Sean's Travelogues

[Sean]

...I take another bus in Pakistan with dodgy aircon from Quetta to Taftan on the Iranian border- the locals' idea of comfortable temperatures isn't the same, having different physiology to cope and they just don't care. The whole southwest is a vast baked desert with no large towns and only scattered farmers and bandits: the bus arrives at 5am and I find a cheap place for some more sleep, getting to the border at 10. A few creeps around but not too bad and I only change my loose rupees for rials, rather than any euros at a poorer rate- you have to be at a height of vigilance with changing money and treat dealers with infinite contempt and distrust: border areas generally are horrendous for scams and hassle, the officials not the least of it.

As ever the same inability of officials to read passport details, including the two main things- the surname, usually thinking it's the second of the two first names and ignoring the surname on the next line, and the country, usually taking the last word of the UK title for some reason- 'Ireland': I try never to waste time correcting anything the zombies say. Then a new one for me was this nonsense about finding me a bodyguard, some rule I didn't know about, not having a guidebook for one thing and only some photocopied pages: whether it's to keep an eye on foreigners' movements in this sensitive area by the Pakistani and Afghan borders, or there are genuine concerns about vehicles being ambushed and robbed I don't know. I told them as much as I could what complete nonsense I took it to be, but it's the law and I had to wait an hour till this military guy rolls up; I thought it might be a money scam but it isn't. He accompanies me to the next town, me shrugging off the rapacious taxis he was going to go with and finding a cheap bus.

Plenty of goods moving in both directions at the border, unlike the animosity of the India-Pakistan crossing, the Iranian lorries being top Western standard; driving is on the right, opposite to south Asia. From the minibus I get a look at the fence disappearing off into the distance marking the border; there's the same dust, desolation and craggy mountains around for about the same distance into Iran as Pakistan and at one point a dust storm blew up obscuring the landscape, and further blocking your nose. Persian sounds something between Russian and Arabic and unless people have studied English, communication is almost impossible: words that are widely recognized elsewhere like 'bus', 'train station', 'street' 'coffee' or 'coke' leave them staring at you, and most place names are largely useless to quote, pronunciation being completely different. Further there are occasions of raised voices, joking or otherwise even in the immigration building, something almost unheard of in south Asia.

Swapped from one unarmed escort to another and visit several police checkpoints to see my passport and bag, all friendly and welcoming enough. Big argument with the minibus driver who tries to overcharge me and exploit a misunderstanding anyone entering the country may have: Iranians drop a zero from all the bank notes, so they call the 10000 rial note (worth 65 pence) one thousand, and the 1000 a hundred and so on. I'm raving mad at him and refuse to pay the bastard anything at all, marching off with the bodyguard to the police station: he's driven off with his few other local passengers when I emerge.

I get shuffled around in a couple of patrol cars with other police inside, each one carrying machine guns with big ammo holders, but the first big town here of Zahedan really doesn't look so bad, even if they say it's unsafe (it had a mosque bombed ten days later, killing 20). It's grey, low rise and sprawly with low-density population and a sense of being cut off from things. Managed to get a cheap but good hotel, arguing with the one place I thought were trying to take advantage and dragging the accompanying police on motorbike and car around with me; actually the country has 25% inflation so the guidebook prices are all out and maybe I needn't have been quite such a handful to the first hotel. Some places also don't have as much business with fewer tourists and the great difficulties getting visas with the political situation. I finally shrug the police off in the morning and get my passport back as they give me my last free lift- to the bus station for a bus to Bam: they watch me get on it, after even following me to the washroom beforehand. Bus stations are built to a fine standard, without south Asia's seething crowds and chaos.

Iran is reasonably well developed, if a little rough around the edges and still a largely inexpensive country, the very cheap petrol prices making for particularly good transport deals. More high security ID checkpoints en route to Bam with large mounted guns on roofs pointing out east to the hazy hot plains and mountains- there's a sense of fear over what's going on with the Americans in Afghanistan and Pakistan to the east, their troops also nicely stacked in Iraq to the west, ready to invade for Iran's oil.

Without any mistake about it Iran has been demonized by Western propaganda out of all proportion and is among the most developed and indeed Westernized of all countries beyond the West; the UK Foreign Office travel advice for instance is the same old absolute pack of politicized xenophobic lies and racism and no serious traveller out here even looks at it. I can criticize Iran but there are plenty places more psychotic than this- it's Europe's bridge to Asia but much closer to Europe in thought, culture and Abrahamic religion. The climate is also European with the elevated land keeping temperatures down: the desert closer to Bam becomes sandy with dunes for a while but the intense heat of central Pakistan is gone.

The intensity of light is high, needing sunglasses; this region is rather like the surface of another planet since though the hills aren't so high they're almost entirely bare of vegetation, an unusual sight. There's very little rain or moisture and minimal variation on the browns, greys, rubble, cracked earth and subdued mountains: all very serene and still, reflected indeed in Iranian Islamic architecture, which manages to be confident and spirited in a subdued way. However the atmosphere overall, as with all Islamic countries, is unstable, disturbing and the sense of control contrasting for instance with Indian diversity and freedom visibly on the surface.

The mountains throughout Iran have huge harsh jagged edges, hard enough to resist erosion over geological time, angular rather than not smoothed as liberal Europeans are more used to seeing: sedimentary strata is wildly bent and distorted under evidently enormous forces under the surface, all as the society is distorted by repressive forces under the harmonious surface. The sunlight as it falls on Iran is also at one with its nature- it's dazzling and uplifting in a unique way but with this unsteady glary edge- there's a sense of consistent sunlight striking everywhere the same, all as Islam's omnipresent, interfering spiritual zeal.

Near the bus drop-off I have the usual shouting match with taxi drivers and walk off, then get a reasonable deal as one comes driving after me; I saunter down the road to the recommended place to stay, unsure if I'm in the right area as the driver didn't seem to know, but walk in and find this English guy already staying there- I met him in Lahore in Pakistan and has been travelling on his motorbike for several years.

There's a long afternoon siesta in Iranian cities with the streets suddenly deserted of traffic and people, but even so Bam is very quiet- it was largely destroyed in the 2003 earthquake and its desolation is a strange experience with plenty of rubbleized buildings still around and others subsequently trussed up very uncertainly with steel joists. Biked it with the friend to the old citadel here called the Arg, seriously damaged by the quake but perhaps making it even more peculiar, a small fourth century town in this grey brick still with identifiable buildings and rooms.

Iranian women are far freer than in Pakistan, or Turkey or Egypt for instance, all often seen as more secular Islamic countries with Iran more fundamentalist- not the case in the least. Women of any age go out alone or in groups and populate the streets often in equal numbers to the men, rather than outnumbered 100:1 or more and kept indoors; some greeted me and the biker while in a restaurant, talking to strangers being no problem. In Pakistan though they say nothing and are basically terrified, keeping a very low profile and often in burkas where they can't even see properly, having to look through a gauze, really disgusting and saddening, Islamic societies having obvious hatred for them.

Generally in developing countries people can't give you directions, certainly not more than gesturing down the same street, because there isn't sufficient level of internalized knowledge, conceptualization or model of the world in them. So they usually want to walk with you, which can be a nuisance and may well have to be declined with the need to keep distance from strangers. Yet Iran again isn't so bad in this and you can get more sense out of them asking questions on the street; they also understand what pointing is, whereas the south Asians just look at a raised arm or finger dumbly and don't think to move their eyes in that direction- the gesture being just another thing they don't understand about you.

The buses are quality German makes with aircon, emergency doors and windows, and sometimes spacious rows of two and one seats with carpeted aisles, rather than two and two- and not the usual sealed metal death tubes developing countries incommensurately and brainlessly attach onto foreign engine technology. Buses here lack the constant confused movement of people on south Asian buses and trains, though they still let the odd cripple or waif get on before departure to beg up and down. Gentle muzak is played, though accompanied by patriotic images on the television screens inside, and similar background sounds are heard in shops and elsewhere; even prayer time wailings from loudspeakers are muted and don't bark down on the people so moronically, and people play Western popular songs on personal stereos. Relaxing well-designed fountains are another feature of the cities; it's basically a quiet country with quiet traffic- with road signs reminding people to wear seatbelts.

The bus muzak though is unfortunately invariably followed by a trashy, simplistic comedy or soap opera video- a completely anodyne selection to avoid moral transgressions no matter how remote: no violence or sexual or political content, or drinking of alcohol etc, the result being far more offensively infantile to any thinking person, and in the West I'd absolutely have the bus stopped and the police called if necessary to get such unspeakable trash turned off: I used my earplugs. The vague idea of raising standards through top-down censorship produces the same pop culture filth as the bottom-up postmodern uniformity of democracies. Moreover it was interesting noting many blocked internet sites- anything with the remotest controversial content is stopped with good software, also blocking access via cloaking sites; even the Wikipedia article Women in Islam for instance was prohibited.

Travelling up from the bleak southeast the country gets greener and richer but with similar spaciousness- the population is only 70 million, comparing with Pakistan's 165 and only half the size. Iran's has the confident feel of a large scale, diverse and important place: living standards are good though wages low; I found endless cases of being looked after by locals, from free bananas from a stall and free local bus rides to exceptional service in banks including excellent exchange rates- customer service is generally good, especially towards foreigners. It's a fairly easy country to travel in, just with a few oddities and tensions, from both within and without.

Women have confidence and are concerned to be seen to be getting on and abreast of the latest merchandise, though are mostly dressed in dark colours. The characteristic Islamic tense air comes from the confused attempt to reconcile sexuality by denying one half of it- women: sex is wrong therefore women are wrong; Muslims know no women outside Islam choose to behave in the way it prescribes for them and sense that they're nuts. Wider Apollonian rationalized norms define the culture and clash with the properly visceral and passionate, producing instead a proxy twisted religious zeal, a similar but largely less extreme situation as in Christendom; the scarf plus cloak make the women look like ghosts, a ghostly reminder of what the society has lost. Moreover there are no urinals in Iran, only separate cubicles, underlining the prudery about the body and principles and ideas placed above the corporeal.

Women however share the same wanting rooms and in town buses their compartment is only loosely marked off by a few bars, rather than a full-scale metal wall as in Pakistan: it's still always a smaller area than for the men though. The black headscarves and shoulder pieces bring a cautiousness about bright colours but are together with jeans, handbags, stylish sunglasses, make-up and perfume. They walk unaccompanied in town and seem to have every independence- in many places there are as many women on the streets as men, and a boy and girl holding hands is fine. The next step, you can see they're half thinking, is just to be rid of that ridiculous covering: they try and make the best of it though, wearing it alluringly- faces are almost always uncovered and you can certainly flirt with them a little.

They run shops and hotels, work with men behind ticket counters, read television news and show sophistication in their relations; they're put on long distance buses first to have another women sitting next to them, but can be in different places down the bus, and will chat to each other and across the aisles. There are also some obviously gay or transsexual men in women's clothing, completely ignored. Older women however tend to wear flowing all-over black robes, and dress gets more conservative in some towns further away from Tehran. There are also a few women with babies around begging, the sexual repression not much preventing ostracized lone women. Men wear the shirt and trousers international style, contrasting again with the Pakistanis for instance who all wear an identical traditional outfit in very similar muted colours, the religion completely dominating their outward personality.

Islam imposes its bizarre spirituality on women more than the men of course: if women's beauty corrupts men, there being something wrong with the experience of beauty, why not make all the men wear burkas with the little cloth meshes to look though, it being impossible to see out of them properly- and then all the women could wear what they like. The women would be sickened if their awareness was raised of what this imposition is expressive of in more conservative countries, and it's hard to understand why Iran trashed its own fine Zoroastrianism in the 16th century for this stuff from another country. You soon feel though that many ordinary people do sense the contradictions and don't think things are right, and will begin to ask me what I think about their country and indeed about Islam- which of course I reply to in vaguest terms. There's a national election in a few weeks and the current Iranian president seems unpopular particularly for his stance against the West; no doubt some of the hospitality comes from concern about the country's image abroad.

Unfortunately there's still no queuing, just the usual idiotic mass of barging and pushing in, and the vendor or teller happily interrupting serving you to attend to some other loud-mouth, especially if any momentary gap appears in your dealing with them- I shove them off best I can, usually to their amazement. I bus it to Yazd, arriving 1am and get the guidebook recommended place; give a taxi driver a seriously hard time over the price but let him drive me to the hotel first so I was there, rather than be compromised with his cartel buddies at the bus depot, when I'd have to have agreed a price beforehand. As usual I offer the right price and then walk off from the scum when he refuses, yelling at him to get the police, and putting it to him he needs to agree the price with me if it's going to be exorbitant: he comes after me in the car before accepting the money, only a pittance anyway. I hate them- taxi and rickshaw drivers without metres certainly include some of the world's most unpleasant people, looking for every possible way to trick and deceive you, lying without the slightest compunction; indeed I have another extreme confrontation with another one taking me to the bus station the next day and wanting to change the price en route: nearly shouted the bus station down- great stuff. There's a scattering of Western tourists visible in Yazd, though not so much to see there.

There are many lighter skinned and tall Caucasian type Iranians distinct from the Arabs, though with rather distinguishing heavy features and somewhat jagged movements giving them away: if you dress in shirt and trousers you can often be taken for Iranian and they start talking to you in Persian. Bus on the afternoon to Shiraz, another developed city with no obvious poverty: there's a German traveller on board and we share a taxi to the hotel he's going to, a place popular with Westerners. Share a room for two nights as we were expecting slightly lower prices- he's a regular overpacked guy but not particularly untrustworthy.

A local bus and taxi 60km east of Shiraz are the ruins of Xerxes' Persepolis, the 6th BC Archaemenid site burned by Alexander in reprisal for the Persian attack on the Athenian Acropolis. It's worth a visit but in poor condition really with few of the original columns and walls remaining and only a few areas of stone frieze and sculpture, in what look like Egyptian-Greek style; there's an area set back in the rocky hill overlooking the site with images rulers of vassal states bringing Xerxes gifts. Not too hot here even in the midday sun; a few Westerners mostly in tour groups, the rest Iranian visitors.

The usual taxis circus once again on the way there and back. I share one with an Iranian girl and he starts arguing with her- I have it stopped and we get out: she pays him some loose change but I should have kept her from giving him anything, it always being worse when they know I'm a foreigner, but they don't know I take zero garbage from them. The taxis outside the site have another nice cartel going, with the isolation here: they laugh at me and I laugh at them. I try hitching lifts but so far down the road some men on horseback find me a share taxi at a good price- everything's doable once you're past the world's lies.

There's men's cheek-kissing and the usual hand holding in friendship or one leading another somewhere; Iranian openness also brings some invasive questions, such as asking for your detailed itinerary or where you're staying- information you never give. Street hassle is at a minimum though and hardly anyone approaches you, even if they recognize you for a foreigner. There's no alcohol but non-alcoholic beer is widely sold, quite good cherry or lemon flavoured. Interesting to see groups of men sitting on carpets for eating- only a few can sit cross legged with the weight forward as Asians can, most adopting some half-way position, most Westerners being unable to do this at all- another intermediate step on the way to the Europe.

I couldn't do an Iranian train, Esfahan to Tehran being the only part of my itinerary on the rail network but the station is 15 inconvenient kilometres from the city centre- too far to go to find out if there's a sleeper on a night train, and I'm not sure about any untrustworthy agents in town. The bus is only £3.70 for eight hours to Tehran, though breaks down for a while: I arrive early morning in cool air. Tehran's subway is ultra modern, with a few carriages for women only: there are no doors between carriages inside though, just small transparent barriers separating the women, and they can also get on to any of the other carriages with the men.

I wanted to see something of central Asian so I chug it over to the Uzbek embassy on the far side of town, beyond the end of the metro to take a bus, where I get the customary genuine assistance from driver and passengers- they're pro-active people. Similar to Russia and other former Soviet states however who like to control and record movement and still seem to think they're in the Cold War, there's an officious waiting time of at least a week plus costs including letter of introduction from the British embassy: onward tourist visas are discouraged and it's best to get them from your home country over whatever time period. In this area of the city it's interesting to see the mountains rise with tremendous abruptness, seemingly a sheer face of rock topped with snow, like perhaps a giant tsunami coming at you. Also decided to risk some ice-cream, Iran being so clean: I hadn't had an ice-cream cone for about 20 years and pigged on three.

So I book a flight to back to Birmingham, one last mad thing being that there are few direct flights to Europe and you have to go via Dubai, which is south and the flight from there retracing almost the same route north back over Iran. And the English clientele from Dubai were a right rabble, and accommodated for as such by the flight crew: jokes on aircraft aren't really reassuring, only authority and efficiency.

The Iranians have a good level of awareness that the West's popular view of them is that they're crazy: perhaps there's a genuine Western concern that Iran is both Islamic and developed and thence some kind of threat, but surely the main reason for the misrepresentation of and belligerence towards Iran is that it has some of the worlds last remaining large oil fields. In the short term future of the present peak oil environment or half way point in consumption of world reserves, oil production will no longer keep pace with demand and go into reverse, causing failure or radical transformation of the major economies: the US alone consumes a quarter of world oil supply and is completely dependent on it.

Pakistan is being weakened and destabilized possibly to get US troops there also, discouraging any Chinese invasion of Iran: Pakistan is the obvious path bordering both countries, any route through the former Soviet republics meaning war with Russia. Perhaps Iran could even broker Chinese reinforcements on its Iraq and Afghan borders to pre-empt the Americans...

[Sean]

Antagonistic India and Pakistan maintain a quiet single border crossing between Amritsar and Lahore with almost no traffic or trade; there's little hassle bar a few official porters to shrug off or bark at to leave your bag alone, plus officials trying to push a poor exchange rate on you with black market deals in the corner of immigration. Some rickshaw and taxi creeps on the other side but just I hung around and found a minibus, then two cheap local buses to Lahore where there's one well known if small traveller hotel. It hosts some interesting, far out traveller characters and I noted that I had to come to a more insecure and less popular country to meet such a group of friendly people, even if they were the last Westerners I'd see Pakistan. It's 9th May, my birthday and I'm 40.

The buses have a metal screen separating off their front third for women, its door opened and closed carefully again by the ticket staff only: there's also a separate door on and off the bus for them so you can hardly see them at all- totally bananas. Friendly atmosphere among the men, I suspect partly with reference to the possible thoughts of a foreigner as they perceive me forming. Lahore has occasional violence but is largely safe and orderly and certainly with less of India's deceit and stratagems for money; Pakistan is slightly less developed than India with fewer good vehicles seen and less English spoken- hot dusty rows of low rise stalls and shacks line the roads and everything is a little more subdued and less colourful.

Pakistan is a populous country but only a sixth that of India: there are fewer beggars, less rubbish and better attitudes from shop owners to let you browse without interference, pestering and surreptitious talk and distractions: they're not so desperate or foolishly excitable. Pakistan is a conservative rather than secular Islamic country, the great majority of the men wearing traditional loose top and trousers in monochromes of white, grey, light brown or light blue, with just a few in shirt and trousers and even fewer in tee shirts. Women, when there are any around even to glance at, are in similar but darker colours or black, wearing all-over robes plus an often contrasting headscarf with slits, or grotesque burka grids ever the eyes, even in this heat: as usual in Islamic countries men outnumber women on the streets by 10:1 to 100:1 or more. With everyone in similar clothes it's also harder to identify people, their identity undermined.

Their lives are organized round the disruptive prayer routines and loudspeakers' fevered mournful chant, this bizarre, abrupt and unwarranted scary passion, whether you want to hear it or not; the sad tones even seem to be asking what have we done to ourselves. People's voices can become suddenly angry and loud despite the surface calm, and it doesn't feel as safe as India, despite the politeness and lack of touts.

Visually Lahore is easier on the eye yet the air is tense and with none of India's remarkable spiritual sense of yourself bouncing back at you when you pause on the streets: the peace as such here comes instead from a disciplined, conformist social surface. The subjugation of women, almost none on streets here as in most Islamic countries, makes it like a vast gay zone; Islamic countries though are anathema to the West for further reasons, including their challenge to Christianity and frequent strategic and oil rich locations- downplayed by Western media. There's an obviously feeling of being put upon from its two main borders, the Americans and the fighting to the northwest, and preponderant and more swiftly developing India to the east.

Got a train ticket no problem to Sahiwal for tomorrow morning. Then via a bus or two I take a walk through the walled old town area with narrow streets often only a couple of metres wide, similar to many similar Indian towns off their main roads, except yet drabber and filthier here; friendly and dignified people with no low life to bother you. Walking back I encounter a large political demonstration against US drone bombing- many thousands marching down the closed main road with Pakistan flags and signs saying Go America go- rubbish English as ever, trying to mean the opposite. Had to be somewhat wary of it and even one local I spoke to suggested I avoid it, but no problems and it was still going on even after I spent an hour in an English book stalls street. Dust covered jumble sale books printed decades ago are somehow shipped over here including editions from decades back and National Geographics even from the 50s: I bought some Shakespeare to raise the tone.

Found this large mosque-tomb complex, very clean and white and was allowed in okay; shoes off of course but no pushing or barging unlike in some Indian temples. A momentary prayer to Allah then found some sleep on the floor, alongside many men lying down, I think waiting on this Sunday for the next prayer time; no women. As I stood facing the small enclosure at the front of the hall, people making their way out noticed and made their way behind me rather than across in front- very respectful, and indeed people generally are pleased to see Westerners. Pakistanis want recognition and peace and they're only pacifist Indian stock, yet they persist with this religion from the Mughal invaders with its inherent stresses and nothing to do with the subcontinent's traditions: there are indications however that there's a real sense in some people that maybe what they're doing and who they're trying to be isn't quite right, but that they can't drop it. Deep down they know they're from one of the world's greatest cultures not the present nonsense, and perhaps there'll be a Hindu reunification some day. Locals may insist Pakistanis and Indians are all the same really; they're a concerned people unsure about themselves and foreign influence taking advantage of the sectarian insecurity.

It seems never to occur to Islamic societies that you can have freedom as well as order. The repressive behavioural religious codes are accepted because it isn't understood that the codes indeed needn't be foregrounded and insisted on as cultural norms: instead people can behave just fine without everyone so outwardly being the same and insisting on fixed doctrine. Freedom and difference can be normalized so that people have both a fixed structure to hold onto and room for anyone who can to think beyond the system. Without scope for departure from the fearful majority Moslems will always be crushing themselves; it's worse even than Western postmodernism and its ubiquitous brainless pop culture.

The failure to conceive of freedom alongside order reflects the sexual repression inherent in Abrahamic or Christian-Judeo-Islamic societies, including its influence in India, where women's natural self-expression and beauty, allure and wonder is then necessarily seen as some kind of corrupted promiscuity or flirtation. Wider Apollonian and Western civilization and its Abrahamic religions has difficulty reconciling sex because of its Dionysian nature, providing repression via either Christianity's patriarchy or Islam's open misogyny: if reality is principles, issuing from rationality's predominance in masculine psychology, then women and their more intuitive psychology are indeed unacceptable.

The attempt is to squash sexuality in a deep contempt for their own humanity, in the wider framework of arbitrary controlling Apollonian principles Moslems identify with. Hinduism and dharmic religions with their conception of different right action for different individuals and circumstances, despite India's 800 years of Abrahmanic overlords, embody the Dionysiac more, with Hindu society indeed characterized by it's own chaos and delight. One irritating thing in Islamic countries is then being asked if you're married and when you're not, them looking at you with wide eyes, assuming you therefore have no sexual experience, dating and any association of the sexes outside of marriage being beyond their dumb comprehension. The downgrading of women also downgrades their temperament's natural moderating influence, adding to the manic, rudderless masculine neurosis.

Chai or tea stands serve tea in a cup and saucer instead of the Indians' glass to burn your fingers- how civilized. Again though there's the amazing cluelessness in restaurants, waiters gawping at you, coming to the table for bizarre reasons like repositioning a glass or putting a top on a bottle, moving their hands around in clumsy ways and invading your space. They have great uncertainty with what they're doing, placing stuff on the table carefully and then looking at you terribly anxiously, their thinking not organized by procedure.

You also have to politely explain that a bill or check-bill is something you check- and needs itemizing with prices adding up to the total, not just one being invented out of thin air: they get confused and offended and stand leering in idiotic horror as you insist that you give yourself time to go over everything, even seeing the menu prices again to check, and even for small amounts. There are endless difficulties these cultures present where necessary and clear headed Western thinking clashes with poor local practice and you have to be absolutely clear with yourself about what you need to do despite any levels of consternation it generates in others- which in fact much of the time does then make them think.

The Sahiwal train has similar internal design to Indian trains though simpler and smaller scale; vast, flat and roasting hot but cultivated land is seen out the window. The town is pretty far-flung and more central Asian looking, dusty but spirited with roads disappearing off into the desert. Near here is the rather special Harappa excavation site of the Indus valley civilization, contemporary with the world's earliest civilizations of Egypt and Mesopotamia: it ended in 1700BC but dates back to the mid third millennium. I found a bus, minibus and motorbike to get to this small museum and isolated areas of only the bases of walls marking out the buildings, rooms and walkways of the settlement, elegantly laid out seemingly to avoid congestion and stretching over hundreds of metres: quite an experience to see one of the famous places where Hinduism and the Vedas or sacred texts either originated or were further developed. One or two locals walking through the path going to the next village but otherwise I'm the only one there.

There are fewer cows around but more buffaloes, huge like dinosaurs, and pony and carts; also seen are variously dead pigs, boars and a horse, decomposing in holes or foul streams by the road. There are more cases of elephantiasis victims begging on the streets with legs distorted and swollen several times normal size from parasites; hotels can have bed bug infestations on the sheets and rats in the corridor or by the reception, or in restaurants. Some very light Caucasian-type skin starts to appear, alongside very dark.

Pakistan is a transitional country between south Asian dharmic and Middle eastern and Western Abrahamic religious backgrounds. The society has a refreshing interconnectedness but still unfortunately goes nowhere and needs complementing with more directed linear thought. People are concerned to give a good impression of Pakistan though and are often kind; they laugh more and perhaps have more sophistication than north Indians. They stare at you and if not as moronically as the Bangladeshis, it's still a nuisance: obviously I'm observing them the same as them me, but when you think they've had enough they come back and stare some more; pointing out what they're doing has no effect as it doesn't occur to them that it's unpleasant. I stare back and maybe for a moment they'll wonder why I question them, but they just don't know what intrusiveness or personal space is. Particularly when I get this journal out and write a few lines people come over and just face you directly, oblivious to my trying to tell them you don't do that: they hardly know what writing is or that you might take an interest in such detailed activity, away from the practicalities of farming and basic needs.

Another case of odd behaviour is when you go to buy a can of drink from a stall and pick one from the basketful they've got- the vendor then reaches for more for you and you have to stop him opening them and ask him what the hell he's doing. There's a lot of confusion with yes and no answers, them standing there confused at your nodding and just asking you again: particularly they do not understand or respond to eye movements and seeing you look at things.

I get to Multan, among the world's hottest locations and buy another aircon train ticket for tonight: still no queuing of course at the counter, me shouting at and pushing them away from pushing in, but only looking at me with surprise- they're breaking no rules. I take a walk round, many of the roads somewhat smaller and more winding than typical in India and there's little of much interest; mobile phones still infect the place, people clutching onto them in their alienated world. Back on the station platform police came over while a couple of young men were talking to me, checking if there was any problem, a gesture I haven't come across before. A fence is built down the middle of the rail track to stop the usual practice of climbing down, across and back up the other side rather than use the footbridge, regardless of the danger of electric cables and fast through trains: it's lost some of its metal bars though, so people still cheerfully get through. The whole scene however is much cleaner than in India.

Watched a street brawl between two people, something that virtually never happens in India or anywhere in southeast Asia with their understated religious backgrounds, certainly on none of my trips. Pakistan is an odd combination of apparent peace and security plus gloom and foreboding, providing an unease not at all found in the Indians; police are meaner, more active and more armed. The uncertainties in jettisoning their own spiritual heritage for Islam no doubt underlie the extremist contingent, reflecting tension in people having to identify with something they're not sure about. The Americans and Western interests take advantage of the ongoing violence between different Pakistani groups and add to the flux with their Taliban associates.

I make it to Sukkur in Sindh province, another dusty sauna of a town with too many people but with a good range of produce in the markets and an interesting giant fish and fruits area inside a decrepit barn about to collapse; the power supply going off several times a day and night is unpleasant, cutting off the fan or aircon for cooling in the room. There are women beggars in burkas on the streets, just black shapes whose facial expressions, intelligence, life and personhood can't be read or reacted to, making it easier to treat them as less than human, which is what Islam obviously wants to take them to be: all as a torture victim with their head in a bag, women's garb cuts them off from the world as much as you from them, making abuse easier all round. The mindless can just treat them as a shape, all that they can see, in line with the religious-cultural system intolerant of anything outside the masculine rational paradigm, devoid of sensuality or beauty: you have to remember consciously there's a person inside you can't see.

One man on the train tried to get slightly annoyed with me saying to tell my government and people to get out of Pakistan and the region: I guess you only need a few goons and something nasty could happen to Caucasians here, regardless of how much you might be in agreement with their views. Indeed it's those Westerners who have no regard for Pakistan and only agree with outside interference who'd never visit, not us travellers who're genuinely interested. Most people do realize this of course and appreciate my presence, though I've been saying I'm from Ireland when pressed for nationality, with the US-UK pact involved in the northwest. In the intersection outside the hotel in Sukkur there was some kind of lengthy political rant broadcast from a podium, the damn place really on-edge and it's hard to avoid these political gatherings: from my room I could discern the words jihad, USA, George Bush, Obama, Iran and Iraq; police drive round in jeeps with manned guns out the top.

I was also pleased to leave the Sukkur hotel as the rooms faced south-west with the sun hitting the concrete walls with the intensity to pass through, making them hot to touch- horrible conditions. Early the next morning while still dark I found a rickshaw but with a driver boneheaded enough to take me to the wrong train station much further away, me getting him to stop to try to communicate to whomever we could on the way. It was stressful and I'm livid at him and only pay him peanuts, but actually it turns out for the best as the train began there and I got a bunk and slept some more; a young child with paralysed legs gets lifted on the train to beg- very bad, crawling around with sad eyes. I'm going further south to Mohenjo-daro, the most important of the ancient Indus valley sites.

It's pretty remote and I get off the train a few hours later in the middle of nowhere, with no more than endless parched fields of earth and a few trees and buildings in the distance. Tipped a bucket of water over myself at the little station to cool down, but clothes still completely dry again in minutes. I get a cheap shared pony cart ten kilometres down the road, attracting jokes from the few locals mostly on other carts, passing through one village and out onto another road; blinding sunlight off the white sandstone ballast road and other light surfaces around. Get to the site and take a nice large hotel room with aircon in the residence handily located there, getting some more sleep, midday being far too hot to walk the ruins anyway. Several places I've noticed now there's only hot water available, something I have no use for at all- I take showers to cool down but locals just don't need it.

In the entrance book there are two or three foreign visitors a week, partly thanks to a small airport nearby; I attempted a walk to the first set of ruins in the afternoon but soon gave it up with the heat and had to wait till 6pm for things to cool off enough. I shrug off the 'guides'- they have rubbish English and know nothing anyway, just local farmers who've fudged it into another job and want tips, and in the first place have no idea what learning is about anything anyway: I try to give them a moment if I must before walking on, avoiding making enemies. The Pakistanis are not so bad as the Indians though regarding money and deceit and you don't usually need quite the same severity and heartlessness dealing with them.

Mohenjo-daro was buried until excavations from the 1920s and is far more extensive, well preserved and interesting than Harappa, comprising several compact town areas across a few square kilometres: no roofs of course but complexes of tall thick grey brick walls- rooms, platforms, corridors, steps, roads, hilltop monuments, in many areas with the structures well above head height. Everything being deserted with almost the whole place to myself makes it very still and mysterious- it's 4000 years old and with the evening shadows quite otherworldly and evocative, reminding me of the ruins in the science fiction series The Martian chronicles. Also a curious aesthetic feel to the way the buildings rise upwards on banks on either side of paths; the Indus river is somewhere in the distance, beyond desiccated meadow and tough bush.

I get a share rickshaw and minibus direct to Larkana, another dull undeveloped small scale town with a train from there to Quetta at 2am. I have to get myself a room with aircon for the daytime hours though, the heat is so horrendous and indeed a health hazard for Caucasians. These conditions are probably as extreme as I've ever experienced, the sunlight coming down like a tonne of bricks and all surfaces turning into radiators, pouring off hot air- even late afternoon you can feel the air on your eyeballs, like opening an oven door. The place perhaps has a certain character to it, a kind of unremittingness; some genuine help shown me in finding an internet cafe, which is more than can be said for many places.

It's a nicer hotel for 12 euros with these thick deep red curtains and carpets everywhere, a rather Arabian style; a man with a machine gun with a huge ammo holder walks into a nearby room, the crazies. The restaurant has some lower status person sweeping the floor though, as typical in India, even with the fans going and throwing up the dust while food being served. Anything like a good restaurant is a foreign import and the proper understanding of its working is nil: its underlying practices and aren't understood since they really issue from a distant culture that introduced them over long periods for good reasons. The usurping culture doesn't understand what it's doing because the sophistication of the reasons for the practices are incommensurate with that of their culture- they're too complicated for them, even if it seems they shouldn't be.

As in India many lorries, buses and rickshaws have every available space painted up in rows of gaudy, psychedelic over the top patterns, plus plastic flowers, ribbons, flags and extra lights and so on: in line with the driven ceaseless popular music they play, it's pleasingly enthusiastic but completely tasteless. Vehicles as everywhere in the developing world are wildly overloaded and long distance buses have gigantic loads stacked on the roof, including huge rice sacks: they're full of people but look like the roof is about to break in and not particularly stable.

More examples of people who when asked a question either don't know the answer or don't understand what I'm saying, saying yes- dealing with the issue by just putting a positive veneer on it. Either this or they'll invent an answer but in either case avoid saying I don't know, with the uncertain assumptions it brings of actually knowing about some things in the world: the society generally just isn't on that level of predictability or order. Like India it's interesting to see the Dionysian welter of a society that doesn't refer to Apollonian principle ultimately grounded in an arbitrary system, but doesn't develop into much beyond itself either.

Even with less English spoken there's still no problem with the response to negative questions that plagues learners in many countries, where basically you say no to show assent to questions or statements phrased with not or no in them, matching no with no and not saying yes. Sindhi presumably has a similar feature as when the learner's language doesn't, it gets them into crazy tangles of yes-ing and no-ing.

Waited at Larkana station for the train from its scheduled 1.30am to 5.40am- nothing I could do though I notice some locals turned up nearer the right time, knowing something others didn't. The locals can sleep on benches but I can't lie down or even sit to rest for long with heat seething from adjacent concrete pillars like they're electric heaters- and this is the middle of the night. One of the station officials opens a waiting room for me but he might as well be opening the door of a kiln: I try to explain including in sign language that it's useless to me, but he just takes me for some crazed thick-head and no such people as I'm describing exist in the world. I find a tap and several times fill a plastic water bottle and pour it over me, soaking the shirt: as usual they later ask me why I'm taking a bath and whether I'm clean now.

In the developing world people are more like children in some ways, asking inappropriate questions or being socially clumsy and noisy, since in the West more sophisticated thought and behaviour is established normatively for people to internalize as they mature: south Asian societies are simpler here and in some ways they stay like children.

More of the inability of people to read very simple Western gestures, for instance you point enthusiastically at something and they just stare blankly at you totally unmoved and unwitting, not even glancing at your arm and taking you for a madman: apparently nobody points at anything- they don't know what pointing is, regardless of how much you gesticulate, the morons. For instance I pointed vigorously at the approaching train down the platform to ask if it was the one I wanted (it was) and the five men around me just looked at me with the unblinking eyes of an alien grey: no one moved their head a millimetre or had any idea I was trying to direct their attention, changing the expression in your eyes also having no effect. These cultural differences are really extreme and bring you down.

Another one- asking people questions by referring to details in a book or on a sheet really dazzles them: they completely ignore where you're pointing, say to the name of a taxi park you want, and begin reading slowly out loud the paragraph in the adjacent column on restaurants or shopping or whatever; at best they can only just read English anyway. The culture just has little notion of focus on objectives or attention to detail generally. They also can't read maps at all but are fascinated by them, holding them upside down: for a moment it can look like they're thinking but they're just rabbits in headlights and lack the level of conceptualization to understand a map.

Then they can't give you directions and will want to take you by foot- they can't assume a sufficiently complex internal model of the world in the next person and there's no talk about landmarks or getting around streets- their environment is more just disorder and change. They may fabricate a few 'right side' or 'left side' phrases though to cover for not saying 'I don't know': I shouted at someone once for giving me a obviously totally made-up answer in response to asking when a train would arrive, but he just smiled weakly.

Another example of the alien information processing and their difficulty with specific questions and answers would be when buying coffee and them asking Would you like black coffee?, my answer Milk please prompting only expressions of blank mystification and silent staring back. This sort of thing happens all the time, regardless of language barriers: as with the even more psychotic Africans you cannot have even the simplest conversation without these serious cultural blocks: physically and mentally the differences between Caucasians and Asians or Africans are enormous. Non-Western thought is holistic with fewer assumed principles and directed understanding but fails to incorporate linear thought at the same time, keeping part as well as whole; conversely the West needs to remember the whole and not get lost in principles stacked on the part.

Pakistan is nonetheless a more Western-thinking country than India and its chaos and Hindu strangeness, but with order maintained by fear and pressures to identify with a flawed system, blood boils inside people: individual insight and critical appraisal is flattened. Their discontent is under the surface and poorly understood, the surface propriety being unreal with little unity of outer praxis with inner self, suiting at most the sheep-like majority.

Roughing it again I get some sleep on the train as it passes through bleak brown-grey desert with brown-grey plants going off into the distance on both sides, disappearing in the haze; the rock strewn surface is like another planet and hills rise dramatically out of the plains. On approach to Quetta there are unusual rock formations and strata at 40 degrees or more, a bit unsettling just to see evidence of such powerful forces, and perhaps reflected by the unsettling tone of life here; Quetta is on a fault line and was destroyed in a 1935 quake. Some of the pairs of the compartments are curtained off for women and people are fascinated as ever by my activity, even just rearranging my bag.

Quetta is less than 100 kilometres from Afghanistan and the only main town in this part of the country- Balochistan province southwest of here to Iran has a low, widely scattered and sometimes lawlessness population. It has a strong frontier town feel as south Asia passes away to central and the Middle east: a striking transparency emerges with the streets, shops, people and service reminiscent of the West and matched by higher numbers of lighter skinned people- it's a place where you can be feel yourself a bit more. The lorries passing through in dust clouds provide a sense of long distance travel and movement on, and worldliness, strangers and clandestine activity.

Again there's nowhere near Indian style pestering on the street and rickshaw drivers don't ask for a big showdown over prices, just a few dubious begging women with children, but alongside others seen fishing stuff out of rubbish bins, all covered up and ignored by self-righteous men: you can get most people to accept any degree of injustice. The evening is warm but not so hot and there are huge stark brown mountains with no vegetation on several sides of the town.

For some reason there's only two trains per month between Quetta and Taftan on the Iranian border, so have to take the eleven-hour bus. Some aggravation getting to the station, a case of the local bus door man saying 'Yes' to 'Do you go to the bus station?' subsequently asked in endless ways, but neither him nor mostly anyone else on the bus understanding- the idiots. Get another one back down the road and to the station to find I have 45 minutes before the only daily bus leaves. So I hotfoot it back to the hotel, argue for a partial refund for that night, get a fast shower and my bag and the same waiting rickshaw back to the station: even then I had to run after the bus, being confusion over which blinking one it was.

There's little or no concept of personal space or barriers, your neighbour on the next seat squashing onto yours and leaning and sleeping on you- you have to be firm and explain where their space is, though they have absolutely no idea what you're saying and at best may get a little embarrassed, sensing you know something they don't. There were also lights on inside the bus at night so the driver couldn't see properly out the windscreen- I tell the muttonheads and they ignore me at first, cursorily checking the windscreen but soon turn them off: it's standard driving practice but I also have a coach driver's licence. As usual the driver uses his stupid phone while going along, an automatic prosecution and loss of this licence in the West.

The waiting room at Taftan on arrival early morning has a small room for women and children to sit on the floor with a large one for the men with tables, chairs and restaurant service, providing the usual disgusting brown sludge dhal and oily bread or rice, eaten with fingers; they smoke. I get the same sickly tea, boiled with milk and sugar in with unclean strainers and bowls- reasonably safe though because of the boiling. I don't know why south Asians can't discover the egg and sausage sandwich or any basic cheap and uncomplicated nutritious food- they can't even feed themselves.

The woman are always silent, hardly even speaking to each other and obviously very afraid, with the men having this fake confidence and camaraderie: the misogyny seems to justify itself with the women's silence bringing them more prejudice and contempt. The men must really hate and totally fail to understand women, hate sexuality, hate themselves, hate the world: their prudish principled concept of life just clashes too much with reality, as if the world hasn't got enough problems without such neurosis. The system's questioned by a few of the men of course but I'm not sure you'd even survive whether man or woman with much expression of your individuality.

[DFO]

I suppose you've made a dossier to deliver to the proper authorities
(meaning the Foreing Office)? 

[Dr. Dread]

After he plasters these posts everywhere, he will most likely depart again.

[Sean]

I suppose you've made a dossier to deliver to the proper authorities
(meaning the Foreing Office)? 

As I said somewhere, no serious traveller even reads the racist garbage and claptrap on the FO site.

[Catison]

Aside from the odd political quip there at the end, it was a really interesting travelogue and a good read.  Thanks for writing it.

[Sean]

Too kind. Some people like to go on to Turkey but I'd had enough actually and it's surprising how tired you get inside even when you don't realize it.

[Solitary Wanderer]

I enjoyed reading that. Sounds like a very interesting experience.

I'm off to Vancouver for a couple of weeks shortly, and you may have prompted me to keep a diary of my travels 

[Sean]

I had a few weeks in Vancouver BC in 1997- it's okay, sun and rain, nice woodland at the far end of downtown; a bit of a superficial place though with adult-children on roller skates constantly round the coastal walkways, and people trying to keep each other in line too much... Enjoy.

[DFO]

As I said somewhere, no serious traveller even reads the racist garbage and claptrap on the FO site.

"I then passed through Persia, looked in at Mecca, and paid a short but interesting visit to the Khalifa at Khartoum, the results of which I have communicated to the Foreing Office"

Who wrote that?

[knight66]

Perhaps Richard Burton?

Mike

[DFO]

No, SH (ACD)

[knight66]

Clear as mud, thanks.

Mike

[DFO]

Cmon'man!. It's obvious!. Sherlock of course! It's elemental! (but SH
never said that).

[secondwind]

I envy you your opportunity to travel in Iran, a country I've never seen and may never have a chance to visit.  My previous impressions of Iran have come from a friend who taught in Tehran before the Islamic revolution and reading the book "Reading Lolita in Tehran".  Do you have any thoughts on the current situation--the demonstrations since the election, etc.?

[Sean]

secondwind, well I'd be suspicious of all political developments in countries with oil reserves that the US et al has its eyes on: in this case I wouldn't be surprised to see a Tiananmen type massacre orchestrated by CIA black ops- as part of an excuse for a forthcoming US invasion.

[Lethevich]

secondwind, well I'd be suspicious of all political developments in countries with oil reserves that the US et al has its eyes on: in this case I wouldn't be surprised to see a Tiananmen type massacre orchestrated by CIA black ops- as part of an excuse for a forthcoming US invasion.

I don't think that would be neccessary - the Iranian government has proven itself perfectly ok at randomly killing people by itself...

[Sean]

No, no, I meant a massacre carried out by Iranian forces but engineered by the CIA.

[Tapio Dmitriyevich]

I'm convinced, in maybe 100 years we have democratic countries, i.e. McDonalds, Internet, Gay rights and Mastercard, in all states on earth. Simply, because capitalist societies are more shiny and attracting. Earth, human society - they will lose diversity. If everything is saturated, if economy comes to a dead end (i.e. all markets have been conquered, monopolys at their climax) I think there's need for another world war then. Human beings remain human beings.

[Sean]

The elephant in the room in all this though is petroleum- the world runs on it, and it's running out; peak oil occured around 2007 and when it really starts to bite the US will have no choice but to invade.