Llew Wanders the World

The bus trip from Peshawar to Rawalpindi was generally unexciting. One brief point of interest was the appearance of Akbar’s fort, a 16th century construction that dominates the valley it sits overtop. Indeed, save for the fort, it was made pretty much entirely on the motorway through lightly rolling countryside, and just about as novel as a trip down the 401 back at home.

But there was no mistaking Rawalpindi for London, Ontario (or Toronto, for that matter.) The market area where we arrived was furiously busy. With the help of a friendly fellow from the bus (who spoke barely any English) and a shopkeeper (whose aid he enlisted) I got an autorickshaw to the part of town where I was headed. I was surprised to discvoer when we stopped for fuel that the vehicle ran on compressed natural gas, in a cylinder identical to those used in barbecues back in Canada.

Finding my guesthouse took a while of wandering around the busy streets of ‘Pindi (as Rawalpindi is commonly known), first since the streets were never named, and second because the place had moved, but eventually I got there.

I checked in (to the unsurpsrisingly empty dormitory, meaning that I got a larger room for a smaller price than if I’d taken a single) and went up on the roof to survey the city.

While there, I also tried on my Shalwar Kameez, and found it to be perhaps the most comfortable clothing I’d ever worn. My hosts in Peshawar had mentioned a few times that with my beard and tan, I could pass for a Pathan (a group of Pakistanis from the west of the country that generally have pale skin) and with the Shalwar Kameez on, the effect was complete.

Ready for a wander about town, I headed out to do some sightseeing.

I followed the innkeeper’s directions to Committee Chowk (a Chowk in south Asia is the same as a square or circus or intersection in the English speaking world.) On the way I found myself headed along a street which in typical Asian fashion held a concentration of a single type of business. The odd thing about it was that most of the shops on this particular road sold nothing but pet birds and fish.

The avaiary/aquarium street behind me, I found Committee Chowk and asked around to find myself a wagon (privately operated minibus) headed towards the Faisal Masjid (Masjid meaning mosque in Urdu.)

I stuffed myself in (luckily getting a seat) and we sped on up the road, soon joining the motorway for the quick trip to Islamabad.

Islamabad is everything that Rawalpindi is not. Indeed, it’s everything that south Asia is not. It’s green, spread out, organized, planned. It was designed and constructed for the sole purpose of being Pakistan’s capital. That it was designed by European planners and that development within the city is encouraged, but rigidly controlled is very, very obvious. The commercial centres of the city look almost like suburban strip malls from back home (if tidy, upscale strip malls.)

I got a thorough look at Islamabad before the wagon stopped at Faisal Masjid, on the northern edge of town. The mosque was an attractive building, set against the backdrop of the hills beyond the city. As well as being pretty, it is also imposing. Faisal Masjid is a modern mosque, built with funds from King Faisal of Saudi Arabia, and is one of the world’s largest, with a capacity of 100 000 worshippers.

Outside the mosuqe, I met three Afghans who’d also come sightseeing. They spoke limited English (and I not a word of any of their languages) but we headed inside together anyhow. We all piled our shoes into a basket and climbed the stairs up into the mosque. There were many tourists inside, dozens of them (including my central-Asian companions) snapping away with their cameras. Virtually none of these tourists were westerners though. The most exotic (by Pakistani standards) visitors were a pair of Chinese Muslims (who were scolded for taking photos inside the central prayer hall.) I wandered around the soft, smooth marble courtyards and the towering minarets for perhaps forty minutes before the call to prayer began, signalling that I ought to be going (non-Muslims weren’t permitted in the mosque during prayer times.)

My next stop was to be the village of Nurpur Shahan, just outside Islamabad. It was (so I was told) the site of a shrine to a Muslim saint, and Pakistanis comgregated there on Thursday nights (it was Thursday) for prayer and musical performances.

Being unable to find a wagon headed there, but having plenty of time, I decided to walk the 8 or 10km. I turned left upon exiting the mosque and soon found myself on a street whose buildings and gardens were pretty and well tended, even by Islamabad standards. This scene, I thought, showed perfectly the contrast between Islamabad and the rest of the country. Of course I had to take a photo to document it.

I heard a shout from across the road. Something in Urdu with the word “photo” in it. A policeman stationed in front of one of the homes across the road was calling to one of his compatriots on my side of the street. After a bit of sign language communication, I discerned that I should carry on up the street. The next officer I met politely but firmly directed me towards a small building, with large windows on all four faces. Uh oh.

I entered, and was asked to sit down. A man in shalwar kameez told me that photography was not permitted in this area. This was something of a surprise. I knew enough not to photograph police or military installations, or even bridges, but this was a simple (if pretty) residential area.

Several other men, all also in shalwar kameez took the seats on either side of me and started asking questions. What was my name? Nationality? Passport Number? Visa Number and Type? Occupation? Address in Canada? Telephone Number There? Hotel in Islamabad?

This continued for some time, with several of them dutifully noting down each answer I provided. After perhaps twenty minutes of this, a new man appeared, dressed in a crisp blue dress shirt and black trousers. He was clearly the superior of my “interogators.” He asked most of the same questions, as well as a few new ones. “How can you prove you’re an engineer.” Trying not to sound too flippant, I answered, “I have business cards back at my hotel, or you can ask me some structural design questions.”

This fellow took my passport, and several other travel documents, insisting that I count them and make note of what was being taken so I could be sure they were all returned after copies were made. He then headed back out across the road.

After this, all of the men who had originally met me returned to the room. They were very friendly and re-assuring, saying “everything will be okay… This is only a formality. We just need to verify your documents,” and so on. After a bit more, sitting, talking with them and waiting still another man appeared, clearly the most senior of all, accompanied by the blue shirted fellow from earlier. This new fellow was even more intent on finding something wrong with my story, excited at finding a contradiction in my story when, after having listed off where I’d gone in India, I told him I’d hadn’t stayed at a hotel in Delhi, because I hadn’t been there. “But you said Delhi was the first place you went in India.” “No, I said Darjeeling.” He was able to deal with this, but seemed disasppointed.

Further entertaining (in hindsight) exchanges with this fellow included:

HIM: “Why did you want to take a picture here?”
ME: “Because I thought it was a pretty, green, street with lots of flowers.”
HIM: “There are no flowers here.”
ME: Silence, because I was unsure if he’d be annoyed by my pointing out that he’d see them if he turned around.

HIM: “Did anyone brief you on this street?”
ME: “‘Brief’ me?! No.”
HIM: “You can be perfectly frank with us. You won’t be in trouble.”
ME: “I am being perfectly frank. No one ‘briefed’ me on this street.”

HIM: “Photography is not permitted on this street. You wouldn’t like it if someone came along and took photos of your house.”
ME: “Well actually I wouldn’t mind at all, but I do understand how some other people might.” This last bit was, of course, completely false. Indeed, it took a lot of restraint not to replace it with “if I saw someone taking pictures of my house I’d probably be flattered and invite them in for tea so that they could get some shots of the interior too.”

This went on for ten minutes before the guy finally left. With his departure the initial crew became still nicer, having someone bring me a cup of nice milk tea, and even turning on the television and digging up some English programming for me. True, it was Friends, which some might consider torture rather than kindness, but I’m sure it was well meant.

At last, around 20:15 (some 3.5 hours after I’d sat down) the blue shirted fellow returned, confirming that everything was okay and handing back my travel documents. At this point he also (finally) explained what was so sensitive about the area. Apparently large numbers of foreigners live nearby, and the Pakistani government is very concerned about preserving their safety from terrorist attacks. In fact, he noted, the Canadian ambassador lived just two houses away.

I suppose that while this may have been annoying for me, it should have even been something of a relief that Pakistan is so keen on protecting its foreign visitors from harm.

The ordeal ended with a jeep ride back to the bus stop at Faisal Mosque, where though it was well past dark I still managed to catch a ride back to Committee Chowk and to my hotel. It was getting dark by the time I returned, so I just ate dinner at the hotel, had a great bannana-apple shake from a stall across the street, where I sat in the tiny interior with a couple other customers, slurped it down, ordered another, then whacked my head on a bunch of banannas hanging from the ceiling on my way out. Almost immideatly upon my return to the hotel I was in bed and asleep.

My next day had none of the previous one’s drama, but was interesting all the same. I woke when a hotel employee stuck his head in the dorm window (I’d locked the door) and asked if I was awake yet. I quickly cklothed myself and headed outside to discover one of the men I’d met at the police post waiting for me. He said that he’d be my guide for the day, and would be able to let me know which areas were “sensitive” and which were open. With the way he phrased it I wasn’t entirely sure whether this was meant to be a gift to make up for my previous troubles, or if it was a way for them to keep an eye on me, but either way I didn’t really mind.

First we headed out to change some money. It took a while to walk there, and during that time I explained my day’s agenda. If he was meant to be an escort rather than a guide, he was a fairly easy one to shed. After hearing what I had planned he said “that sounds good. Those are all okay places,” then put me on a bus bound for my first destination and said he’d meet me at my hotel at 16:00.

My first stop was Shakarparian, a hillside park at the south end of Islamabad. The place was pleasant, if not exciting. There were a few restaurants, as well as an amusement park at the top of the hill. A few Pakistani families patronized the places, but it was (unsurprisingly for a weekday) a pretty quiet place. Its most interesting features were the (hazy) views of the twin/disparate cities of Islamabad and Rawalpindi, along with the grove of trees planted by foreign visitors. Many of these were mid-high level Chinese officials, and leaders from small muslim countries throughout the world, however there were also a number of names I recognized: George Bush, Helmut Kohl, Francois Mitterand, Robert Mugabe… No Canadian PMs or Governors General though.

After wandering through the park a bit I took a convoluted back route down towards the National Rose Garden. One really wouldn’t expect Pakistan to have such a place, and certainly not one as nice as this was. I’d hit the place at the EXACT right time (uh-oh… that phrase made me sound suspiciously like a terrorist) the flowers were at the absolute height of their beauty. The landscaping of the space was very different from rose gardens back home. Except for the beds right near the entrance, the garden lacked the intensely manicured looks of most western rose gardens. With just a few constraints to guide them, the roses elsewhere in the park were allowed to grow without much interference. I wandered through the place, and almost made myself faint with the amount of deep breaths I took to enjoy the beautiful fragrence of a plucked rose given to me by some of the (very few) Pakistani visitors to the garden.

Before too long I realized I had to return to my home-area if I was to do a bit of shopping that I’d wanted and still meet my “guide” at the hotel by 16:00. I walked out from the rose garden to the main road and with a bit of local help caught a wagon headed my way. Upon returning to ‘Pindi, I wandered through its busy Rajah Bazaar area for a while. I was there primarily to search for food to take trekking while up north, but the walk through the bazaar was modestly interesting in its own right. Unlike many of the Asian markets I’d visited before, this one dealt primarily in consumer goods, like TVs, small appliances, housewares and the like. All the same, it maintained a bit of the exciting feel of the more rustic markets in Peshawar and elsewhere.

My shopping completed, I returned to my hotel and checked out. I’d originally planned to stay until morning, but some thought and perusal of my guidebook during the day had convinced me that a night bus was the best option. My guide/escort still hadn’t showed up by 16:30, and I wanted to get a bit of writing done, so I asked the manager if he’d mind directing the guy to a nearby internet cafe when he appeared. Apparently official worries about me must have eased, since he never appeared.

My final hours in Rawlapindi were spent in a thoroughly delightful fashion. First I stopped at a tikka (marinated barbecued meat skewers) stand for dinner. The chicken tikka was some of the first meat I’d eaten in almost two months and was absolutely delicious. It was all I could do to prevent myself ordering more and missing the bus I’d planned to catch. This delicious dinner was washed down with two more bananna shakes from across the street which were every bit as good as those I’d had the night before. Culinary needs dealt with I caught an autorickshaw to the bus stand which was still very, very busy at 20:00. I didn’t have to much trouble finding a bus that would take me to the Northern Areas though, as it seemed that 30% of all the buses there were set to make that journey. I bought my ticket and after a brief wait (which allowed me to purchase snacks and drinks for the 15 or more hour journey) I settled into my seat, ready for a ride up one of the world’s truly great roads: The Karakoram Highway.

Tags: Pakistan

This entry was posted on Monday, April 25th, 2005 at 8:52 am and is filed under Pakistan. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.