Well, for the benefit of others I thought I'd let you know that we have successfully been granted our Pakistan tourist visas. Below is how we did it - of course, it goes without saying that just because we did this, it doesn't mean you must do it too. Every person (and nationality) is different and there's always more than one way to skin the cat.

We successfully got in touch with Kamal from Snowland Tours, via the Gmail address listed on their page (the other address seemed not to be getting through, hence my initial confusion). Kamal was very quick to reply and happy to help. We put to him our actual planned itinerary without censorship and he suggested making some changes for the sake of visa approval. For $US50/person he provided a letter of invitation and a scanned copy of his official tour company registration documents. His amended itinerary included Lahore, Islamabad, Gilgit, Multan and Quetta. He was very prompt with the processing of these documents.

Before submitting our application I called the Pakistan High Commission in Canberra Australia and asked if it was likely to be granted a tourist visa if we were travelling overland by motorcycle, and I was told that it would be no problem. However, in order to be successful I needed to notify the Australian High Commission in Pakistan of our itinerary and provide evidence of this as part of our application. This I did simply by emailing my details and itinerary to the 'general enquiry' email address for the Australian High Commission in Pakistan, and printed a copy of this email to include in our visa applications. I also registered ourselves on the DFAT Smart Traveller website and included a copy of the registration details with the application.

Our passports were returned to us, complete with visas valid for 6 months from date of issue (entry only for 30 days) in less than 1 week! I was amazed and impressed that in the end everything happened so easily. Hopefully this is a sign of things to come for our journey through Pakistan.

Regarding the MAP, I got in touch with some people from the Pakistan Bikers Club, as suggested by Moosi and they are in the process of giving us some advice regarding our non-censored itinerary. I have also found the illusive MAP (Motorcyclist Association of Pakistan) - they have a closed group on Facebook. I've yet to find the time to reach out to them, although they have already accepted my request to become a member of the group.

I hope somebody else finds this helpful, as all the negative banter about Pakistan on this forum and others had us feeling very nervous about a successful crossing

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Jimmy
http://blokesonspokes.com/