Day 65
Our destination today 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!