Conference 2

Here's a few pics from our 2nd conference. It was in this lovely hexagonal compound (which made finding your way around it a little taxing until you learned to always keep an eye on which number of side you were on):

(click to see larger image)










There was lots of interesting wildlife that we don't get up by us, some wild, like this pointy fellow:



















But lots kept in the compounds fairly extensive menagerie. These guys' tufts remind my of one of my university professors...



















Poor monkey:

























On the last night we took part in the 'Fun Night' (a title like that is asking for trouble, but it was actually genius!). Lots of people sang songs (including me), danced, read poems, acted out the story of Samson complete with Bollywood dances, and so on...

Here's a couple of the highlights:

Jenny and the other girls put in several hours of practice for this Sindhi Stick Dance:



And this is a Qawali - often written about leaders or holy men, but in this case an irreverent appreciation of our company's leadership team:



We've seen few really good sunsets so far - the sun usually sort of fades out through the haze like this:



















But occasionally it does do something a little bit interesting:

























You may have noticed that this post about a conference - a meeting of people - doesn't contain many people. That's on purpose. But please be assured that we did in fact meet lots of lovely people doing all sorts of interesting work in all kinds of places and situations. We had some interesting teaching, and some fascinating local perspectives on culture and politics. We enjoyed some good times of worship (with an actual music group! And some awesome harmonies, mostly courtesy of one musical family...) and times of sharing things for prayer.

It's nice not to be doing that long bus journey again for a while though...

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.

Orientation conference

We've been back for a few days now, but hadn't quite got round to updating you on our orientation conference in Lahore. When we tried to book our Daewoo (that's the coach company here - connected to the car company of the same name) tickets we weren't too disappointed to learn that one of the colleges had booked the entire 6.30am bus, meaning we'd have to get the 11.30am instead. What a shame.

The Daewoo bus is fairly special: the overall experience is closer to travelling on an airline than a bus (but with more legroom), with baggage checks, luggage tags, and a hostess who brings round newspapers and refreshments. And the equivalent of £8 gets you a 7.5 hour journey. Unfortunately ours picked up a puncture on one of its inner rear tyres, which added another 90 minutes.



















Especially for Laurence, I should point out that the full writing on the green rickshaw reads "MASTER PANTHER".

The journey includes one rather special stretch through the Salt Range, including what I think is the craziest piece of motorway engineering I've ever experienced, which I shall save for a post of its own in full geekish glory.

A friendly chap I met on the bus (and even bought us chicken at one of the stops) helped find us a taxi who wouldn't overcharge us. The journey to the college campus at which the conference was taking place was straightforward enough, but actually finding where to go once we were inside the vast maze of buildings, gardens and arches (in the dark) took so long that we decided to tip him a little extra. The campus was very nice indeed. Here are some of us watching the ubiquitous cricket match.



















The conference itself was great, mainly just for the chance to meet a few other folk in a similar boat. There were 25 or so of us from locations all over the country. We had some fascinating talks on culture, religion, politics and local church history, interviews with local church leaders, and even a cooking lesson ("make sure you don't waste any of the oil!" - we can see why so many of the more affluent people here struggle to keep their weight down!).

On the last day we had an outing to the Wagah Border ceremony (detailed post with pics to follow), before a lovely meal out with one of the other couples (at a buffet restaurant - endless variety of curries being made in front of you, live music, pretty swish - not the kind of thing we'd frequent, but great for a rare treat).

On the journey back we broke the journey at the house of a couple of our new friends, then got a couple of minibuses back up from Pindi. The last one waited until it was full, then set off. Then stopped to pick up just one more passenger to be squeezed in wherever possible. Then again for one more. And again. And one more time, this time for a family of three, prompting a complete re-shuffle so that no women were sitting next to unrelated men. Wouldn't like to do that for more than a short ride!

Oh, and when we got back, it was cold! Apparently there was a big hailstorm soon after we left, and it's been triple-layer temperature ever since - bit of a shock to the system!