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!
