Holidays part 2 - Islamabad

Continued from part 1.

One more Daewoo Express ride took us back up to Islamabad, where we intended to spend one night before getting the plane to Gilgit.  However, our plans didn't quite turn out as we'd hoped.  You see, the flight to Gilgit (further north) is in a small plane which flies up a valley between big mountains (rather than over the top) so it only flies in clear weather.  So even though they let you book seats months in advance, this is no guarantee of being able to get on the flight.  The weather was good on the day we wanted to fly so the flight went, but it hadn't gone on several of the preceding days, meaning there was now a long waiting list of people trying to get on the flight.

When we arrived at our guest house we met another family who live and work up that way who had already been waiting for several days, so our hopes were not high.  The airline never let slip where you might be on the waiting list*, so you are faced with the delightful prospect of an interminable wait in Islamabad punctuated by fruitless calls to the PIA call centre in Karachi.

*my conspiracy theory says that this must be deliberate, otherwise they couldn't operate their complicated system of priority lists, VIP seats and backhanded deals through "my brother has a friend behind the PIA desk - I'll see what I can do".  According to this family we met, you used to not be able to book tickets ahead, and you just turned up - and it mostly worked, you got your flight usually within a few days.  Now, since the advance booking system started (and given that one can easily get a full refund if you don't fly, so people often speculatively book lots of seats in case they need them, thus throwing even more disarray into the system), people have been known to go to the airport 15 days on the trot, and still not get on board.  Trying to be organised doesn't suit this country.

We decided to give it one more day, which meant we had an afternoon to look around Islamabad, courtesy of lots of tiny yellow taxis.

Taxi races - what's that, a seat belt?!

We took a nice little walk up to Daman-e-Koh, a viewpoint up on the Margalla hills overlooking Islamabad and Rawalpindi.

A steep climb to Daman-e-Koh.

Interesting little flowers.  Also on the wildlife front we saw a large mongoose,
some wild boar and a couple of jackals in the woods.

Busking Pakistani-style.

Looking down on Islamabad.

Faisal Mosque.

Botanical inspections.

Back to our travel plans:  we took one speculative trip to the airport at 6am the next day to see if we might get some no-show seats, but after failing to get on 3 flights to Gilgit and one to Skardu (which would have involved an additional 6 hour jeep ride to Gilgit), we decided to cut our losses - especially given that my parents had to be back in Islamabad in a week's time to catch their onward flight, and there would be no guarantee of getting back again even if we did make it there in the first place - and move to a hastily concocted Plan B.  Which involved hair-raising jeep rides, glaciers and sliding down mountains, and of which there will be more another day...

Tribal wedding part 1

As Jo mentioned previously, while we were down in the south of the country we got to go to part of two tribal weddings. We’ve been to one up at the hospital before but this time was a very different experience.

The first wedding was happening on the night we arrived, (from the UK, a journey that included a 7 hour layover in Dubai airport where the marble floors are not very conducive to catching up on sleep!). Some friends kindly let us crash at their house for a couple of hours before our host picked us up and we hopped on a bus to go to the city a couple of hours away where the wedding was going to be. Unfortunately the bus was only half full when we got on and wasn’t going anywhere fast. Apart from the Daewoo most buses here wait till they are full before they go anywhere - I guess you’ve got to get your money’s worth out of the trip. Fine as long as you don’t need to be somewhere by a particular time. After a quick chat with a fellow passenger we decided to hire a car with him to get to our planned destination, a bit more pricey but at least we got there before the wedding was over.

We arrived at about 9pm at the groom’s village in time for the first part of the celebrations, the Mehndi. The bride wasn’t there for this part, I think her family and friends were holding an equivalent celebration somewhere else. Not quite a stag do or a hen party but maybe that’s the closest equivalent. Before any of this though, I had to get into my outfit for the evening, kindly lent to me for the occasion. The families of the bride and groom are part of the Kachhi tribe and their clothes are a bit different from the usual shalwar kameez. Negotiating all the cloth was a little bit tricky by torchlight but the groom’s female relatives soon had me fixed up.

One of the best things was that the food came at the beginning of the evening, usually you have to wait until right at the end by which point you’re beyond hunger. A delicious biryani was served up on pieces of newspaper, (saves on the washing up,) and we all sat on the floor and ate it with our fingers (takes a bit of practice with rice).

Next we had the Mehndi ceremony itself. The groom was sat down and everyone took it in turns to go up, wave some money round his head then put it in a basket, paint some henna on his hand (actually a piece of paper he was holding) and feed him a small piece of mithai (sweet stuff). We managed when it was our turn, I’m not sure we did it all in the right order but hopefully that doesn’t matter.

Then there was the dancing. First a group of girls did some stick dancing (see video below). One of the girls dropped out at the last minute and as it was one I had learnt before I was hastily drafted in. No opportunity to practice first but fortunately I was near the back and the girls kept me in line.

Following this there was a traditional circle dance that everyone could join in. A guy stood in the middle and played different songs on his dhol (double-ended drum) and everyone sang along and danced in a circle around him. The were just 4 basic steps - across, to the side, back and to the side but the men then added a series of crazy leaps, twirls and other flourishes. The women just did the basic step - I’m not sure if this is because that’s tradition or because of the crazy amounts of cloth we were wearing.

After this we headed home, (a mere 3 hours away,) but most of the guests stayed on to then travel to the bride’s village the next day for the wedding itself. It seems like a pretty exhausting thing to do the night before your wedding but fortunately it’s quite acceptable to find a blanket and a corner to sleep in.

Part 2 is here.

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!