Hello all,

Salaam aleikum from rainy Lahore, Pakistan!

The free internet in the big library of Lahore, such nice bonus! Allah believes in speedy internet. It’s a huge place with beautiful murals, crystal chandeliers, gold-rimmed staircases, huge illuminated world globes, thick white pillars and old wooden library furniture. Filled with old books, it breathes literature in here.
Women section on the right, left section for the males. Here in the internet room, it is mixed gender, but the first row is for females.

open gate to Pakistan…..
We swooped through the border on the sunny morning of Thursday without any rash security checks and only had to fill in various forms on the Indian as well as the Pakistani side. Walking straight through both big gates, a special way of crossing on foot with us making silly poses at the white line that divides the countries.

At the little bookshop of Mr Latif 100 meters from the border (as lonely planet will tell you too) we got a first hear from him on the perception how Pakistanis endure the western media bias against Muslims; “One explosion in Lahore or anywhere in Pakistan and everyone in the world knows about it. 3 simultaneous bomb blasts in Uttar Pradesh, India (over 1 month ago) and nobody in the west gets to hears that!”
That’s what you get in your daily read; Hindu extremists in India are by far not as news worthy as any so called Muslim strike is.

In the local bus to Lahore, we flashed past little towns where people had put many pool tables outside, playing in full sun on the roadside. The whole road was decorated with *a lot* (understatement) of political posters, either old Bhutto party poster or the new one, which features her husband and son on it.
Everwhere. On walls, buses, carts, riksha’s, shops and wherenot.
Plus also those posters of opponents that we haven’t deciphered by name yet.
The bus was separated in 2 compartments where the front was closed by bars and an iron door. Maarten joked about it resembling a prison bus, which wasn’t too far off. The *containing* compartment in the front was for women and the back naturally for men. Women sit upfront, guarded by the door from evil men and have to endure a less bumpy ride than the men. Not a bad deal. Younger women were peeking through the thin bars and looking at us, obviously not used to seeing white foreigners driving the local bus into town. Also staring teenagers, like those who were trying to sell us sweet and salty snacks.
Lahore is a smoggy city though, as you can see here. Kuch kuch kuch. I’m not too bothered by it, but Maarten feels his throat polluted.

After some hustling with out bags and walking too long into a wrong direction we finally found our hotel. As indicated and through word spread, the hotel is the best one in Lahore for the backpacker’s needs, because of the owner, a former journalist, offers good guidance to Qawwali and Sufi music nights and much more cultural information in the rest of the country. Straight away we met a lot of like minded people who are also doing special projects by themselves by being journalists, photographers and documentary makers. Or even just traveling around. Not your average tourist hotel as in other places in India and it’s great being in such a place where people talk about their interests and idea’s.

Like the Correspondances Generation project of Alexandre and Benoit from southern France, who traveled all the way from Europe overland to here (like many people do you may have noticed). have been doing many items on several regions that they covered. Their website is well built and contains hordes of interesting clips, interviews and other local items. All in French though but no reason to not have a peek.

The sound of Lahore from our hotel rooftop, 17.30h; muezzins call for the Muslim prayer, amplified from many directions, while many big brown eagles soar the sky shrieking their bird call, some relaxing of them relaxing on the broadcasting tower next to us.
I’ve tried to record it but to no avail..either through low battery power or not being in the hotel at this special time of time. That’s why this written soundplay instead of audible proof.

Lahore itself is a bizarre city as it is much more western and cleaner than any Indian city that we have been too. Much more shops where there are even supermarkets that sell dutch food items! (blue band butter, remia sauce..what the hell? who needs nasty remia sauce in this good part of the food world). The people here are really gentle and come to you in a composed manner. Unlike India, where the locals just like to swamp and tire you with their endless means of overly direct contact. So it is a fresh breeze to be among the Pakistani’s, who take their approach more kindly and don’t feel the need to control or force you into their communication. Also their humor is a bit more open in ways of understanding irony. Yesterday even some old muslim guys came up to us, saying “Musharraf, he must be killed and Bush too” in a sort of funny boyish manner and asking us if we wanted to help them, hah.

The food is slightly different from India, though many of the same dishes still exist here. Just that there is meat. A lot of meat; beef, mutton (goat) lamb, chicken and fish. Loads of shawarma’s and tandoori kebab barbecue street cookers and whatnot. Tough for us, as the meat does smell nice. Mhhh, but I am looking forward to eating some spiced fish sooner or later. Also on the street there are loads of dried fig and date vendors. And they taste so good! Not like that pre-packed shit we get back home in the Islamic shops. Yum yum.

The good thing also is, that the people here in fact talk Hindi. They call it Urdu though, as the difference between both *languages* is just the script. Hindi links to Sanskrit whereas Urdu links to Arabic signs. But by speech, it is more or less the same, bar the small accent here or there.

The atmosphere here is really not grim as the western media likes to portray. The only people who seem a bit more on their nerves are the police men, which is understandable, especially at the police quarters where we have walked past. But even they greet us with a smile most of the time, while they casually sway their Kalashnikov’s or AK47′s over their shoulders. Riots, danger, protests? None of that. Just a city where people move around, work or do anything.

Like this morning, from our dorm room, we could hear a sort of protest outside but no one knew what was happening. Once outside, we didn’t see or hear anything. Even if things happen, you’re most likely not to know about it unless you’re right at the action. Some people of the hotel are already here for longer than a week and during the bomb blast some of them were quite near to the explosion so they heard and saw it. Others didn’t and only learned about it much later. One corner in a big city doesn’t mean a whole city.

Last night we went to the old city, to see the Muharram ceremony. It’s an Islamic ceremony that lasts around a whole week, where every night mostly men (and some women) chastise themselves by beating themselves every night with their bare hands on their bare chests (not the women though) in the name of a sacred Muslim saint and Allah. Many people yesterday were congregating and we stayed to see the beginning of the ceremony. Maarten had already been the night before with a Polish photographer and he filmed parts of the endless ceremony. This time it began a bit earlier and 2 groups of men stood bare chested next to each other, taking turns of singing and doing the ceremonial beating. The beating on themselves caused major deep purple bruises and many already had pressing wounds. it was impressive to see, especially more so as we felt the intense atmosphere. We were 4 of us, Brian from Glasgow and Jim from Austin, Texas had joined us and we were the only whites and non-muslims who were viewing this scene. We took a bit of distance, not to interfere with the local spectators and the families of the chest beaters. Several times we kindly got told to move more on the side for the obvious reason that our presence should be a bit reserved. On Saturday, the last bloody night, they will bring out the knives and sickles and will chastise themselves on the back and shoulders. Already we saw many men with major scar cuts and in some backstreet merchants were readying the knives and sickles, sharpening them with sparks on a turning stone.

We won’t be here anymore for that, as tomorrow we will go south to the town of Pak Patan where at the moment the biggest Sufi festival of Pakistan is taking place where the most famous Derwa’s will perform with vocals and spinning dances that turns them into a trance. This festival is just the best opportunity for recording and while we didn’t know about it before and heard it from people in our hostel, we’re lucky to have this chance.

This afternoon, there is live Qawwali singing at a certain shrine, which we quickly need to go to so I’ll wrap up this post. Tonight there’s a Sufi night at another underground shrine where our hostel owner will take us to. Busy day and days ahead.

Well, plans suddenly change. Our Polish photographer friend just walked in and told us that the Qawwali singing is cancelled, as well as the Sufi night. Because of Muharram. There goes our opportunity, but also our rush. Catching up with emails isn’t a chore, especially since our internet mobility in the next week or so will be very limited.

We got contacted on Couchsurfing by several people from Lahore so we hope to meet them tonight since our plans are all open now. One of them, a female, wrote in her email that she is a DJ. We wonder in what way, jump into an unexpected musical adventure?

After I wrote this, the power in all the library was shut off. Such power cuts happen a lot, daily and nightly, a few times per 24 hours. Amjad, another gentle Pakistani introduced himself. In his mid twenties and keen on learning why we are here and how we experience Pakistan. The benefit of a power cut is that you can talk quite a while and I answered his questions on European culture, confirming right or untangle wrong and truths. Especially questions on sexuality were interesting, to know what is punishable in the west, which are taboo and what are the freedoms compared to here. A very nice open minded person who surely is not stuck in the conservative thinking that many westerners perhaps may think of Pakistanis. I’m sure he won’t be the last person here in Pakistan to prove that either.

oh yeah, new photo’s uploaded here of Amritsar temple, embassy and border spheres.

here some selected:
Sikh style

cookies!

golden temple parade





golden temple

communally cutting garlic for the gurudwara food

Sikh guard at our holy hotel



our typist outside at the Pak embassy

same-high-school-going-as-me traveller Theus on bike

his cheer scribbled bike

Score. We got the visa this morning!
Signed and glued into the passport.

While we were waiting we met several European tourists who were handing in their application. Vidian and Armelle, a young French couple from Bretagne, were also told that they needed the letter of recommendation. Unfortunely for them, the French embassy were acting anal about it and did not want to give them the letter. That while they DID get a likewise letter for entering Iran earlier in the morning. Their second attempt at the embassy an hour later proved useless. And all while any other European embassy makes no problem of providing such letter for Pakistan -even if it has to be a bogus letter like the Belgian one for me-.
Except French embassies ofcourse, who are the sovereign leader in making their citizen’s travelling life difficult worldwide. Sponsored by your own national, how quaint. That’s not solely a judgement on the go, but based on the bad experiences that my ex girlfriend has endured with them in various countries. They proved themselves selfrighteous once more, as long as their diplomats, or say, prime minister can safely tour the Middle East whith his popstar girlfriend. Just an example ey.

Vidian and Armelle did manage to hand in their apllication with the strict Pakistani officer excepting them and collecting the fees for the visa. We won’t say how, that’s a secret beyond any help the French embassy would care to give.
Let’s hope it does work and they can get their Pakistani entry.

You can check their excellent blog here -in french- (or see the right hand side link section) and follow their overland trip from Europe all the way through Russia, Mongolia and down to here before they will return back to Europe through the Pakistan and Iran stretch.

The other European applicant was Theus, from Holland! Also holding the letter Maarten had, he even had to sign a certain waiver agreement for security matters, which Maarten strangely did not have to sign. The world again seemed a tiny place when Theus said he was from Utrecht too. How coincidental!
And to even add more bizarre serendipity to this, he went to the very same high school as me in the provincial town of Woerden, around the same years! Say what? We were soon laughing about knowing the same teachers and who’s had who. Maarten looked to us with surprised disbelief. How lives sometimes spiral into each other at unforseen moments like on the curb of the Pakistan embassy of all places, it still amazes us…..though the feeling is getting slightly familiar over here.

Theus has been travelling on motorbike all the way from Europe and came through the Iran-Pakistan route, which he will partly retrace now. Not going home just yet, he said and will turn down at the Middle East to drive through Northern Africa and entering Europe by boat. Sounds like a great trip, passing so many continents!

We wish the best to all you travellers, getting lost somewhere, gathering new experiences elsewhere. We’re off to take our evening sleeper train to Amritsar and setting foot in Pakistan tomorrow morning. Lahore for the next few days, which will be a blast Nah, we’re really looking forward to the gentle Pakistani hospitality and culture that everyone is praising.

Delhi the past few days has been about relaxing and me recovering from my belly bacteria games. We met Andy again over the weekend, who is in town for few days doing some business in scrapyards, looking for parts to patch up motorbikes. On saturday we went for a midnight ride in his customised Ambassador car -the one with the bed and PC inside-. Rather Maarten went for a drive, as Andy was way past his alcohol limit and off we took to India Gate, the sort of Arc the Triomphe of Delhi. Not that Andy has a driving license, Maarten neither, it was a boyish adventure of 3 kids and a dog driving around in the posh and diplomat area in a suspicious and attention tagged vehicle. At every street corner jeeps of the Delhi police were waiting with the siren lights on. Andy already made it clear that police likes stopping him, for they always want to seek a reason to nail a foreigner. For financial matters, obviously.
We didn’t get stopped, even when nearly trying our luck to ask police officers for directions for we had lost our sense of it in this maze of wide avenues, when an autoriksha pulled up beside us and put us back on track again.
Luck with avoiding the police, well….If you try, you buy, I reckoned.

oh yeah, new photo’s should be added, see the right hand link blah blah, you know the score by now.

Hi folks,

Tomorrow afternoon -your time- we’ll have a live phone-in at the Tracks world music show of Dee and Rory on Life FM! It’s on between 1pm and 2pm GMT time -so that’s between 2pm and 3pm for continental Europe, 18.30-19.30 India time etc.-

You can tune in live at Life FM (ofcourse live is better ey! ) or listen to the podomatic session later if ye can’t catch it.

For now, we’re back in Delhi for a few days waiting on our Pakistani visum that -hopefully- is given on monday. After spending 2 days in Ludhiana, we needed to be here yesterday just before the weekend in order to apply for our visum. That we might get it on monday will be quite smooth as well, as it normally takes a few working days -not counting weekends-.

Ludhiana was a quick swoop. Arriving somewhere in the afternoon on a bumpy bus from Amritsar, it wasn’t much fun for me as I had gotten some stomach bug -which is still bugging me now-. To carry your heavy luggage and trying to get a riksha that knows the place where you want to get to, while you feel nauseous and trembling, is not the best way to step into an auditorium to see a cultural presentation. As in previous post, we had met Seema in Jalandhar and she invited us to come to Ludhiana for this presentation which was to raise awareness on AIDS among teenage schoolkids. We met her at the auditorium and she made sure that we could leave our bags and get somethings to eat and drink. It was quite well organised and the presentation itself was a mix of various art forms. There was even a kid rock group playing 80′s, 90′s and modern rock songs. *We will rock you* was the song they started with and we wondered whether it was chosen because of Freddy Mercury or not. We didn’t ask either way. After them there was a fahion show of kids who had designed AIDS symbol clothing, paraded by proper models of some fashion college. The bit we liked most was the theater show of younger kids who portrayed a story of a AIDS infected baby girl that was left on the floor outside a hospital. The kids acted with a lot of energy and sung songs together as if in some musical (don’t think of the South Park joke now). There was ballet which was nice enough to end it with and the 1,5 hour presentation was over. Seema helped us a great deal (which we thank her heartily for) and took us to a downtown hotel where her cousin worked, so finally I could lay down and slumber away the head and bellyache. The hotelroom looked ‘like being in a Lynch movie’, as Maarten said. It certainly felt like being in Lost Highway, the bacteria in my belly jostling the effects.

In some way Ludhiana felt like one of the grim cartoon cities, like Sin or Gotham city. We don’t know why, perhaps the many overhead roads, narrow and moist back alleys and the sulky greyness of it all. Without intention to speak bad of the locals as they were as friendly as we have experienced allover Punjab.

The next afternoon we went to a Punjabi cultural event next to the same auditorium of the day before. As it would soon be Lohri, a holy Punjabi festival for the farmers -and Punjab IS the farmer’s state of India-, this event was organised, even if Lohri really would only begin on the 13th of January. We were told that all the bigger Punjabi pop and folk stars would perform and that for free to all the people of Ludhiana. As soon as we entered the amfitheater that it was held in, all eyes turned to us. We once again being the only foreigners -or at least, whites-, people cheered to us and no sooner than that Maarten was filming big groups of young men dancing before his camera. I tried to record sounds, but as folks kept on talking to me or into the mic it was useless. Someone of the organisation (that we met the day before) with next to him an armed guard with an AK47, intervened into the chaos of guys swarming around me so I could get upfront. It was not so much the men that bothered and angered me, but rather that most were annoyingly drunken…and drunken Indians are impossible to handle in a logical way, like we experienced before -and will do again-.

All that done in the space of a few hours, we left in the early evening so we could get tickets for the night train to Delhi. No sleeper places left, which ment we would have to sit most of night in a crowded wagon. No fun. At the station an attendant told us that we could get a sleeper place, hinting that we would have to pay him a bit for that. And the guys of the train. Bribing, corruption, such bog words. It was rather that they gave us a service that could secure a bed bunk for us. It was ours to take or leave it. So we paid and got a sleeper wagon to lay in. Which was quite empty by the way -while such sleeper places *supposedly* were sold out-. So it was.

At the Pakistani embassy we had to wait. and wait. and wait. That while the stomach bug still bugged me with cramps, again no fun. The morning was wasted between the Pakistani, Dutch and Belgian embassy. We don’t like embassies, but after the initial cold rejection at the Pakistani embassy we got smoothly helped by our own embassies whose consulair employees were even open to social chitchat with us, give drinks and let us use the internet. Unlike any official place would do at home, let alone we expected such courtesy from our embassies. We both had to get a certain useless approval letter that in the whole world, only the Pakistani embassy asks for. Well, there is a use for the useless. Just as an addition to your visum request. That’s all. The Dutch embassy wrote an official letter than approved Maarten as exisiting citizen. The Belgian embassy wrote a fun letter that stated it doesn’t supply such letters on the act of such and such rule. Signed by the ambassador though. But that’s indeed what the Pakistani consul wanted; the official proof of signature and print paper. We still have copies of those letters so will take a pic of them and put them here soon enough haha

Ok, waiting our time away in Delhi again and we must admit that after 2,5 months swerving through dusty and muddy cities and remote places, Delhi feels mighty western and -gulp- clean again. The continuous smog also seems to have cleared as it isn’t so hot anymore as it was 2,5 months ago -when we hated it here-. Again we are in the world of the western tourist where every Indian shopkeeper is merching western items to please those homesick, or those not wanting to adapt to Indian items. Either way, we’re way more at ease here this time, whether bellysick, tired or not.

Soon Pakistan we hope, if the monday morning promise is a true outcome. If that goes well, we should be in Pakistan by tuesday morning. In Lahore that is, the first biggest gateway city into Pakistan. Some of you might think Lahore not being a safe place since the bomb blast a few days ago but we have been assured that tourists are not a target in Pakistan, rather any authority should be very cautious. It’s more dangerous to be a local official clerk, police officer or politician in pre-election Pakistan right now than it is to be a simple wandering tourist. Even our embassies couldn’t deny that when we questioned them.

Perhaps next post from here or over the border, who knows.
Hope you tune in tomorrow to hear us both talk and blabber about our dwellings here.

Little extra update today (8th of January), as it has been raining all day. We’re just waiting around without haste, wasting our time to get our bus to Ludhiana in the early evening.

Yesterday late in the evening I went to the golden temple on my own as there was some nice religious music bouncing from the outer speakers. Pity that Maarten didn’t come along, so I once again got myself in some unexpected situation. We hadn’t been in the small golden temple itself, so on this last night I wanted to see it at last gasp chance as something was going on in there. I peered inside and a ceremony with the main guru was taking place. An elderly Sikh man ushered me gently inside, though I felt ashamed for invading in this ceremony while not being pilgrim like all other people around me. The guru and his helping men were chanting recitals from holy Sikh papers and on a sudden moment every pilgrim started singing along. The guru then held a package upon his head and walked outside the temple with a lot of the pilgrims on his trail, wiping tears away from their faces. Tears of enlightenment, one person told me. There’s only one marble lane that connects the temple to the land from this artificial man made holy lake so I followed behind. Pilgrims were carrying a golden cabinet, taking turns for it and all offering themselves. I just wanted to get past so not to be a nuisance to the pilgrims. Several men pushed me upfront in the queue, as being the token tourist you can bet that they want to give you the honor to help them. The golden cabinet was actually carrying the old gray guru, lying on plush pillows, who was waving with his white fur stick. A pilgrim stepped made place and a barrier of the cabinet put upon my shoulder so I was part of the walking machine of 20 or so men. Quite heavy! For 30 seconds I carried his holiness in his human transportation box until I got relieved by an eager and happy pilgrims. Sure deal, it’s yours to take and carry. At the end of the marble lane I got sanctified sweetened dough put in the open palms of my hands. I couldn’t eat more after the heavy dinner we had before, so I sat down at the lake and dropped little balls of dough into the water for the fishes. A golden carp surfaced -which brings luck if you spot one, a Sikh said- and accepted the holy food with pleasure.

Oh yeah, Maarten has added the *new year gunshot video* in the post of Jan. 1st.

some pics of Punjabi train rides

the Sutlej river, one of the 5 flows from the Indus