Pakistan,Iran Dash

Glancing across the bedroom at the melodic wall clock, I notice three pants, two socks and one thong swaying away in the breeze from the humming ceiling fan, it’s strange how something so simple can catch your attention when you lay down to sleep in a small town somewhere in Pakistan some 20km from the Afghanistan border.

There can’t be many places on the planet that can capture a westerner’s imagination like the Baluchistan desert can, with it’s craggy peaks bursting from the washed out desert floor like rotten black teeth, the vast undulating dunes that cross the broken highway just because it can and when travelling west you always seem to notice those mountains just off to your right, out of the corner of your eye, the perfect hiding place.

We pass through villages with black turban clad Pashtun men passing the time of day, it’s difficult to forget all of the tabloid press headlines and take it in our stride, but we stop, drink tea and give roll up lessons to the bewildered masses.

At the countless check points we are told in no uncertain terms that we must wait for our escort because this is a very dangerous area and it is not safe to continue, so after out-running the escort we have time to take in what’s around us and the more we look the more we stare.

Having traversed the Bolan Pass the day before, Alexander The Great being one of it’s greatest toll payers, the Baluchistan area and it’s people seem real in every sense of the word, and I love it for that, these people wear their heart on their sleeve.

Across the foreboding plains you can see mud brick villages, open, harsh and in a weird way inviting and goatherds grazing in amongst the scrub with wild camels striding alongside.

Sat on the hotel bed, with Caf fast asleep, again the strange noises come from below, I don’t need to open the window and look, I can tell it’s a thirty year old Toyota pickup with it’s left front wing missing. Long Live Pakistan