June 17th, 2009 by Boris | Category: Travelogues | Continent: Asia | Country: Iran, Pakistan
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After surviving the bandit country that supposedly is northern Baluchistan (Quetta to Taftan) without any incident we arrived at the Pakistani-Iranian border in our shiny new pink bus. I guess that the bandits thought that no self-respecting traveller would stoop so low and hide behind bright pink.
The Pakistani part of the border was a breeze. Even though I had overstayed my visa by a day the immigration officer didn't even bat an eyelid and stamped me out of the country. As soon as the Iranian...
June 16th, 2009 by Boris | Category: Travelogues
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If, like me, you only get a 7 day transit visa for Iran and ıf, again like me, you find out that the money you budgeted with only lasts for 5 days, there's no need to dispair. It can be done while still seeing something from the country, mainly Yazd and Esfahan.
After taking the overnight bus from Quetta to the border at Taftan have one last milky chai (from now on it's only sugar) and then proceed through customs so you,re one of the first in line as soon as the Iranian border opens....
June 14th, 2009 by Boris | Category: Travelogues
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Back in Lahore temperatures climbed to between 40 and 45 degrees. And if that wasn't bad enough Pakistan practices electricity offloading so almost every other hour we were without any juıce and therefore no fans either. The only way to deal with this was to do absolutely nothing during the day but replenish your lost fluids and get active during the evenings.
One evening, we had just gotten back from watching the sunset at Badshaahi Mosque, Nıamat, our trusted rickshaw driver, was...
June 4th, 2009 by Boris | Category: Travelogues
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When we arrived back in Gilgit Joe, Jakko, a Finnish traveller and I decided to cross over to Chitral and onwards to the Kalash Valley to visit the spring festival and sample some of the fiery local wine (that last point might have been the main reason, Pakistan being mainly a dry country…). Unluckily for us, the snow this year had arrived late and the pass across was still closed for vehicles. This meant that we had to cross on foot. None of us was planning on doing the walk twice, so we...
