To get the visa to India was to find our way to the Indian embassy.Islamabad is a modern and very open city, and al the embassies are concentrated in a closed area. Coming there with a taxi you have to take a shuttle bus that brings you to the embassy.
It was easy for us to get a taxi and not expensive.
I thought I could use the formulas already filled out in Iran ,but I thought wrong, and with that we lost a whole day, payment had to be in local currency and the formulas changed, and to know that we lost much time waiting in a long queue.To put that in order only the taxi drivers got happy.
But next day every thing went smooth and fast, and we got the promise to get our visa in one week.
Unfortunately it is winter here in Islamabad and to day it is raining and with that mud and dirt.
I finished yesterdays blog and when Dora told to have seen an internetcaffe near to here I risked myself out from here to find it, and so a few steps on the road a fine car with a young man offered me a lift. I told him what I was looking for and suddenly I got an English speaking helper. He brought me to a place where I posted my blog.The owner helped me and even offered us a cup of tea and by the end would not receive any payment, On the way back I got my news friend s name and E mail Nauman Ahmad and he told me that he was on his way to Egypt to stay there for 10 days a strange way to get help from such a person a muddy road in Pakistan.
Yesterday was cold and rainy, specialy the nights are difficult to get through.
Near to here I found some chops and even a dentist who for 5$ refilled my tooth, his clinic was modern and but as all here the street a dumb.
Unfortunately both of us have got a flu and Dora is really ill to day.
It is Saturday to and the place here without any activity.Normaly during the day the place is full of men speaking with each other in groups. Every day we noticed two different men walking along all the wrecked cars taking note on a piece of paper. Well you can find out by yourself what all this is about? somebody has a friend in the government, And we go on counting the days till Wednesday
Yesterday we took a tourist tour with a taxi to Islamabad and here re the results

No1 the Pakistan monument
No 2 the view from the monument over Islamabad
No 3 another view
No 4 a bright new stadion
No 5 one of the government buildings
No 6 the main street kilometer long and very large 14 lanes all together
No 7 the Fasai mosque
No 8 Another veiew
No 9 And here we stayed for 10 days in a dammed cold
No 19And they looked after us

16-01-2008

The road from Quetta to Islamabad is about 1500 km long, in quality goes from surprising bad to surprising good.Quetta is at a plateau 1000 m high, but only driving 70 km downhill it comes down to flatland and the temperature goes up.

The road itself over long distances have 4 lanes.

The traffic is loaded with slow lorries, and when a lorry brake it stops on the spot mark the place with a lot of stones around it, and the occupants sit down in front and behind waiting for a miracle. Several times you see a turned over lorry. The road is also used by tractors, animal drawn carriages and bicycles. At the roadside you also see many modern service stations.Dieseloil is sold at a price of a little more than half e dollar a liter.

And the flatland is really flat with rivers, and you notice a beautiful agriculture land with rice, sugarcane, mango plantations, all green and this in January month.

The trip took 4 daies.

On the first day we took of at 7.30 the Brucotu( so we baptized him) came half an hour late, in snow, but soon the sun appeared.

The passage downhill through canyons is very beautiful.

We stopped at the roadside and made our lunch, but offering a plate of food to the

Brocutu he would not eat, and this was the first of the many surprises from his side. The only good thing with him was that he did not smoke, and worst was that the only English word he new was go, and that he used too often.

At the police control points he did the talking .But at one point something went wrong, the police resolved to escort us with a van running in front of us, a van with two armed men sitting in the back. And this on a bad asphalt.road

And now started a hell, the van a Toyota changed several times, trying to speak English with them they spoke a lot I did not understand and begging to stop up for the night I got a no and orders brutal to go.

At midnight I just stopped and said I could not drive one kilometer more.

Well at one o clock in the morning we ended in a police station s yard, where we finally could get some hours sleep.

In the morning the officer who spoke English told me that it all was for our security , and I could answerer that to drive by night in a traffic like this with the high lights in my eyes was more dangerous than anything ells.

To get started again took a good deal of the morning. To get the BB turned in the yard was a difficult job and several onlookers turned up at the street in front of the police station.

Back at the road the whole story from yesterday went on and on again. Armed men in a Toyota staring in my face some times driving very slowly, which made our Brocutu mad as hell; he wanted to go home as fast as possible

I had to beg for a brake at lunchtime, and we had our lunch in the BB with several policemen around us and around them a lot of specters.

And the night came and it seemed that this time we could stop at an ordinary service station , but no everything settled the owner of the place could tell that the security department had order us to an other place only 30 km from there, it was such a calm place he said.

And the night from yesterday went on an other time. Well the yard was a little bigger, and the start in the morning a little easier.

The tour was a 300km to Lahore where I hoped to find a stop for the night.

Really something changed:

From Lahore started a motor way fantastic a three lane straight road and suddenly no police van in front of us, and I drew into the first service station hoping for some sort of a hotel for the Brocutu, but there was non,.We offered him a place in the front of the BB, but he would not, preferred to sit in a chair near the BB.

To do his sufferings less, we slept only some hours, and took off early at 4 o clock.

I think that the motorway was among the best I ever traveled on, first very straight and then up into the mountains not too steep and very little traffic.

We arrived at one o clock, and here started a new trouble: the Brocutu had not got the proper address and had never been here before. An other hell started running after some cars who promised to help but without luck. It was late when we could lay down that day, but we where in the dry port, so they called the final place

Next day went smooth, We got a final place to park for the time it would take to get the visa for India, the Brocutu got his money and I embraced him telling him in Portuguese how much I disliked him.

And now to the next capital : to get our visas to India.

Text to 10 photos

No 1 In the canyon

No 2 Here they travel on the second floor.

No 3 The Brocutu with a policeman

No 4 The harvest of sugarcane is going on

No 5At second police station s yard

No 6 The lorry trafik.

No 7One of the many Toyotas in front of us

No 8 See how many passengers can go on a van.

No 9 An accident, he wanted to cross from the other lane

No 10 An other accident

05-01-2008
Well we are still in Iran.
The day before yesterday, we stopped a little before the dark at a P place, and when ready to sleep the police arrived ordering us to follow to a more secure place, we did not like it but obeyed .From there we took off in the morning 35 km to the town Zahadan, which showed to be a very big and a very open town, with large and long avenues .Asking for an internet café we had a taxi to go in front us and we arrived there before it opened, now it started to rain and it was also cold.
Unfortunately nobody there spoke English, but later on they called an English speaking person, it was Mr. Ali Molazehi He was Indian and helped a lot, first with internet and later he could inform that there was an Indian embassy in this town, what a luck, it should be easier to get our visas here before going into Pakistan
To day it was closed but tomorrow it was open he said .. We went out in the cold and had a lot of difficulties to have our photos taken always because of the language. We had planed to sleep in front of the Internet, but the police wanted us to park in another street.
And the rain and the cold went on.
With a lot off help we found the way to the Indian embassy just to hear that it was closed to day because of a holyday in India, but I happened to see the ambassador with a big turban, to morrow at nine o clock he said, We parked at the street in front of the embassy. The suburb here is a little sinister, may be because of the rain,
06-01-2008
At the Indian embassy things changed, the consul let me understand that it would take up till 10 daies to arrange ours visas, and told us better go to Islamabad.
At the same time the police arrived to tell us that they wanted to escort us out of town to the Pakistan border, and so they did have
The run to the border was on a good road as allways,but the rain started again,so we crossed the border under rain, and the entrance was as going 100 years back in time,on the Iran side beautiful buildings on Pakistan a mess of mud, but the functionaries spoke English, but the mess started when they discovered that we did not have the dammed document. End of the day, we are sitting in there parking lot, and tomorrow, we will go to a town with a soldier in the BB.
08-01-2008
The order was short and hard: you have to go to a town called Quetta only a little more than 600 km but the road is good but it should be done in one day.
The road was not always that good and when the wind against was full of and , when the soldier we had carry all the time called faster the trip came to a hell. It was absolutely impossible to make it in one day. It was more a rally than a tourist tour,and even the old soldier got tired, so we happened to overnight in parking Lott. The BB full of sand and very cold. To day we ended in Quetta, and the last end was even worse, the bad road went high into the mountains with snow.
The last 15 km of road was under construction and full of trafik.But we ok we are now here as prisoners in a closed area, but well treated. But unfortunately doomed to continue with a soldier in the BB, holding my passport as security.
But ok if Pakistan is considered a dangerous country we have protection
Text to photos
No1 Last from Iran
No 2 Pakistan border
No 3 Restaurant on our way
No4Our soldier and Dora at their lunch
No 5 He is a devil
No 6 At Quetta
No 7 The guardian at the deposit
No 8 At the deposit
أ

02-01-2008
To day we finished the second day on the last leg in Iran from Bender Abbas to the border of Pakistan proxy 400km.
The way goes at good roads over a desert landscape we have seen a lot of date palms and advanced agriculture in plastic tents, but dry it is , very few rivers show a little water.
To day s journey took us up a couple of 2000m up an hour slow going up and then over a endless flatland ,just now we had luck to get water in our tanks from a water tower.
We also found the way to a feeling station for liquid gas and had a bottle felled for les than a dollar and here ended the story of the little gas bottle from Spain, you may remember all the trouble we had to get gas for our kitchen, and managed to get a 2kg bottle. Well later we got a bigger one. Coming to Denmark I wanted to leave it at Brita's house but decided better not to, and that was good because in Norway we passed a place to get it feeled.And so on it followed us all the way, but now we are well off with bottles, and yesterday evening it got empty, so I resolved just to leave it where we stood, in a calm street in a village, and suddenly somebody hammered on the door two young men and three Women in black dresses , they invited us to dinner and to come in to sleep in their house, I told them how tiered we were, but when they took of they convinced me to take inn the Spanish gas bottle. It was not this time I got rid of it. Taking off this morning I let it there, but another woman stopped us, and back came the bottle again. But finally at the filling station , when I tried to have them field it, and they could tell me that this bottle was not possible, I got rid of it as a present to one of the men there, but taking off he wanted to give it back, but then we run away.
Text 5 photos
No 1 I thought that I could leave it here, but no.
No 2 Finally I happened to see a date on the palm
No3 There are beautiful date palms all over Iran
No 4 Here Dora found water in the middle of the desert
No5 A bright new mosque in the middle of nothing .