The long road to Pakistan!

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Trip Start Jun 16, 2008 Previous
Entry Trip End Aug 12, 2008

  Karimabad, Pakistan
Tuesday, July 15, 2008

The vivid colors, cows on the street, the incredible stench, the poverty, the child like curiosity of Indians, the overwhelming crowdedness. These are all images I associated with traveling to India. By no stretch of the imagination has India let me down. It will take me the next 12 months of my life to process all that we have seen in done in just a few short weeks.


Within our first 12 hours of arriving in the chaotic landfill/circus of New Delhi we were splattered by a fast moving taxi that covered us in an unknown street sludge we now only refer to as "Delhi Punch", which could consist of any of the following: mud, gas, feces {cow, monkey, dog, human}, rotting food, and the list can go on forever. I must mention that in India cows are worshiped so they roam the city streets freely. So as you can imigin they can add an interesting element to the punch. It just screamed "Welcome to India Bitch" with a capital BITCH!

After 5 days of battling the sweltering heat and the pointless nonsense of trying to secure our Pakistan visa, we finally set sail for our adventure. From Delhi we traveled to the unexplored Northern territory of Kashmir. Before leaving for our journey I knew very little about Kashmir or the ongoing conflict between India and Pakistan. Even though we never directly felt unsafe, when it comes to traveling in this part of the world there is never any certainty. On top of everything, we just happened to be travailing during a time of high tension due to a large religious pilgrimage which consequently lead to really unique experience. The first bus break stopped at a location offering free food for the pilgrims. I, of course, jumped at the chance for a free meal. After I was done eating, a large curious bunch of Indians crowed around me. They were taking pictures of me and so on when one of the guys asked me if I was willing to dance for a two minutes. I was not sure what to say to this question. I really did not know what to say other then "Abby, I am going for a dance". They led me to the front of a big crowd of people and cranked up the stero. I don't know what happened, but I just started to shake it and the crowd went wild. After a few seconds all the young guys started to shake there money makers with me. It was really intense at this point. I had a big a crowd of people watching and I knew I had to put an exclamation point on top of this experience. I knew I had something special in my bag of tricks to make them lose it. So I went for it all. I took off my hat and started waving it around my head! Not just they had a funny looking white guy awkwardly dancing at there party to make it awsome..... they had a hairless awkward white guy dancing at there party to make it super awsome! At this point the roof almost came off the building.

From Kashmir we made our way East through the Himalaya's to a small mountain town Leh, just West of Tibet. The entire bus journey through the mountains was a "hold on M-fer" ride from start to finish. We logged 36 straight hours of bus-sitting already, and then decided to condense a 24 hour bus ride into one day journey. I really did not put much thought into how that would be possible before we paid for the ticket. Even though it turned out to be one of the most visually stunning bus journeys of all my travels it was also one of the most intense experiences of my life. We found out that in order to drive one of these buses, the driver must have animosity for everything good in the world! On two different occasions our driver got out of the vehicle to fight with other motorist. The last of his bouts resulted in our driver taking out a stick to not so peacefully have a high altitude discussion with two men about who should be the one to back up on the one lane, narrow highway. At this point the entire bus cleared. Everyone except for me and Abby got off the bus to either watch the action unfold or go to the defense of the driver. I am sure to everyone's surprise my fighting record has been less then steller, so there was no way I was going to get an Indian ass kicking on the side of a cliff in the defense of a bus driver I had deemed a "chod" just 10 minutes deep into the madness. Way before i ever set sail for this joureny I decided that the extent of my Indian bouts would be the occasional Indian leg wrestle.

Our next holiday destination was the ye old town of Manali. As we stepped off the bus we were shocked with a new set of unexpected variables to overcome. We were in a true tourist/backpacker town for the first time of our two and a half week journey. The town was a combination of a dirty gypsy circus, a little slice of Israel, and Indian tourist street bazzar! Think dirty gypsy kids walking on tight ropes, Israeli backpackers bartering with impoverished locals over 2 cents, an occasional Elephant walking down the street, and then the Indian tourist taking pictures of us! We did not know what to make of the hodgepodge of stimulants, but we decided to jump in head first. After two straight weeks of sweating cheap Indian curry we had no problems over indulging on yummy Western delights. In the mix of the circus we even found the time to jump off a mountain. There is just something about the sound of third world adventure sports! Once again like everything else with this trip we really did not put much thought into what the experience would entail before we signed on the dotted line. It turned out we were going strap ourselves to non-English speaking Indian with a tattered looking batting helmet loosely tired around his head. I am not going to even mention the state of the parachute. But since I was already $40 deep in the experience all I had to say was "giddy up!" Like everything to date on this journey it turned out to be a good experience and a story to tell.

From Manali we jumped onto another ten hour bus journey that turned out to be par with our experiences so far. Just two-hours into our ten-hour haul for some odd reason the entire front window of the bus completely shattered. After a few minutes of the driver shaking himself of broken glass, the he got back in the saddle and delivered us to where we are today! I am writing this from Mcleodganj, India. The home of the Tibetan government in exile, the largest Tibetan refuge population in the world, and last but certinatly not least the home of the Dali Lama. It was a unique experice for me having spent time in actual Tibet just under 2 years ago to see the story from the other side not to mention free of Chinese propaganda. It has been just 60 years since the Tibitean people where violently liberated from there land and the scare still runs deep. This is a topic I could and would love to talk about for days! From Mcleodganji with a short stop over in Amritsar, India we finally made the BIG jump into Pakistan!

I am writing this blog from the mountians of Norhtern Paksitan just West of Afghanistan, about 5 hours South of the China border. I have a huge update coming soon telling the interesting story of how we found our way here! More updates and pictures coming soon!

And so it goes! -Johnny Nomad

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