Western Pakistan: escorts; restrictions; road conditions

[idf000]

Hi,

Arriving in PK at 2:30-ish I was told I would be staying at the border (Taftan) that night. There would be no escort that day. The PTDC Motel was shut (not clear if it was a permanent thing) so I was put up in some disused offices. They did cook me dinner which was nice.

Day 1: Taftan-Dalbandin: the first escort ran out of diesel after 20km and sent me on unescorted. The second had no vehicle and comandeered the doctor' car. The next three had no vehicles and after initially resisting I accepted that the only way I'd be moving forward was to have an armed pillion (increasingly grey and frail men). At 2-ish in Dalbandin I was told I'd be going no further that day. The Al Dawood hotel (the only hotel?) is fine. The people are nice.

Day 2: Dalbandin-Quetta: the road becomes quite poor although it is mostly metalled. I had one armed pillion for about 115km where I was sent on alone on quite a good surface to Nushki where I required an escort up the twisty bits of the mountain road (10km) and was let loose again for 100km until just after the Lak Pass when escorts had to be found to take me into Quetta. 8.5hrs for 330km.

At Quetta I was told that: foreigners cannot take the Dera Ismail Khan road (it goes through the NWFP). There was an undated police edict saying explicitly that foreigners could not travel the Dera Ghazi Khan road and must travel the Sukkur road. At the time of writing the Sukkur road was impassible for low vehicles at Temple Dera as it's under 4ft of water (too much for the XT). I was told I could apply for special permission to travel the DGK road from the home office on Monday (this was Friday evening). I chose the "dangerous" road south to Karachi -- more for something to do to be honest.

Day 3: Quetta-Khuzdar: the first 40-odd km of the N25 from the Lak Pass are dusty hard-core varying from four to one-lane wide. It is busy (with NATO supply lines too!) and slow and I was head to toe in dust in half an hour. In the end I had 16 escorts as far as Kalat and then I was free to go the remainder to Khuzdar. I arrived at 4-ish and checked into the grotty PTDC. The people were nice, mind!

Note that yesterday a NATO tanker was torched at Mangchur (just north of Kalat) so the view on the danger of this road may have changed).

Khuzdar-Karachi: at the south of Khuzdar I was stopped and told I needed an escort on this dangerous road. I was put on the phone to some bloke who said he was worried about me riding my bike alone to which I said I'd been doing alright so far. A minute later I was told I could go on ahead unescorted. A couple of escorts were thrown in along the road but mostly unescorted until north of Hub where I had about three to south of Hub and was let loose again. The road through Hub is poor and if, like me, you miss the unmarked expressway at the half-built roundabout (it's the second exit that looks like it heads into the city) you get to ride a parallel but terrible road all the way into the city.

As it happens there's been 40 people killed in Karachi in the last 48hrs including one in Lea market which I rode through (none the wiser, obviously) with no signs of violence or police. YMMV.

Several of the escorts force you to ride behind at 40kph. Motorcycle escorts are limited to 60kph. Several of the escorts started dropping behind at 75kph. Several of my potential escorts saw me coming towards them, screeched to a halt, turned round and despite the fact I generously slowed to 60kph never managed to catch up.

I'm not a security expert but much like Iran (see other posting) it's questionable if they're offering you any security (you're either not being escorted or you're becoming a slower more obvious target to any potshot-guy).

Cheers,

Ian