What You See Is What You Get...

...but isn't necessarily what you wanted.

This week I and my 'boss', Mr P, at the workshop went down to Pindi on another shopping trip - mainly for supplies for the hospital, but also to try and reconnoitre the availabilities and prices of various materials for the solar project.

So after many deals and many cups of tea at various shops (including spending £500 on lightbulbs), we parked the van and hopped into a more nimble rickshaw to head into the narrower, busier streets of the metalworkers' bazaar.



















Riding in this thing feels very much like driving a fairground dodgem - the handling is pretty much identical - only it's more in your interest to avoid the other vehicles rather than take them on. And he can get through some minuscule gaps when he wants to. The bazaar is a bit different from your average one - the stalls/shops are much bigger and generally have piles of interesting things, and various guys making things out of other things.

Anyway, to come to the point of this blog post, here's a representative sample of one of the dual-language, triple-participant conversations in one of the shops. To give a little context, I'm trying to track down some plastic tubing for use as a heat exchanger. It'll need to stand up to nearly 100°C, and there aren't many kinds that'll do that.

(opening pleasantries)

Me: "Do you have any PEX pipe?"

(discussion back and forward between Mr P and shopkeeper in Urdu/Punjabi)

Shopkeeper: "What about this one?" (hands me a bit of tube - a yellow one, 1/2" diameter, no markings)

Me (thinks): "It's a yellow one, 1/2" diameter, no markings..."
Me (out loud): "Umm... what's it made of? It has to not melt at 100°C."

(more Urdu/Punjabi discussion)

Mr P: "Okay, how about this one?" (points out a different one - black, 1" dia, again no markings)

Me (internally): "It's black, 1" dia, again no markings..."
Me (out loud): "Do you know what it's made of? I really need to know the material it's made of before I can tell whether it's suitable or not..."

(more Urdu/Punjabi discussion)

Shopkeeper: "Also, I have this one over here..."

Me (in the privacy of my own head): "But what the @£%$!!ing $£^^@ is it made of???!!!!! Aaaargh!!"

What You See Is What You Get...
...but that doesn't necessarily mean you know what it is, and neither does the shopkeeper.











Random addendum: for ages I've been trying to get a picture of one of the painted trucks at night, because in many cases all that amazing decoration is done in reflective paint. But, not wanting to blind oncoming drivers with my camera flash (road travel here being quite dangerous enough already!), I had to take a short movie and grab a frame from it - not the full glory, but you get the idea:

Squeegie merchant!

Today I went down to 'Pindi with the workshop boss to get the first batch of supplies for our prototype solar water heater. Here's the edited highlights of the day, complete with random hotchpotch of sights, observations and random impressions:

Mobile Goat Bouncers. For a while on the drive down we were stuck behind a small truck chock-a-block full of goats. There were also two guys in the back with the goats, whose job seemingly was to clamber about the place disciplining their charges if they misbehaved. All while barreling down a bumpy hill, swerving around the other traffic. Can't say I particularly envied them their job.

First stop - the metal merchant:




















After purchasing our copper pipe and aluminium sheet, we headed to a little shop where we were presented with an ever-growing pile of different pipe fittings and valves. Here the language barrier didn't help general communication - after about 20 minutes I drew the chap a quick diagram and he said "Ah, for this you need 3/4" to 1/2" reducing tees." Which I could have told him right at the start! Or rather I could, had I been able to follow any of the conversation, or known how to say any of that in Urdu.

The taxis in Pindi are almost as finely decorated as the trucks in the rest of the country. The very best ones, which unfortunately I wasn't fast enough to snap, had a large painting of an animal on the side in addition to all the other paraphernalia: tigers were popular, as were white horses, as (for some reason) were eagles fighting cobras. But the BJW award of geniusness has to go to the one proudly displaying an intricately painted 3-foot lobster.
















The drivers here also have their own equivalent of the UK's once-ubiquitous "My other car is a Porsche" stickers - writing on the back of a tiny Suzuki pick-up said, I'm reliably informed: "When I grow up, I'm going to be a truck".

Taxi race:
















Members of the Wilson clan will no doubt be thrilled to hear that we also went to a genuine Pakistani squeegie merchant. Need a plunger (or ten?), any kind of brush, or a random basket-y thing? He's got them too!

Some of the trucks have proper pictures on as well as random patterns. I'm a fan of the somewhat bewildered expression on the tiger.




















A final thought: watching a suzuki with 8 men clinging onto the back of it go over a speed-bump is, for some reason, really rather amusing.

A visit to the capital

Yesterday we forewent our lie-in to go on a visit to the capital, leaving at 7am for the estimated 2.5hr journey. Travelling here is never boring; even apart from the excitement of negotiating the traffic, there are always plenty of interesting things to look at. Here's a view from the road as we drive down the valley:

Going through one of the towns on the way down, the traffic slowed and stopped. I should explain at this point that traffic jams here (like everything else traffic-y) are somewhat more chaotic than at home. Here's sort of how it works:

• First line (nearest the side) of traffic slows to a halt.
• A few drivers, including our own, quickly get impatient, and move out to overtake, forming a 2nd line of traffic.
• We move forward a little, then this line too slows to a halt.
• Impatience -> move out into 3rd line -> slow to a halt.
• Repeat, until there are 5 or 6 lines of traffic going our way.

Then, clearly not going anywhere, we wait a bit. Our driver hops out to chat to a few other drivers. We discover later that the story appears to be that a few lorry drivers have blocked the road over pay disputes. We gather from the gestures going on outside that there might be an alternative route around the blockage.

So we turn round and head back the way we've come - easier said than done as the aforementioned impatient drivers are still doing their move-outwards-another-lane thing until the whole place is fairly jammed. Another stop for directions, and we're off down this tiny side road, squeezing past tractors and the like, heading out of the town to the side. And as we head across a bit of a dip in the road, a local gestures off to one side. So we turn off again, down what is clearly...

a river bed:

It's obviously a well-used route in non-monsoon time, with turn-offs to different parts of the surrounding settlements, and we meet various other cars, trucks and motorbikes picking their way along the tracks between boulders, banks and muddy bits. Our driver is a hard-to-read (though not unfriendly) chap of few words, but I got the impression he was enjoying himself.

When we arrive 3-and-a-half hours after we left, the capital is very obviously a planned city, with wide, straight highways set out in a grid pattern; a typical address might read something like House 364, Street 28. It's not the kind of place you could easily get around on foot. We meet up with one of our hospital colleagues who has been down here for the night before, and head into town and to the various markets. We pick up our one souvenir so far - a rather beautiful little table, the top of which looks a bit like this:

The shopkeeper apparently has relatives who have been treated at the hospital, so gives us a discount, after serving refreshments while we look around. The shop is full of fascinating bits of furniture and suchlike, a couple of highlights being a rocking-camel, and a glass table which has 15 or so legs set out in a circle - but with the difference that each leg supports the tabletop at the opposite side from where it's foot touches the ground, having woven through all the other legs on its way past. The overall effect is like a cylindrical woven basket. Each leg is entirely separate from all the others, but looped around and through all the others, and the whole thing has obviously been carved from one single huge piece of wood. It's like one of those soapstone sculptures you sometimes see, but hugely more complex. I don't bother enquiring about its price...

Then we go to have a look at the Faisal mosque, a vast marble structure. You leave your shoes at the entrance, then make sure that you walk on the white marble in the sun rather than the black!

We are treated to a great lunch at an 'Italian' restaurant, then it's the bookshop (Jenny's favourite!), a quick look around a couple of other markets, back past the furniture place for something our colleague had bought when we were there earlier, a stop for water, then back on the road. The journey back is less eventful, the road having been opened once more, though driving in the darkness certainly keeps the excitement level up. (Remember, if your vehicle is at the faster end of the spectrum, any trip is basically one constant overtaking manoeuvre!)

And relax.