Tomor­row I’ll be get­ting up around 8, pack my things and walk the 300m to the bus sta­tion, where I’ll look for a bus to take me to Wagha, the only bor­der cross­ing between India and Pakistan. In the last couple weeks I’ve met many people who thought going that way isn’t really a smart idea con­sid­er­ing the recent devel­op­ments in the area. The Kalash val­ley, an area up north has been taken over by the Taliban, the risk of abduc­tion in Balochistan is unusu­ally high, viol­ence is rampant in Kara­chi, Osama bin Laden is sup­posedly turn­ing into a pops­icle some­where in a cave high up the moun­tains in Chitral and the Pakistani gov­ern­ment never really had, like ever, con­trol over the tri­bal areas close to Afgh­anistan. Con­tinue read­ing →