Day 57 - 27th September 2009; leaving Quetta

John, Tracy, Gaz, Rhi, Andrew, Meg, Dave and I get up at 4:30 to try to get the train to Lahore. John and Tracy already have tickets in a sleeper carriage, so are definitely going. When we walk onto the station forecourt there are numerous families who seem to have camped there overnight.

Myself and Gaz leave the others outside the doors marked ‘ticket office’ which doesn’t open until 6am to find out if there is somewhere else to get tickets from. One man starts talking to us and asks us what we are doing here. He advises us that we shouldn't be in Quetta as there is a big problem with kidnappings. He then escorts us into the ticket office which is open from the station side entrance. After a long time queuing, it turns out there are no sleeper tickets left, and we decide we don’t fancy finding out what 20 hours in a packed Pakistani economy class is like. Leaving John and Tracy, we trudge back to the hotel at dawn, fully stocked with our luggage as we had been told we could not leave anything on the truck if we were going separately.

So it is another day’s drive under armed escort, but the scenery improves as we leave the desert, and there is some good mutual people watching to be done...and camels and buffalo.

scenes from the roads of Pakistan, courtesy of Lu Galbraith

man on his way to collect his wife and mother-in-law, probably

now wouldn't buses be more popular if they looked more like this

While on the road, we catch what we suspect is John and Tracy's train trundling along on the track in the distance. They later confirm that is was when we finally meet up with them in India a few days later.

We make a petrol stop in one town and there is a gathering of intrigued locals on the station forecourt. This provokes a quite vicious response from the police, who whip the spectators with a wooden stick to beat them away even though all they are doing is staring.

We camp on a cricket ground in the police compound in Sukkur, just next to the prison cells which I might normally feel uncomfortable about. However, if there are any prisoners in them, they don't make themselves known. There would probably have been some unpleasant consequences for them if they had as there is a gathering of guards, and families, mingling amongst us, more out of curiosity than anything else I suspect.

It is now very humid and uncomfortable, and I am not looking forward to waking in a ball of sweat in the morning.

Mario and Jana, our German couple, cause a bit of a stir by choosing to camp on the roof of the truck despite there being electrical lines dangling just a couple of feet above it.