PAKISTAN!

Its getting HOT!

Very early in the morning of day 24, we said goodbye to our Iranian guide Arman and the superb busdriver and embarked our first flight. As the border crossing between Iran and Pakistan is very unstable and nobody is interested in meeting up with the Taliban, we had to skip a few 100km on the bus journey. It is not really cheating, rather staying safe.
Everybody could have a good rest on the flight.
Then we dove into the crazyness of Karachis streets!
People everywhere, Bollywood buses, donkeycarts on the streets, Turbans, machineguns, soupkitchens, barefeeted children, flocks of Eagles shooting down - so much to take in after a sleepless night.
We had a good few hours of rest before we went to the Mohammed Ali Jinnah Mausoleum. Mohammed Ali is more or less the Gandhi of Pakistan, father of the nation that was formed after the Brits left in 1947. He coined the name Pakistan which means "Land of the Pure and the 30 million Muslims that live in the 5 regions of Punjab, Afgania (which is now NW-Frontier), Kashmir, Sindh and Balochistan (P-A-K-i-S-tan). Our guide Amjad arranged the changing of the guards especially for us and we were allowed to take fotos with them. Then the locals came and everyone had to be on their fotos. It was absolutely crazy they were everywhere and just stared at us. No wonder, there is only about 500000 tourists a year coming to Pakistan and most of them go to the north where K2 and all the other mountains are....and Karachi is right down south, on the shore of the Arabian Sea. Only commerce, no tourism. Celebrities again.
We had to stay together as there was a demonstration going on in front of the Mausoleum. Funnyliy enough it was about Facebook. Somebody had put an image of Mohammed on Facebook and now they wanted to block the site - which they did in the end. So people were protesting on the streets. Noone of us was keen on mingling with the crowd, so we were driven on, to the shopping mall, were everyone enjoyed an italian ice cream and some of us bought another muslim-outfit. No headscarfes here, but the miniskirts still have to stay in the bag.
Next stop was the beach. Lots of camels and horses there and for 1€ I galopped along the beach. It sounds a bit better than it is, my horse was held by a guy, but I did not fall off!
Just like in Thailand we were being followed by little kids trying to sell us flowers in a pretty persistent way. We had a stroll down the beach anyways, dirty and pretty smelly, but some locals were even swimming in it. There was a fair crowd of people and you could notice that women are wearing even more clothes than in Iran. Most of them really only show their eyes.
To finish off this impressive day, we had a very nice dinner on the rooftop of the best restaurant in town. They served us a combination of curries and rice and bread and dips and so on. It was really good and noticeably spicier than the other countries. There was a nice breeze which was good after a day of 40°C.
Oops, what was I saying this was not the end of it at all! Back into the beers we cracked open the first bottle of cold beer when we got back to the hotel! Very sweet taste and we could not stop. Happy times and a great welcome to Pakistan!