heat. Besides, Esfahan preserves exquisite historical legacies, highlighting the enormous Imam square (or previously called Naghsh-i Jahan), that is the second biggest in the world (after the Tianmen square, in Pekin) and for sure one of the most charming. The square is surrounded by two levels of doorways of Islamic aesthetics, under which a part of the big bazaar of Esfahan settles. Most of the square is covered by lawn and flowers, where every night, as the heat is turned off, tens of families extend their carpets and relax, while they take tea or eat fruits. At one end of the square the mosque of the Imam rises up, described by the locals as the most precious mosque of the world, and probably it is, containing all the walls and domes covered by painted tiles that configure some dense, harmonious and marvellous trimmings. Of similar beauty the smallest mosque of Sheikh Lotfollah ascends, to the lateral of the square, in front of a big pool. On the other end of the square the covered bazaar is extended, through which one is able to walk two kilometres with calmness, with the cheerful vendors but without them pressuring you to buy from them. When finishing the bazaar another of the historical relics of Esfahan is the mosque of Jameh, with more than seven centuries of history built and rebuilt with different artistic techniques. I should not forget either to mention the popular bridges that cross the river with numerous Iranian families relaxing under their shifting boards; and the dream-like palaces, surrounded of forests, that seem to have risen up from the stories of the thousand and one nights. In one of these palaces there were some delicate paints, some of which they showed sensual girls showing the breasts. I found it remarkable that, on the contrary to what the European church had made during the middle age, the religious regime of Iran had not erased these paints. In any case, I think that i should also mention the only negative point of the city: the tourism that it always ends up corrupting, because in some sites, for the first time in Iran, they tried to cheat with the price. Despite passing five wonderful days in Esfahan, not only we were visiting monuments and relaxed in the parks. We wasted a whole afternoon to buy a new tyre to replace one that had burst before entering Esfahan and wasted another morning to extend another month the visa in Iran. While we were at the police station, I met again with Santiago, a traveller from spain that i had already met in Kashan. Santiago travelled for some months following a route similar to us, although afterwards he went to Afghanistan and through other "stan" countries .Apart from talking for some hours with Santiago, we also had occasion of talking a good while with Meisam, a student of computer science that still had to make the military service. Meisam explained us that when finishing the university he should do 20 months of obligatory military service, although the option of not doing it is not too recommendable, because then you do not have the option of leaving the country (except to countries with saint mosques: Aràbia Saudí, Iraq and Syria), you cannot work for the government, you cannot buy yourself any house, not even having the option of getting married. For this reason, in his university there are more girls studying than boys, although somebody also explained to us that when it became obligatory to wear the veil at school (in time of the Shah it was prohibited), many traditional families started to register the girls in the schools. When questioning him on the government, Meisam explained that the previous day they had hanged 30 people in Tehran, as punishment to offences as drug dealing, murder, robbery and adultery... Last year 300 were killed, the majority hanged, but also some stoned to death(killed with stones), that it is the punishment that receives a married woman that commits adultery and her lover in specific cases. Answering to our questions, Meisam explained us that if a man is found with a prostitute (or not), the two are obliged to get married with impossibility of divorce, since in such a case, the man has to pay with a part of his body (a leg, an arm, an eye, the head...). Finally, Meisam surprised us explaining that he was not Muslim and that not even so alone believed in God, therefore, theoretically according to the Koran, any Muslim should murder him. Afterwards he explained the motifs of not being religious, "if you do not think, you can be part of any religion created by the man, but when you start to think and realise that the religions are made by humans and not by God, you do stop believing inevitably". Afterwards he gave me a digital book forbidden in Iran for its contents: "God Delusion", by Richard Dawkins, but also forbidden in Europe, because I had not paid for the copyrights. 31/07/2008: Today it is exactly one month since our entry in Iran and, while we crossed a burning desert towards Yazd, we have had once more a discussion about Iran and its people. In spite of the Islamic government of the country - fanatical according to Alexandra - I think that Iran is one of the best countries to travel on the planet, then apart from being economic (we have only spent300 € in a month including food and diesel) and to have good cultural and touristic attractions, its inhabitants are the most hospitable in the world (together with Sudan). It has already happened some times that they have invited us to eat or to dine, and many more that have given us bread, fruits and vegetables; they offered us even money once. And not only that, apart from being hospitable-related, the Iranians are honest, in general opened and interested to know foreigners. But Alexandra does not value so much these positive aspects because for her it weighs too much the duty to wear the veil, partially because it is a too great ideological collision, for she would be partisan of forbidding it in Europe. On the other hand, according to Alexandra, the fact that a country is governed by a dictatorship (besides Islamic) discredits it as a country favourable to tourism. In any case, even so, Alexandra feels moderately at ease in Iran, because often she declares that she would prefer spending more time visiting the country, although maybe also because she has fear to go in Pakistan and she wants to defer the entry so much as she can. Persepolis (see on map) 03/08/2008:
Persepolis is admirable, but it had to be even more in the antiquity, when it was the capital of ceremonies of the Persian Empire, that Alexander the great decided to burn it. I would dare to say that Persepolis would be part of one of the seven marvels of the world if Alexander the great wouldn’t have wanted to take his revenge with the Persian king Xerxes, the troops that about 150 years before, had arrived up to Athens and had burned the Acropolis. In any case, the history justifies the action of Alexander the great explaining that the incident was produced in a night of drunkenness in which he was influenced by a courtesan of Athenian origin. Although it remains little of the former palaces, the things that remain are formidable, highlighting some big doors adorned with winged horses with the face of the king Xerxes, very high columns (of 20 meters) that were part of the central room, the numerous covers of the room of the thunder, but especially, the magnificent reliefs that adorn numerous stairs and walls representing welded, kings killing mythological creatures or fights between lions and buffalos. They also appear among the reliefs, different representations of Faravahar, the main symbol of the Zoroastrian monotheistic religion, founded by Zoroaster quite a lot of centuries before Jesus. Although formerly the Zoroastrianism was the main religion of Persia, at present they only subtract little less than one million faithful, divided up among India and Iran. Proof of this is the temple of fire in Yazd, which we had visited two days before. Yazd is a ancient city that preserves an old town with narrow alleys, some of them covered by succession of small domes, and with the houses built of mixed mud with straw, also although they highlight different houses of rich merchants, some converted into hotels. Typically of Yazd, in the summit of many homes, are some towers with vertical openings connected to the rooms that stand out under, that were used to hunt the wind and to direct it towards the interior of the habitats. The qanats, canalisations of water carried out at more than twenty meters (up to 200 m) of depth to prevent the evaporation during the hot summers, are also typical. Yazd had been a shelter for the Zoroastrians from the beginnings of the expansion of the Islam in Persia, preserving at present only one small community among the predominant mosques. This small community maintains the flames of a temple of the fire, which burn uninterruptedly since about a thousand years ago. To the outskirts of Yazd there are the towers of the silence, which were used till few years ago according to the Zoroastrian tradition so that the bodies of the dead men were cleaned by vultures. From Yazd, we have gone towards the south, to Shiraz and the next old cities. First we visited the ruins of Pasargadae, without too much interest, apart from the tomb of Cyrus the great, the founder of the Persian Empire. More interesting were the tombs of Naqsh-and Rustam, excavated in the wall of the rock and containing interesting reliefs. And of course Persepolis, that we visited yesterday afternoon and another time today in the morning, to finish enjoying it with all the possible angles of light. Shiraz (see on map) 08/08/2008:
Shiraz is known as the city of the poets, of the wine and of the flowers, with evidence of production of wine since more than 7000 years ago. And perhaps it is thanks to the famous wine that Shiraz was the cradle of important Persian poets and sufísm, among which it stands Hafez, a worshiped sufí poet of the fourteenth century that wrote poems of love, mystical and others dedicated to the wine. And even if at present the wine is prohibited in Iran, Farzan, a boy that we meet in Shiraz, told us that many people still produce it at home. In fact, it is noticed that Shiraz is a more modern city, because through the street quite a lot of women do not dress in black, take tighter dresses and the colourful veils. Also there are women of the qashqai culture of nomadic origin that dress coloured dressed, that Alexandra compared with those of the European gypsies. Shiraz was interesting through its bazaar, which - according to Alexandra - was the most interesting that we had visited during the journey after Marrakesh, and not only for its pretty architecture, but also for the diversity of products. Alexandra was being lost for three days through the bazaars while I visited other monuments, as the fort of Arg-and Karim Khani, done of bricks and without too much interest. More interesting is the Regent mosque and the mausoleum of Shah-and Cheragh with curious mirrors decorating the domes of the interior. Yesterday i also visited the gardens of Bagh-and Eram, of a thousand years of antiquity and with a pretty palace of the 18th century. There I passed for Iranian and I only paid 50 cents of dollar (the normal price for the majority of monuments) instead of the 4 dollars that they asked for tourists. And today, before leaving towards Kerman, we visited the pretty and calm mausoleum of Hafez, the poet. While we visited the mosque of Regent, we met some Catalans who visited Iran for about twenty days. We went to eat together some hamburgers, and in the middle of the conversation one of them asked me: was "it difficult for you to relax when initiating the journey"?. At first it seemed a meaningless question to me, but I remembered afterwards the first months of stress when i travelled through Europe, with the sensation that i did not have time to make everything or to visit everything. With this question I realised that it is a lot of time that the journey passes off very calmly, without numbering the visited things or well-known people, but the quality of these visits and friends being so much more important. We do not have deadlines and we advance when the desires of knowing something surpass the desires of extending the knowledge for what is old. It is probably due to this lack of pressure that lately I am experimenting on many moments of conscience (Mindfulness), feeling everything that happens inside of me and my surroundings while my brain is observing in silence. In Shiraz we made another good acquaintance, Farzan, that invited us a day to his pretty home. Farzan told us that Iran is good because you can make all you want, even if it is hidden. For example, a day he suffered a theft at home and as the police came, they saw that he had alcohol in the bar without commenting to him on anything. Or for example, in Iran it is illegal to have satellite dish, even if all the people have it. One of the problems according to Farzan was the isolation, for example it is complicated to have visa to travel abroad or to have credit card to buy through Internet. That his girl that came afterwards under the veil took it out imediatly , Farzan explained that he met her in one of the many "prohibited" parties, afterwards they kept maintaining "prohibited" meetings in the parks (only the men and women of a same family can be together). Later they had sexual relations, naturally forbidden, as many other youngsters of his age, although many girls have sexual relations avoiding losing the virginity, because it would obstruct the wedding. And to finish presenting us examples of prohibitions that are not followed, Farzan took us to a supermarket where we found cans of German sausages produced with 60% pork meat (logically the ingredients were not translated into Persian). 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. ‹ Previous (25/06/2008) MONTH Next (2008-08-24)› ‹ Previous (2009-09-19 - Pakistan) COUNTRY Next (2009-10-08 - Turkey)› |
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