DISPATCHES

Mazur

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There was relatively little discussion or bargaining until we were about to set off and the porters asked for three times the normal price. We negotiated with them to 40%. Still, we were paying the tourist prices. Walter commented on how clean this station looked compared to others, and it did. Lakpa looked more disgusted than usual. We were a long way from Nepal, having travelled fully across India.

We were dropped off at our hotel. We actually visited several, trying to negotiate a lower price, but being saddled with so many bags certainly left us as marked men. We chose a place where there was a rooftop and we could make transmissions.

We washed, then caught a scooter for the Odeon restaurant where we dined on a tasty curry in air-conditioned splendor. Then we took another scooter out to the Golden Temple, holy headquarters for the Sikh people. There we dumped our handbags and shoes and went inside the temple.

It was an extremely beautiful time to visit at 9pm in the dark of night. The layout of the place was such that the main temple, clad in gold leaf, was situated inside a man-made lake on an isthmus. Many smaller and larger temples surrounded the lake, and all of the devoteees were making a clockwise circumambulation around the lake.

There were impressive bearded and turbaned guards with purple cloaks and mighty swords and spears. At one point, several of them descended upon us with passion and forced us to turn our baseball caps around backwards (everyone has to have their head covered inside the temple). We all went out to the gold-coated temple on the isthmus, and observed the devotees circulating before these cross-legged sages, who were mumbling into massive books through vast grey beards. Devotees crawled and tossed coins and bills towards the sages. Lakpa held his hands in a praying position and bowed. I prayed silently to the gods and asked for their support in the future and help for providing us a safe journey.

We finally followed the pilgrims out of the temple, declining handfuls of rice and marveling at a group of men who stripped off their turbans and clothing and swam naked in the lake, with the fishes that circulated over the tops of lightbulbs shining brilliantly from the bottom of the lake.

Our day was over, and we took another scooter back to our hotel where we slept semi-naked like babies in the semi-clean sheets, beneath the speeding ceiling fans, between power outages.

The following day, June 1, dawned scalding hot and I was up on the roof early trying to transmit. I had trouble getting a good satellite link but was able to continue using limited battery capacity.

We had our omelets, chapathi and tea on the veranda then carefully repacked our bags. Today was the day we would cross from India into Pakistan. The two countries are at war, so there is always a question of how you will be treated by the various border officials along the way.

By 9:30am, we were at the Indian border and hired porters to carry our 18 bags to the customs and immigration building. We filled out our exit cards (I filled out Lakpa's because he can not read or write). Walter and I were cleared to go and the officer put exit stamps into our passports, but Lakpa got hassled. The Indians always seem to hassle these Nepalese. I guess they think the Nepalese are a lower form of life.

Anyway, they checked all of our passports several times before ushering us into the customs hall where a fairly pleasant Indian customs officer only made us open one bag; I remembered him from my last time across this border. He seemed to take it fairly easy on us this time around.

Then our porters carried the luggage 700 meters up to the fortified border with Pakistan. An enormous steel gate swung open, and a tall, dark soldier with a tam and a handlebar moustache stood guard. It was a bit intimidating, walking through this fortified border past a large number of heavily-armed soldiers. We began our negotiations with the Pakistani porters, whom we needed to carry our things an additional 700 meters inside Pakistan.

I noticed that on the Indian side of the border, workmen were building a sort of amphitheater facing the Pakistan side, and the Pakistani border guards assured me that, indeed, busloads of Indian tourists would soon be attending the changing of the guard ceremonies. This theater would be used for spectators and film crews. It reminded me of the coliseum in Rome.

We proceeded into Pakistan with our porters and the first checkpoint we came to was the army's military post. They asked to see our passports and wrote little things in big books, and we opened one bag and showed the contents.

Then our porters carried our 18 bags on to the immigration office. The immigration officers were the same ones from our last crossing in 1998. They remembered me and I them; we all shook hands. I changed a little money with them, and we proceeded into the customs hall, where officials searched the bags.

After that, we were good to go and they let us out, and the crossing had been surprisingly easy — a breeze, actually. Well, we arranged taxis to the bus station in Lahore and waded our way across a herd of beggars, and found our way into a bus, and finally after another six hours, at 9pm, we had arrived in Rawalpindi, and were well situated in our hotel, where we would complete our final purchasing, and wait for the arrival of the other members.

— Dan Mazur, MountainZone.com Correspondent

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