Celebrating Pakistan

Pakistan is a busy place. The streets are thick with traffic and hum with activity, the train stations are positively bustling, and there is constant activity wherever you look, all the time.

However, as anyone who’s had a nose in the news will know, things have been even ‘busier’ than usual lately. Tens of thousands of protesters approached the center of Islamabad earlier this week, led by the wife of imprisoned ex-leader, Imran Khan. The protesters were calling for Mr Khan to be freed, and for hundreds of seemingly manufactured charges against him to be dropped. As a result, Islamabad was temporarily shut down. And Islamabad was my next stop. Of course it was. Thankfully the disruption came to an end the day I arrived, however and as aside, it tickled me when I was told that I should have avoided winter because ‘lots of people haven’t got much work and a protest like this is a fun thing to do’!

Travelling in Pakistan always has its complexities. Usually, however, any restrictions and warnings centre around the border states (including Baluchistan where I started my journey) and are relatively easily avoided by the average traveller. The capital shutting down like that is a completely different issue if, perhaps, an almost inevitable one in this case. After all, capital cities are where large political protests always tend to happen, be it London, Bangkok or Islamabad. 

This reinforced my sense that my timing has been somewhat off in Pakistan. Throughout most of this train journey, I’ve been pretty lucky; going with the grain on everything from weather, health and train connections to wonderful, serendipitous moments.
These last few weeks, however, have been a little less smooth. I was expecting some of these challenges throughout this trip. To be honest, I was sort of looking forward to them. I wanted this to be a challenge; I didn’t want straightforward. Duly delivered! Real life, real travel.

Even before the hold ups and detours, it didn’t take me long to work out that there’s nothing remotely vanilla about travel in Pakistan. On the contrary, this is much more of a cardamom pod situation: brash on the surface, perhaps, but boy does it give the overall experience an edge you wouldn’t want to miss. I’m absolutely loving my travels here, big time, but it’s not a straightforward country. And there was me saying travel in Iran was complicated…my journey through Pakistan has been next level. 

This kind of dual state of being – both complex and rewarding, frustrating and enlightening – can, and often does, exist when travelling. Challenging circumstances and great travels do, in my experience, go hand in hand; it’s not an either/or situation.

Pakistan has got real energy and an edge to it. A good edge. There’s a vibrancy and authenticity that has become lost to visitors in so many other places I’ve travelled in. There is tourism here, but it’s thinly, and somewhat unevenly, spread. There’s a fair amount of it in certain parts, including the jaw-droppingly beautiful Hunza Valleys where I spent much of the past week, but none in others.

We talk about authenticity a lot in travel. At Selective Asia, we go to great lengths to introduce our clients to a more representative and real version of each place they visit. However, on occasion (usually in places with the greaterest tourist footfall) this search for a genuine connection for the visitor can, conversely, lead to the inception of a sort of manufactured version of that supposed authenticity, created for the benefit of the visitor rather than the resident. 

This is not the case in Pakistan. I’ve travelled through Punjab’s and Sindh’s lowland planes, cut through vast swathes of countryside and stopped at bustling cities such as Sukkur and Multan, walking through hectic local markets and standing in the stillness of historic shrines as I go. This is the untempered version; a proper experience of the reality of the place.

Once again, the people I’ve met along the way have really made my trip. Sharing those conversations on the trains, and chatting to people in restaurants or simply on the street. Whilst I’m not quite as much of an anomaly as a solo Western traveller in Pakistan as I was in Iran, I still catch more than my fair share of glances, seemingly. I like to think they’re in response to my rugged good looks, but it could be the 6’6’’ tall, white guy thing, s’pose…

The landscapes I’m passing through are as captivating as it gets, particularly in the eastern regions for an obsessed orophile – ‘oro’ meaning mountain – like me. There are 5,000 unnamed peaks stretching over 6,000m in this incredible region, where not two but three major ranges meet. The Karakorams, of course, but also the Himalayas and the Hindu Kusch. Yup. Sign me up.

Through conversations with guides and strangers alike, I’ve started to form a mental list of ‘where next?’. I’ve not quite made it to Lahore yet, but I’m already salivating at the thought of the street food I’ve been told about. Where I’ll get to on any future travels here? Not to run ahead of myself (moi?!) but I hear great things about Peshwar, and Chitral, so they will undoubtedly be in my plans, then Shimshal and …the list goes on, and so do I. Despite the challenges, or perhaps because of them, Pakistan is a country I’m very keen to visit more of. But Lahore is firmly on my route this time, and I can’t wait to see it, and taste it, for real.

Day: 49 / Distance: 11,583km