I woke up Saturday morning feeling really pretty ill. Lot of diarrhea, but I managed to squeeze an early pot of tea out of the restaurant, and that and a few lomotils got me out the door and on the bus.
This bus was an oldish Fiat,with an interior which made the entire body look hand-built. I was anxious to get to Peshawar quickly, to catch the 1815 plane to Lahore, and was very glad to see the driver get us started a half-hour early, and start just really ramming that bus down the road out of Kabul.
I'd thought that we'd go up to the Khyber Pass, but we drove through flat land east and south of Kabul, and then immediately down through this very narrow, rocky and winding gorge, a pretty amazing road. Lots of curves and tunnels.
|
I'm not sure whether that first stretch just out of Kabul was the Khyber Pass, or the part climbing out of the border with Pakistan. The Pakistani kid sitting next to me told me the whole complex of pass, lake, farmland, river valley and pass is the Khyber. The latter part was labeled "Khyber Pass", and had a few posts of the Khyber Rifles along the road. In any case, I'd wanted to go overland through the Khyber Pass, and I did that, at some point between Kabul and Peshawar.
Neither border crossing took too long. I was antsy about the Pakistan border because I was afraid I might still have a piece of my chillum in a bag, and because it took so long. But, my bags didn't get searched, and we finally did get into Peshawar in time for me to make the plane to Lahore.
Little twin-engine Fokker, it was dark and lightning and rain in Lahore, and since I didn't know any hotels there, I had the taxi take me to the InterContinental. Plush. Had an American-style meal, cheeseburger and iced tea, fell into a very soft bed in an air-conditioned room.
Had pancakes for breakfast the next morning - the first time in about a year - made my booking for the Delhi flight right there in the hotel, and sat around 'til noon when I went to the airport.
Met a nice American there, Hawaiian guy working for the Ford Foundation doing agricultural advising throughout Asia. We got seated together on the plane too, since we were the first 2 in line for baggage check-in.
Throughout most of this trip I've felt pretty blase about things, except getting to see the Maidan-al-Shah and Herat, but on the plane to Delhi I was feeling a real sense of anticipation - getting to see India. But the airport destroyed that. All pretty routine. Passport and baggage checks. Porters hustling trips and a taxi driver hustling a tour sideline. Now I'm into the part of the trip that Tom Davis advised me for - and he said go to the Nirula Hotel.
 |
Nirula's has nice rooms, good service, and a bar and a restaurant, but it is seedy, in just the fashion that Delhi is seedy. Damp rot, blotchy paint, holes in the walls from renovation work, a huge mound of abused hotel furniture heaped in a corner of one of the hallways, dimly lit and a little foreboding. But I have an air-conditioned room and a nice bathroom.
It is very hot and damp here. The climate changed right after the first big gorge coming down from Kabul, and finally by Peshawar, it was pretty obviously the Indian subcontinent. Lahore didn't feel markedly different from Delhi, or Peshawar. Hot and humid.
After I got settled in at the hotel, I bought a ticket for a city tour tomorrow, and had a few drinks in the bar. Met an American there who's been studying philosophy here for 4 years, and we chatted about our acquiring racial prejudices we did not have before leaving America.
At breakfast this morning I met an Australian woman, middle-aged, who is on her way to Srinagar for a package-tour trek in the mountains.
The tour today was long, maybe thorough for the genre, but very unenlightening. Delhi may be mysterious, but my curiosity is not necessarily aroused. Just another capitol city. On the walk back to the hotel I ran into a younger American couple who'd been on the bus with me from Erzurum to Tehran.
 |
 |
 |
 |
A business day. Shops don't open here until 10AM(!), quite a change in strategy as per hot weather. In Iran and Afghanistan, a lot of business gets done in the cool of the early morning.
I bought some traveler's checks at American Express, cashed some, bought 2 books, had lunch, and then tried to buy a ticket to Srinagar at Indian Airlines. Lots of very nasty-looking hippies standing around, crowding all the ticket counters, and I wasn't at all up to pushing and shoving, so I bagged it and went over to American Express to buy a ticket there. Even that took better than an hour just for a one-way ticket. After that I tried to get a ticket on one of the tours to Agra and the Taj, but they were all sold out. As that had been how I planned to spend the day tomorrow, and Delhi is otherwise boring, I'll try to reschedule and fly tomorrow.
Also decided today not to try to go to Uzbekistan. Probably would cost too much money, and I'm tired of the desert.
| Next page... |
