Elsien's Traveblogue

Pakistan has been really good, after Karachi, very interesting, and absolutely lovely people, who like Britain and Britons (and Dutch interlopers) and don't blame them for Britain's foreign policy. Although the Baluchi and Pashtun frontier people are apparently quite Taliban-friendly (so Pakistan people and fellow travellers tell me, as well as Pakistani newspapers and TV), the majority of Pakistanis love to talk to Westerners and are very open, friendly, helpful, generous and hospitable.
Poverty is the big issue though. I travelled through the most fertile part of Pakistan, the Punjab, and found all these small, dusty villages: mudbrick houses, wooden carts pulled by donkeys, mules, oxen and even the odd camel; harvest done entirely by hand (lots of women involved) and schoolboys sitting in the court / mudyard of the school in groups of 40 or 50 or more, being taught.Many girls don't get secondary education as it's not free and in many areas there is no provision.
There are lots of historical relics, some dating back to the Indus civilisation thousands of years BC, others Greek and Persian, Buddhist shrines from before the Islam, ancient Muslim and Sikh shrines and old bazaars, British colonial buildings and almost all of these are cruelly neglected, apart from the very few that have UNESCO heritage status, but most of them haven't and are falling to bits.
I liked the small cities I stayed in, even though they were dusty and noisy (Pakistani traffic hoots and honks all the time), but they had real character and authenticity as well as charcoal-smoked chicken tikka smell and flavour in the evenings.
The travel was pretty authentic too: on local trains and buses and minibuses. I had to sit with the women, which was a bit of a shame, as they are far less educated than the men and didn't speak much English or were far too busy with their large broods of small children. I met a couple who could: a young woman working for a bank on anti-poverty projects (hoorrah!) and a Primary teacher, but her accent was so outlandish that I had terrible trouble understanding her. (Mind you, I was told by a Pakistani bookshop owner that he couldn't understand me, "What language are you speaking?" and told to speak "Classical English".)
I only met the first other tourists after two weeks here, a Czech backpacker, on an archaeological site and a Frenchman, retired engineer, cycling around the world, in the most Spartan hostel imaginable (the only one in Taxila), where he and I were the only guests. We were locked in at 8pm and I almost froze under the thin blanket as the temperature had dropped from 25 to 15 degrees.
Islamabad was quite splendid, not quite part of Pakistan, planned in rectangles, with a lot of green and trees, a sort of International Milton Keynes, and with one of Pakistan's biggest mosques. I stayed in Rawalpindi, only a few miles away, more like the small cities above and a lot cleaner and more pleasant than Karachi. Karachi really was the pits.
However, for cleaner air I went further North, to Abbottabad in the mountains - a bit chilly and it rained for the first time I had left UK, but splendidly built up against the hills, surrounded by forest and with a weird Colonial British area where some Pakistani regiments are now based, appropriately, as it was the British army area before. Nice hotel with scalding hot water and a terrace overlooking the town and the mountains. Lots of different ethnic groups of people in different colourful clothing.
I've gone semi-native, in the futile hope that a headscarf will deflect attention - it doesn't, at least not for long, but I do gain respectability and acceptability his way.
Here in Lahore I have also been given a shalwaar kameez and I still look like me!