Oct 8:  The mass of humanity in Peshawar and Lahore and the smell were both immediately oppressive.  Nothing about the places raised any second guessing about whether we wanted to stay even one night.  We went to the nearby Peshawar rail station and checked on trains going to Lahore which is near the Indian border.  I was getting better and figuring out local transportation procedures but it was always very challenging given the mass of people in the train station, the limited use of English in signage, train-specific rules in Pakistan, and the very deliberate and heavily-accented English spoken by officials.  Pakistan had been a formal member of the British Commonwealth until 1971, still maintained a close love-hate political relationship, and evidence of the mind-numbing British bureaucratic civil service approach to everything was very obvious as I tried to buy train tickets.  An overnight train was leaving Peshawar shortly and there were some open-seating tickets available—we probably would not have paid anything extra for a better class or for a sleeping compartment even if it had been available. We got on our designated car which was surprisingly crowded mostly with men.  Lots of the Pakistanis could speak English with a huge variety of accents and dialects.  We were the only westerners in the car and Cath’s skirt and top was the center of everyone’s attention.  Cath notes that we had a “party on the train—sugar cane and bananas” but I don’t recall it being that much fun.  There were a lot of passengers who were almost exclusively male.  We did try to lay down part of the trip in some luggage racks that were being used as makeshift bunks by some of the passengers but as soon as we lay down, some creepy guy would crawl in next to us, so we sat up most of the overnight trip.  We pulled into Lahore station about 6am. 

Pakistan/India Border & On to Kashmir

We learned that the Wagah border crossing to India is only ten miles from Lahore.  Amritsar, India on the other side is only another 30 miles.  It is not a natural border—it is on the Radcliff line established in 1947 at the time of Pakistan and India’s turbulent and violent independence from Great Britain.  Lahore and Amritsar  are main cities along the Main Trunk Road used as a major trade route for over 2,000 years running from the delta of River Ganga to the Kyber Pass and beyond to Central Asia and the old Silk route which we had traveled from Istanbul.  There were a lot of travel options to get from the Lahore train station to the border and we caught a van that wound slowly through the congestion of Lahore and then out to the border.  I distinctly remember looking out the open van window early in the trip when we stopped by an intersection and a camel’s face was about and arms-length from my window looking at me—he was being used as a pack animal loaded with bags of something.  I was so tired having traveled over 30 hours straight by then. The camel and I stared at each other for a while and I was just fascinated by all the strange detail of the camel’s face and head.  Just before our van lurched forward, the camel opened his mouth and let out a belch or a cough that was truly sickening.  We hadn’t eaten since the prior evening, but the camel took care of my hunger and appetite.

Cath and I certainly had a lot of ups and downs since Istanbul.  Road weariness was taking its toll.  We had always been “travel partners with benefits” and neither of us had any interest in a long-term relationship.  We tended to avoid discussing the need to intentionally part ways to get away from each other and instead framed our discussion in terms of whether we had the same future itinerary or not.  India was a major crossroad on the Hippie Trail and for Cath and I.  Amritsar was itself a major cultural and religious destination to visit.  It was the largest city in Punjab and also the center of Sikhism and the site of the Sikhs’ principal place of worship—the Harmandir Sahib or Golden Temple.  Beyond Amritsar, the Hippie Trail branched off to Kashmir, Nepal, and north, central, and southern India which all offered nearly infinite experiences and sights.  As we headed to the Pakistan/India border, my definite intention was to briefly visit Amritsar and then take a public bus to Dehli.  Cath had Kashmir on her itinerary and I did not.  Because Cath wanted to go there, I had read more about Kashmir and was interested but I also planned an extended tour and trek in Nepal which I naively thought was similar to Kashmir since both are in the Himalayas.