Day 64_to_68

After sleeping like 12 hours, I seem a person again. After the crazy day that we had yesterday we’ll separate from the others. Eloy, Lucy and Marc are going to other mountains, but as we are not sure about the road conditions and I’m still tired (and the foot is hurting) we decide to ride to Abottabad, halfway to Islamabad.

The morning ride is really nice, we have to cross just some more rivers and sand slides, but it’s not a big deal. Even we cross some little rivers with me on the Bonnie! Tià does a great job, because it’s not an easy road with a loaded motorbike!

Last views from the Pakistani mountains…

Then we leave behind the mountains; now the road is fine, but the traffic is crazy. You find cows, motorbikes everywhere, cars in the wrong direction, beautiful trucks… everytime that we have to cross a city is a nightmare. We are stuck sweating and surrounded by other vehicles hooting their horns all the time. A bit stressful situation.

Finally we manage to arrive to Abottabad. The city is well known throughout Pakistan for its pleasant weather, high-standard educational institutions and for hosting the Pakistan Military Academy. However for the foreigners it’s just known due to sad events. On 2th May 2011, Abbottabad gained worldwide attention when Obama announced that Osama bin Laden had been killed in his compound in the city. In February 2012, nine months after bin Laden was killed, Pakistani authorities demolished the compound where Bin Laden had lived for years. We just see it as another city in Pakistan with its normal people living in it.

Our destination the next day will be Islamabad. We don’t know what to expect about the city, but we’ll meet there with the others to explore it. There is a nice highway to go to Islamabad, but it’s forbidden for motorbikes. It seems that in the past it was allowed to ride there, but the rich people with big motorbikes were racing, so there was a lot ofdeads. To prevent it they don’t allow anymore the motorbikes to ride there. Lucky us!

So we have to take the secondary road, with all the little motorbikes, the cows, buffaloes, crazy trucks … at least the tarmac is in good condition. At some point Tià follows another signal that says Islamabad, and we end up in the middle of the highway!!! The other cars are filming us and taking pictures. After a nice 40 km riding at 100 km/h on smooth tarmac, we find in front of us a police officer standing, asking clearly us to stop. We stop, and we wait for the worst. We have been told that if you enter to the highway with a motorbike you are escorted to the initial point!

The police officer is quite nice, and we play dumb saying that we didn’t know about the rules … we just have seen Islamabad and we took the wrong road. Instead of applying a fee, he says: -“ OK, for your safety we’ll escort you to Islamabad.” We are shocked! It’s not just that we are not getting a fee, they will accompany us! The first moments we ride slow (around 60 km/h) because we don’t want to bother, but they start the lights and say us to run more! That’s how we ended up doing the last 30km at 120 km/h escorted by the police. When we reach the exit to Islamabad, they stop. Then, we were waiting for the fee, or maybe a typ… who knows?! However nothing like that! he just said that he did something “alegal” for us allowing us to ride there, he wanted to wish us a nice trip around his country and a selfie!

Islamabad is a surprise for us, we were not expecting this modern city with its wide avenues!

We end in a hotel, which is not the one Mark booked, but we have a nice surprise there! While we are doing the check in Tony appears! He explains his adventures on this days that we spend separately, and he gives us some advices about Islamabad… to see the “real” city, we should go to Rawalpindi. Today is his last trip day, tomorrow he’ll fly back home. What a pleasure meeting you Tony!

At night we share dinner with Marc, Eloy and Lucy also. It’s nice being together again!

Sorry, no photos today!

Net day is te first day of Eid al-Adha also called Festival of Sacrifice. It honors the willingness of Ibrahim (Abraham) to sacrifice his son as an act of obedience to God’s command. But, before Ibrahim could sacrifice his son, God provided a lamb to sacrifice instead. In commemoration of this, an animal is sacrificed and divided into three parts: one third of the share is given to the poor and needy; another third is given to relatives. As it is also a non working day, ad the people stays at home with the family So Eloy, Lucy and Mark decide to ride to Lahore to avoid the traffic at the Grand Trunck Road (promissing name isn’t it?).

As this celebration lasts 2 or 3 days, we want to take one day off, so we’ll ride to Lahore tomorrow. Everything is closed. It’s a pity because we don’t have the opportunity to visit properly Islamabad or Rawalpindi… But we can have a lazy resting day at the hotel…

Eating pizza! it’s not spicy!

The Grand Trunk Road…The Grand Trunk Road is one of Asia’s oldest and longest major roads. For more than two millennium, it has linked South Asia with Central Asia. It runs from Bangladesh to India. From there, the road continues towards Lahore and Peshawar in Pakistan, finally terminating in Kabul, Afghanistan. We will ride it on a holiday and leaving early in the morning, but it is not enough!!!

The temperature and the humidity are really high, so it’s at least uncomfortable to ride in this conditions. Then you have to add the crazy drivers coming from all directions (one good thing is that anybody can come from the sky, so we don’t need to worry about this?), plus the lovely unexpected potholes, cows, “water buffaloes”, rickshaws… In my opinion, when I look in front of us, I see an image from the game “Mario Car”; it’s just insane, the only thing that’s missing is the “banana throwing”!

The Eid al-Adha implies animal sacrrifice and a feast all over the country, and today we can see the results of that. First we find an strange big ball in the middle of the road… it isa cow stomach!!! (yes full of shit). And about not being worried about what comes from the sky when we are on the road … I change my mind after a while! a truck starts to overtake us and it is full of discarted pieces of animals. Specially some cow intestines and stomachs that are hangig out of the trailer just over our heads!!!

Finally after 6 or 7 hours we arrive to Lahore, that’s a bit of a chaos city. On the way we experienced again the hospitality on this country. When we stop on a gas station the people start talking to us, they give us juices for free, and they offer any help that we can need during our stay in their country; even they prepare some lunch for us when we haven’t asked for!

As we are tired, so we will visit tomorrow the city. In the evening we met with Mark, Eloy and Lucy to have some beer (they found a hotel that serves alcohol to the foreigners!!!) and dinner.

Next day we want to visit the mosque and the fort today. We ask at the hotel for a taxi, and they book one for us. The man is really nice, it has just a little problem… he can not see!!! He things that we want to go to a mall called Fortress, but we want to go to the Fort! anyhow we end in a military controlled area of the city, they ask for our passports in a tense way and they disappear with our driver for some minutes! Finally, everything is fine and they let us go… go back because we are going on the wrong direction! We reach the Red Fort after hitting 2 rickshaws!

One following the rules!

Some Pakistani way of driving…

There are some people more interested in us than in the fort! it’s a bit crazy the number of selfies that we are taking! Everybody is looking at us!

Then we visit just from the outside the mosque. And we go back with a rickshaw to the hotel and the necessary AC sistem.