SWH project part 8 - business dealings

Last week Mr P and I took a trip down to Lahore to pick up a bunch of materials. A few dealers in the Pindi metal market (which is much closer) appear to have something of a monopoly, making the trip worthwhile (copper is Rs1000/kg in Lahore, Rs1600/kg in Pindi: no contest).  After driving down one day, we went out to collect the stuff we had ordered on the next day.

an early morning start

At home such a visit might have lasted 10 minutes or so; long enough to give it a once over, pay, and shove it in the back of the van.  Here:  6 hours.

It's all about the relationship, you see.  After a couple of hours and 10 years' worth of "how's your family, etc", we finally got to see the stuff we'd come for.  Then it was lunchtime, so obviously we had to stay for a leisurely meal of spiced barbecued salmon and naan.  Then Mr P went off with the proprietor on his scooter on another short errand (in a market not easily accessible by van), while I stayed to supervise the loading of the van.  The thing was:  my task took 20 minutes; his took 2.5 hours...

van full of shiny things

Then the 8-hour journey back on the next day.  I still find it amazing that the last 100 or so kilometres takes almost as long as the preceding 400 up the motorway.

Some other miscellaneous observations:

• There's a stretch of road a little way down the KKH which is lined with orange stalls for a couple of kilometres - amazing.

• On the way down the Salt Range we saw a broken down bus.  They'd obviously decided that on sharp double bend on a 7% slope on the motorway was an ideal place to change it's rear differential and drive shaft - which were sitting out in the first lane of the motorway.

part of the Salt Range

• At home we have that road sign with the stag on it to warn of the potential of animals on the road.  Here, they have specific signs for jackals, porcupines and turtles.
• In Lahore we passed what must have been a rubbish dump, with literally thousands of kites on or circling above it - I've hardly ever seen that many birds in one place, let alone birds of prey.
• At one point in the bazaar, a chap came past delivering an ice cube.  An ice cube 3 feet long, which he dragged along the ground behind him with a big pincer thing.
• Near the place we were staying there was a guy selling various colours of fish in plastic bags, like you might find at the fairground.  But in two of the little bags were little turtles!
• The place we were staying had lots of interesting birds in the grounds, including hoopoes and a magnificent golden woodpecker.  Oh, and people's chickens - it was odd to be woken by the cockerel (or 3) rather than the call to prayer!

Hoopoe

• On the evening of the second day we went to visit a friend of Mr P's for dinner, a little way away.  Barrelling along through the darkness between the traffic, 3 on a motorbike, with no helmets on, was massively exhilarating, though not without that nagging feeling of "this is really stupid!"
• They're busy widening parts of the road between the hospital and the nearest town.  Pakistani roadworks are something to behold, particularly when widening the road involves moving a cliff/mud face back 20 feet.

I'm watching you!

Pakistani roadworks

At home, the digging of the foundations has progressed a little:

trenches

Unfortunately, the last few days have seen continuous medium-to-heavy rain, postponing our concreting work.

The Salt Range

The aforementioned Salt Range: this may be of more interest to you engineers and other geeks, but it has some nice scenery too!

Once you get down to Islamabad from where we are, the journey is amazingly flat for several hundred kilometres. So after all that flatness, it's intriguing to encounter a succession of increasingly urgent-sounding signs...





























































...before heading onto a 10km-long, 50kph-limited, 7%-inclined series of double bends, cuttings and bridges that looks something like this...



















...complete with escape roads for those whose brakes aren't up to it (looks like it's been used a few times too!):
















In this one you can see where they've obviously had to swerve the road inwards a bit from the edge after it got too precarious:



















Some striking scenery - all of these were taken on the return journey - on the way there it was so hazy you couldn't see much beyond the road itself:



















While the speed limit for those double bends is mostly 50kph, the trucks have to settle for less than a 10th of that as they settle down into hill-climbing gear for the long haul upwards:



















In our area there are plenty of twisty little mountain roads that snake along the sides of valleys in improbable ways, but to do it with a 6-lane motorway is pretty darn impressive.