John & Mick's BIG Adventure

Into India

Day 58 – 198 kms (14525 kms total)

Sunday morning, we caught a taxi to Paddy & Paula’s and woke them up (‘sorry guys’).
We headed out of town for the motorway to Lahore, thus avoiding the inaccurately named “Grand Trunk Road”, which links Delhi to Kabul. Alas, at the toll booth were sent back as NO bikes are allowed on Pakistan motorways. This added 2hours to our journey time.

We retraced our steps and took the GT road – it was crap! We crawled through Rawalpindi, but traffic eased thereafter and the subsequent 100km speed limit allowed some progress. Stopping at a service station for drinks, the staff gave us the money back that we had spent on drinks as they wanted to treat us.

Towards Lahore, the traffic deteriorated; contra-flows meant traffic was head to head and buses bullied their way down the middle, scattering all else in various directions.

Road quality dropped too and we sent more time dodging holes as well as cars, lorries, mopeds and buses. Bizarrely, despite their kamikaze driving, when a rough bit of road appears, or a bump, they exercise such caution not to jolt the car, or splash it, traffic grinds almost to a halt.

We reach the edge of Lahore and traffic has reached insane proportions so we opt to skirt the city and go directly to the border at Wagah. We follow the most appalling road, where traffic runs in any direction it likes, on either side of the road, due to apparent permanent roadworks on either carriageway. The road surface is completely shagged and we drive through mud, water, dirty villages, further marred by rubbish tips until, after 30 km, we reach the eight stalls and motel that constitute Wagah.

John picked up another scrape on the left hand pannier from a Tuk-Tuk that nearly sent him into the central divide.

We check into the PTDC motel, which has only four rooms. The A/Cis either on full, (and noisy), or off, as is the fan and there’s no hot water. Mick goes up to join the crowds to watch the border ceremony, (but is too late to get a particularly good view), while John slaps an ice-pack on the nether regions to try and ease the pain.

Day 59 – 31 kms (14555 kms total)

Monday we woke up early but we had to wait till almost 9am for a coffee and until 9.25 for customs to open.

Passport and then Carnet processing was a breeze because we had changed some money with a guy that was a relative of the guy that did the Carnet, by 10am we were on our 100m way towards the gate, where we were stopped again.
Ten metres short of the gate and our passport details transposed into a large book.
Then to the actual gate, where a Pakistani guard checked our passports and returned them.
Stood beside him was an Indian guard who did exactly the same and then waved us through to immigration.
Here we filled in a form, with passport details and were then given another slip of paper for the same information. This we took to customs, who made us fill in another form and copied the details into another book.
The carnet process was long winded. The guy in charge was new to the job and he wanted to see purchase receipts for the vehicles, which we didn’t have and we had to show them the actual chassis and engine numbers on the vehicles, which are not so easily accessible, to prove they were the same as documented.

They looked into one pannier on each bike, opened a sealed bottle of brake fluid and then gave up – by 12.30 we got out and it was just a short ride to Amritsar.

The next instalment is here

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