Rural Pakistan

The next morning our new police escorts were hardcore to the max!  We had two trucks full of serious police with mounted machine guns on the trucks.  They relayed seamlessly with each other until we reached the county border. 

 

Then everything relaxed slightly, and the escorts allowed us to ride on ahead, and stop when we wanted.  We travelled with the Uruguayans- the German had stayed behind to put his bike on a train to Islamabad. 

The scenery started to improve, and the rivers were bright blue, and there were pretty caves in the rocks.  Possibly they housing Bin Laden, it was definitely his neck of the woods. 

Kingfishers fluttered past.  Buffaloes bathed in the mud.   Adam & Eve giggled in the bushes…

It was incredibly hot, but the riding was excellent.  The boys stopped to pour buckets of water onto their heads from the wells. 

We stopped to recover and drink sugar, and gathered an enormous crowd of pleased onlookers.  I did a little dance to merit all the attention. 

 

We rode towards Sukkur on the main roads, and everyone waved and smiled in the cars. One kid drew up alongside for a high-five. 

 

Pakistan certainly seemed to be improving.  We got filmed on camera-phones, and pulled faces. 

It got very green, with lots of water.  Colourful women in salwar kameez started appearing, coming home from working in the rice paddies.  There were coconut palm trees everywhere. 

Mostly it was very rural, with occasional odd little towns popping up. 

 

 

One town, Sikkarpur, was a little… odd.  A lot of people looked ill in different ways, with limb deformities or mental retardation.  There were lots of gruesome butcher shops there too.  It was a strange place, but everyone still smiled.  The goat-herders took their creatures along the main roads. 

 

Sukkur looked to be an excellent town.  It was really busy and hectic, with families all mingling together in the evening.  It was so hot during the day everyone could only really come out at night. 

We didn’t see a whole lot of it though- we passed out as soon as we arrived.