The Great Out There - Pakistan Journals

In the third world, there's always trouble with transport, an Iranian gentleman told me yesterday. That seems to make sense I guess. When people are poor, uneducated, starving, who is there to be quality control? But it's more than that. Political problems, abuse by the users themselves, extreme weather conditions, overcrowding, most public transport in the first world wouldn't survive one day in these conditions. And so there are problems. For the most part, you'll get there, but how it happens can sometimes be rather interesting...

5 Jan, I had just flown into Denpassar airport, Bali, midnight. Most sensible people would have simply gone to nearby Kuta, or the airport hotel, but I decided to wait for the bemos(minibuses) to start their runs to Ubud, 1½ hours away, in the morning. Sitting with a local Balinese boy, we started talking, him practicing his English, me learning about the local culture. About 5:00, he suddenly offers to give me a free lift to Ubud. How? On his motor bike. OK... At the time, I was traveling with a monster backpack. I gingerly climb aboard, dwarfing the boy, and try to stay on. For the next 2 hours, we moved towards Ubud, him barely controlling the bike with so much extra unbalanced weight. For my part, I grimly hold on as my legs shake, my back tires. It was still dark at that time, but as we swerved through fruit carts and dogs, bikes and buses, heat lightning kept revealing in brief flashes temples, shops, strange Asian scenery. A vicious dog would leap out at me, exposed a moment later as another carving. My face reflected in his mirror was one of sheer terror, welcome to Bali!

A few months later I was traveling north in Thailand to Bangkok. After 2 months relaxing on the islands, diving, rockclimbing, lying on the beach, I was ready to resume my travels. I had heard about Thailand's shaky reputation for night buses, the drivers falling asleep as they continued driving from the previous day. So I thought a train would be good. Well, as I bought my 3^rd class standing room ticket, a girl behind me asked if I had heard about the accident. Accident? Turns out, on the previous day, a train on the same line I was about to take derailed, killing 10 people and injuring hundreds. Oh. Well, that was yesterday, today should be OK. I'm still nervous as the train pulls in, but that passes quickly, replaced now with a new concern. Where's the train? This train is so crowded, people are hanging out the windows, out the doors. There are people in the aisles, people in the toilets, people on the overhead racks, people under the seats even. Oh well, I need to get to Bangkok, so I plunged in. I managed to shove my pack into the squirming mass, but that's as far as I got. I couldn't even squeeze myself into a bogie. So I spent the next 9 hours hanging onto those two vertical bars they have on either side of the door to help people up, and standing on the lower step. It was an interesting night to say the least. My hands tiring, slipping off the bars, every time the train lurched sideways, my feet would slip off and I'd dangle in midair above the racing tracks. Passing the mangled wreck of the previous day's train, I momentarily considered myself lucky. And the sunrise as we approached Bangkok that morning, no sight ever looked so beautiful to me!

A month later found me in Nepal, about to begin trekking the Annapurna Circuit. To cut a few days off the front of it, my lazy group and I were taking a bus to Besishar. The first part, Pokhara to Dumre was easy enough, about 3 hours. Arriving in Dumre, we were told 45 minutes for breakfast. Grabbing our packs, we found a guesthouse and ordered our tea and porridge. Eating slowly, sure we had enough time. But 25 minutes after we arrived, the bus, with great blaring of horns and much screaming, starts to pull away! Paying our bill quickly, we raced over to the bus, which was now so full people were hanging out the doors. Two more buses had pulled in while we were there, and most of those people piled on our bus. The Nepalese, polite as ever, did not take our assigned seats, we could see them through the window, but getting to them was another story. The girls decided to try their luck, with elbows and greater size, to get to their seats. Bill and I, on the other hand, decided on another way. We would try a Nepalese institution, riding on the roof! It's illegal now, but whenever we pass a police checkpost, we simply climbed down and hung out the side. So the next 6 hours were leisurely spent stretched out on the broad, stable roof, leaning against our packs. It was a hot day, scorching us both with sunburns we would still be peeling as we crossed the Thorung La almost 2 weeks later, but it was a good day. Picking unripe mangos from passing trees, talking with the Nepalese on the roof with us, watching the world go by as we entered the Himalaya. Luxury third world style.

And now? Well, now I'm sitting on a train in the middle of the Baluchistan Desert, Pakistan. We left Quetta at 1:30 yesterday, Saturday afternoon, we should have been approaching Taftan, on the Iranian border, at about this time. It was a hot, very dusty ride yesterday. Absolutely everything, myself included, was buried in a very thick coating of desert. That's OK, I thought, I'll be in Shiraz, Iran by Monday morning, I can get a shower then. But then, around 9:00, the train comes to a long halt, not unusual in this part of the world. But after an hour, I start asking around to see what's happening. It turns out the tracks ahead of us have been reclaimed by the desert. It's now necessary to dig them out. Maybe three hours later, the train starts moving again, so I settle in for the night. Waking six hours later, I notice we're not moving. What's up? The friendly Iranian family in my compartment inform me we stopped at 1:00 last night, and haven't moved since. More buried tracks. Oh. Any idea how long we'll be here? It sometimes takes several days, the mother brightly informs me. Oh. That would explain the several crates of food and water that fill the place. I hope my cheese and crackers and 3 litres of water will last... And so we sit in the desert, as the white sun begins to blaze down and light the furnace we have willingly entered. And to think I could have been on the New York Metro commuter line going to work instead...

-Seán Connolly was last seen boarding a train to Iran.

And he emerged! Soon after 11:00, a train came through from the other side. The tracks are clear through to Taftan!

As soon as we started moving again, I sat in the doorway to get a break from the heat. I took my penny whistle out and played a merry tune as I dangled my feet above the racing tracks. Suddenly, the world turned upside down. I hit hard and kept rolling. The air was full of horrible noise. I just lay there at first, stunned, as screams rose all around me. Then I turned around to see what happened and found the train on its side. We have derailed! I climbed up, dusted myself off, and limped over to take a look. A section of the track wasn't completely cleared of the sand, and a big dune took us out. The engine was almost buried in the sand it plowed up in its rampage. We're not going anywhere. Standing in the middle of the desert, the mother asks me, so what are you doing now? Doing? Is there anything to do but wait? Yes, the road's just nearby, you can get a ride to the next town, then get a coach to the border. Oh. But I only have 229Rp left, people are taking advantage of the situation and charging 500Rp, 1000Rp for rides. For me I'm sure they'd charge 2000Rp. Not. I'll wait, thank you. "It could be 2-3 days..." OK.

I slept in black tents, blue tents, skin tents, yurts of felt and windbreaks of thorns. One night, caught in a sandstorm in the Western Sahara, I understood Muhammed's dictum, "A journey is a fragment of Hell."
-Bruce Chatwin "The Songlines"

But then the entire train began to empty out. Everyone was telling me it's too dangerous to remain behind. They were convinced I would get my throat cut as soon as it got dark. What to do? I don't have enough cash, I don't want to use US$, so what? The family started to pack up, they found a jeep who'll take them all for 2500 Rp. The locals are getting rich today! The father said if I don't mind sitting in the back (the cab's full) I can come along. Um, I guess I have no choice... Thanks. I bundled up, put on my longsleeve shirt, wrapped a sarong around my face and neck, trying to protect myself from the fierce desert sun. It was a very rough ride, I was sitting on some piece of hard metal machinery with all sorts of pointy parts to stab me whenever we hit a bump, so I was in pain. By the time we got to Taftan in the evening, I was in absolute agony. If it weren't for the mileage markers on the side of the road ticking down the distance, I would never have made it. Very bad time.

We get to Taftan, and I was immediately mobbed by the money changers, all offering bad rates. The rate at the bank in Quetta was US$1=4200 Rial. The family told me that starting about 2 months ago, the open market was made illegal and that the best I could get would be maybe 3000 at the banks within the country. The changers know this, because they're only offering 3000, 3500 at the last offer. Rather than accept, I'll just go to the bank in Iran. I won't sell at less than the true open market rate, just to be pigheaded. Those changers really annoy me.

It has been a rather unpleasant week up until this point, and I've had quite enough of Pakistan, thank you very much. I'm looking forward to getting it over with. I found a very basic mosaferkhuné (hostel) and dumped my bags. This was likely the most primitive arrangements I've had yet. There was no toilet or running water in the entire place, the "room" was more of a concrete closet without even a window facing an open courtyard, and the clientele were poor, but friendly businessmen crashing for the night like myself before crossing the border the next day. The night was so gorgeous, I dragged my bed outside just like everyone else and slept under the stars, to the accompaniment of a multitude of snores.