Globe Gallivanting- motorbiking across the world

The next day we set off in convoy, sat in the truck.  We opted for the rear of the truck and started in a buoyant mood, chatting rubbish and settling in on our drybags.  The Uruguayans followed us.  The German put up his hammock.  The Uruguayan boys jumped in with us, and we all had a party. A stop for tea in a little shack in the desert saw us taking more gun photos, at the escorts instigation.       We hopped back in, high on sugar and pleased with our adventures. Then the road deteriorated.  It wasn’t the best to start with, but now it really took the word ‘road’ to its limits.  We bounced over horizontal stripes across the metalled road, and were flung from side to side.  It became impossible to sit in the back of the truck, so we stood and ‘surfed’ the bouncing, balancing on the balls of our feet for hours.  The sun hit my face and turned me a pleasant shade of beetroot.  I wrapped my hijab all the way round my head and c...

We were at the Iran / Pakistan border.  We got ourselves out of the country promptly by sole virtue of our pallid skin.  I have little doubt it would have taken 2 hours longer at the very least, if we hadn’t been whisked out of the queue to the front of the line.  Adam met a scared Kiwi biker, crazily pleased to leave Pakistan.  He said it was ‘all going off’.  He managed to petrify Adam completely.  I never met him, and wish Adam hadn’t either.  The Pakistan side of the border was ramshackle and chaotic, but in an identifiable way which pleased me greatly.  We shuffled after old Pakistani officers in their excellent salwar-kameez denim cotton uniforms with badges on the arms.  We met some incredibly nice Quetta police men who sat us down and gave us real tea and biscuits, and talked to us about the difficulties in arranging weddings, and other nice conversations like that.  They laughed at us when we sat outside and ate our boiled eggs ...