China... at last

Hey Everybody,

This is going to be a really long post. Sorry.

We left Delhi just over a week and a half ago after many more stops at fast food restaurants (KFC wins hands down) and boarded a train to Amristar. On the train I got harassed by two lady boys (It’s a form of begging in India for Lady Boys to patrol trains or show up at weddings and threaten to flash people unless they give them money) which scared me quite a bit. They didn’t seem to be falling for my playing dumb routine, but luckily a ticket inspector showed up just in time as I’m not quite sure of the etiquette when it comes to hitting a lady boy – there’s two schools of thought on the subject.

At Amristar we watched the closing of the border ceremony where a load of Indian and Pakistani soldiers ponce about in uniforms while a crowd of people chant stuff (imagine five year old kids copying the changing of the guards ceremony in clothes made by their mums while there mates scream stuff). We then spent the night in what we thought was a disused school cum hotel until we were woken by cricket playing kids at 7am.

At first we found Pakistan very intimidating mainly because as soon as we entered the place we were told to ‘come with us’ by the police – it turned out they wanted to practice English. Oh and because Lunchbox somehow managed to smuggle a bottle of vodka into the place.

We then spent two very hot nights and days in a city called Lahore where we watched an authentic Pakistani music and dance show. This basically involved a little Pakistani dancing guy with bells on his ankles force a Dutch girl (who looked strangely like Neal Fleah from Uni) to dance (or be groped) with (or by) him. But in the end we were all up and dancing, even me despite not having anything to drink. We also saw, for a change, wait for it…a fort, a museum and a temple. Gasp. The museum was alright but the other two were poor and it was too hot (40). We also got harassed by locals wanting to practice their English. One guy even threatened to cry and get down on his hands and knees unless we sat with him and talked… weird.

We then got a train to the start of the Karakoram highway (a road going from Pak to China through three mountain ranges… if you’re interested… probably not). On board Garlen managed to offend locals and a gun wielding policeman by showing to much leg, the little harlot, and was forced to put on trousers. We then spent two days traveling to Giligit. On the way I think I may have got deep vein thrombosis as my ankles went massive like an old ladies. In Gilgit we watched a game of Polo, which is really dangerous as the ball is solid and regularly flies into the crowd, and then left for Karimibad. On the bus there we were left shocked when some locals hoisted a goat onto the roof of our bus and strapped it down for the entire journey. We sat in the bus watching the whole thing unfold in disbelief, but it seemed happy up there and it did have a good view.

In Karimibad we went trekking to see a mountain called Lady Finger (we had to go, any mountain that sounds like a bond villain is worth seeing) Why we went trekking again I don’t know, it was tiring and Garlen almost fell down the side of a hill as we didn’t have a clue where we were going and kept getting lost and finding ourselves starring over sheer drops.

Anyway… skip to the end… we’re in China, views along the way were amazing, Come on the Gooners, Garlen had brain Masala (tastes like pate in case you were wondering), Garlen's Cantonese is useless, no-one can understand a word he says (mainly because they speak Mandarin), and that's it.

Bye, Damo