As A Brother

And so I must delve back into the past, before my previous post, but after my previous previous post to fill people in on what has happened to the journey and why I let slip that our bicycles have been travelling club class on the top deck of buses travelling along dodgy Pakistani roads, and steerage in the holds of Iranian buses, while we have both experencied numb posteriers from sitting for too long in uncomfortable seats.

"Officially the road is safe and it is fine for you to cycle. But as a brother, off the record I advise you not to take it and not to stay the night here"

So said Hassan, the man in a suit with impeccable English who had got his driver to stop his car having seen us by the side of the road, surrounded by curious onlookers, and about to try and find a hotel to stay in Dera Ghazi Khan (DGK to those who have been). We never found out his last name; he worked for the police, but not of the uniformed kind.

It turns out that although DGK is in the province of Punjab, it is actually within the tribal zone of Baluchistan, and as such people obey the rule of the tribal leaders, not the police. Foreigners entering into DGK and its surrounding areas should have an armed guard. We would have known this if we had visited the DCO (government official) in Multan; we had not and so did not.

So, 20 min later, having spent 6hrs cycling over the plains, crossing the Indus river and arriving into DGK, we decided to follow the advice of Hassan and found ourselves (and our bikes) travelling back along the very same road in the company of Policemen with semi-automatic rifles. I am glad to say it was my first experience in the back of a police van. Over the 90km stretch, we experienced 4 such vans and men with guns as each one could take us only to the limits of their district before handing us over to the next group.






Will loading his bike onto the first police escort at DGK







It took just an hour and a half to return to Multan and, 30min after our arrival, we got a telephone call from the front desk asking us not to leave the hotel. A top politician had just been assasinated and it was advised that we do not leave the hotel. I'm sure you have all seen the news, and so shall continue on this thread no further.


The police arrived the following morning to say that all buses and trains were cancelled due to the unrest that had occured in some major cities as well as the 3 days of mourning that had been announced by Presiden Musharraf. We were not going anywhere. The police made to leave, but discovered that protests were being held on the street outside, and they decided to remain safely behind the closed gate of the hotel and drink tea until the crowds had moved and the fire was out.

And so we played the waiting game. We were advised not to leave the hotel without an armed escort (there was a guy with a shotgun protecting the hotel), and all entertainment channels were myseriously removed from the TV. In short, it was a very boring time.

But it was not to last long. The following day (2 days after the assisnation of Bhutto, it was a Saturday but the date escapes me) the police arrived at the ungodly time of 9am to awaken us from our slumber. We were leaving for the Iranian border that morning; everything was organised. We would get police escorts right the way there, leap frogging between districts. It was, after all, "their duty" to ensure that we arrived safe and sound at the border. And so with our bags packed, we departed west.