Day 56 - 26 September 2009; Quetta

I take a rickshaw ride in the morning with one of the girls to go to the post office, but the driver initially takes us to the passport office after repeatedly misunderstanding us. The guard at the passport office helps us translate.

going for a walk, looking for a gig (photo Dave J)

photo Dave J

Meanwhile, Meg and Jen are passing the time by doing some clothes shopping, but given the inadvisability of going out around the shops, they are doing it from the safety of the hotel. The hotel has arranged for a tailoress to come around to show them some clothes, but clearly she had made some unfair assumptions about the size of western women.

apparently there is a string belt to go with this - photo D Jones

Later a group of us go to the ‘five star’ Hotel Serena for a late buffet lunch, meeting some more of our group there. Unsurprisingly, I have never seen a hotel with this level of security around it. Surrounded by a tall wall, at the entrance there is an iron gate followed by ta series of rising gates for the cars. Each person driving or walking in has to go through into the gatehouse to go through a metal detector and be searched by the armed guards, if they feel the need (they don't search any of us).

At approximately £5 a head, this now seems quite expensive, but some of our party are relieved to get more familiar food, like lasagne, pizza and chocolate cake! I guess this is luxury food to the locals, the families there being clearly well off and, given our situation, it's a luxury to us too. Meg is particularly taken with the Choccy cake.

enjoying our meal

at the hotel entrance - photo Meg J

We have a meeting in the evening and it turns out, surprise surprise, that we are not going to Peshawar. Apparently it’s because there was a suicide bomb there in the morning. Maybe we would have been alright to go if the last one was a couple of weeks ago. In fact, given the frequency of bombings in Peshawar, there probably was one a couple of weeks ago, and actually we would statistically be safer going just after one went off. Belgian Sam is still arguing the case for going, but he’s on his own there....

We are now faced with a three or four day drive to Lahore, and then out of Pakistan. I am considering getting the train as are several others. John and Tracy go to book tickets for themselves, while some of us ponder.