AOA readers,
This thread is to explain about my trip to Baluchistan. I have traveled almost all the north of our beautiful country and I always wanted to visit Baluchistan and ride through Sindh. But this had never happened until this week, reason being the too much exaggeration of the security situation I guess. Anyway, in this thread I will mention what I experienced. It was my first trip on road to Punjab, Sindh and Baluchistan.
We do not have fancy cameras, we both use blackberry q10, so that?s the only camera we use. So the picture quality you will find will not be as good.
Number of people were 2
Me(saad), Chuck(usman)
On this trip we missed musadiq bhai one of the greatest man we ever met. Guy we always trip with. Guy who says nothing is impossible and has a great will of achievement and determination. Due to his office issues he couldn?t make it with us. Me n chuck own a software house so we are pretty much vailay to travel.
Chuck is a friend I travel and work with since like 7 years give or take. So me and chuck have a perfect chemistry whenever it comes to trip, and we always ride on bike in Pakistan. (we?ve travelled quite a bit of Asia together as well, Hitchhiked )
We ride Suzuki gs 150. 2013 model. Bought the bike solely for the purpose of trips. Poor thing!
It gets pretty easy on long routes with two guys on a bike, because you can always switch with other driver. Chuck btw is an extremely slow rider. Even on empty motorway type roads, he won?t exceed 60. He will find the only bump on a perfect made road and hit the bike there. So this is chuck, extremely paranoid and a Punjabi. Being a Punjabi or whatever doesn?t really matter, but in Baluchistan at certain places, it does matter. You?ll get to know about that in later part of this post.
I am not sure if I am giving too much details for a blog or not, but I am throwing everything out there as we experienced.
Punjab
Me and chuck left Islamabad at Fajar time (around 4:30 am) on Saturday 19[SUP]th[/SUP] September Like a few days ago
Ride from Islamabad till Multan was living hell on gt road. Chakwal Road is under construction so it was hell riding that road. Anyway, after chakwal the road dint surprise us. The single GT road and fast paced busses push you off the road when they over take vehicles. Anyway we arrived in Multan at 5pm that Saturday. So it took us roughly 12.5 hours. We stopped every 40 to 60 kms, to cool ourselves down. We are used to riding in mountains and drinking from streams and waterfalls, the fresh free water. But on this trip, every stop we made, we had to bottoms up a chilled shezan, coke or Fanta. So this expense on cooling yourself down was costly. Like ofcourse it dint get us bankrupt but comparing thirst quenching with north, this was expensive.
In Multan we got to spend night with at a friend?s home, so it was pretty nice chilling out with those people. Smoked the best shisha ever with those guys. That friend of ours was home alone, so his house was more like a party house. Lol. A lot more than shisha goes around there lol. The city Multan was disappointing; I thought it would be somewhat like Islamabad, in size. But it was pretty tiny and all dusty. Riding bike in Multan aint easy either. The city is small, roads are tiny and then the traffic pours in from every direction, especially the bikes. And above all the metro is under construction.
In Multan, we saw a couple of forts, pretty historic they looked. Dint feel like riding bikes in day time so after visiting those couple of shrines in Multan, at night we moved towards Bahawalpur. Right before leaving Multan we learnt that there had been a sad incident, a blast at vehari chowk. We passed by that chowk towards Bahawalpur. First time ever saw a bomb blast site, it was terrifying, sad and got us sad. Dint click a picture of that incident because sometimes some things are better left memory less. Left Multan at 10:30 pm and landed in Bahawalpur at midnight. Then we left Bahawalpur by 1:30 or so after roaming the city at night. Lol it was fun riding empty roads. After leaving for Bahawalpur our last stop in Punjab was sadiqabad where we had nice breakfast.
SINDH
After breakfast we started our ride down south towards Sindh. Right after sadiqabad you start getting a feeling of Sindh. It looked extremely poor, people looked way to backward, as compared to general village people of Punjab. It was very bad throughout and the crouching heat. Landscape of Sindh was awesome though. After Sukkur we took detour to Monjedaro. Got to see bibis town, Larkana, which looked like 1900?s. But the ppp flag was standing tall at every home, well camp type homes. We were at Monjedaro by 3pm or so and heat was a killer. Monjedaro was awesome though.
Detour from Sukakr towards larkana is a very tiny road, but a good road to drive on. Sad part was. We were pulled over by Sindhi Cops and according to him I was supposed to have a NOC to be riding in Sindh AND according to him my bike wasn?t under my name so it wasn?t legal. Whereas my bikes under my name, anyway I talked my way out but poor sindhi farmers, who were pulled over, gave every penny they had just so they won?t shut down there bikes. In North, the local cops are too nice, not only to tourists but to their own community as well, but in Sindh it was totally opposite. Well we got robbed at Monjedaro. When we were chilling at monjedaro, someone managed to get to one of the side pockets of my book bag and got spare socks. Not a huge score for the robber lad.
After monjedaro we left for Karachi and on our way we saw, saiwan shareef so we took a detour towards the shrine. It was pretty nice. Illiteracy at the shrine was evidently visible.
We took photos and left for Karachi. A very busy highway is super highway that goes to Karachi. GT road is nothing as compared to super highway. Superhighway is overloaded with trucks, buses, dust, fast blowing sea wind; everything slows you down especially when you are riding a bike. Cops stop bikes and try to rip off for a couple of hundred bucks. We dint get mugged like ever by the cops. They tried their best but all in vein.
Arrived in Karachi at 10 pm direct at Burns Road, had dhagay walay kebab, bun kebab, biryani and rabri. After stuffing ourselves up, we spent a night at relatives house in korangi 5 number. So this was the Sunday night we spent in Karachi. Dint get any sleep on Saturday night. Relatives were like, riding in Baluchistan aint no joke, infact every one we met we told them about our tour and they were like, bhai aap ko khab ai hai ya ap pagal ho, why would you be riding to Baluchistan. Lol.
Baluchistan
Next day on Monday we left korangi and got our bike sorted, oil change, and what not and left Karachi at about 5 pm. Towards Baluchistan on makran coastal highway. Now this is where the real trip starts, trip to Baluchistan! It was about 530 or 6:45 when we crossed hub choki. Up till hub the traffic was crazy. Even after hub, it looked like GT road so many trucks and buses riding along and the road is so straight you can see a vehicle far away in sight. It creeps you out at night though. You see a red light or a white light far far away and it takes ages to get to that light. It?s a straight road throughout the makran coastal highway, except for the hilly areas.
Couple of hundred kms from hub choki, a road turns right towards Quetta. Up till this turn the traffic was crazy, right after the turn the traffic cut down to 30 percent of what it was before. It was about 6:45 when we arrived at that turn and after the turn there was no car in sight for about half an hour. So at this point we were like, damn all those stories about Baluchistan are real, there isn?t a single soul in sight for many many miles. Anyway after riding for about an hour, seemed like we had caught up with ongoing traffic. It felt good after a long time crossing a couple of slow moving trucks and buses. At sun down we reached a settlement, named Agor, which is around 150 kms I think from uthal. In Agor it was going to be my first time having a conversation with a Baluchistani and it was awesome. Two kids sitting at the charpai, spent time with us and we spent about half an hour there. No one mentioned any sort of risk or security threats, or security concern while riding towards gawadar and we never bothered to ask about such stuff. The more you ask the more you know, the more you know, more you wonder. So we like to keep it simple.
Though we were scared in beginning but after agor stop, we were like as if we were riding peaceful north. We were comfortable with the night because it just felt like, no one lives around here and its just a road with no people around. So It was pretty convincing for us that makran coastal is safe. Which it was! So at about 830 pm we started our journey towards gawadar and we then we encountered traffic like, every 10 to 15 mins we got to pass a bus or a truck. Nobody was moving in a convoy there, not the buses not the tucks, not even the cars.
We decided to travel all the way to gawadar at night, this way we would escape the heat too.
On Makran Coastal Highway, there?s a fair amount of mountain range that you have to traverse through. Whenever we saw such mountains, we waited for bus to light it up and we would then click a photo. One of the truck drivers refueling his truck at petrol station invited us for dinner in next town (ormara). We of course accepted the offer Truck driver we ate with takes Pakistani fish shipments to jiwani a coastal town at pak iran border. Guy had been riding Makran Coastal for about 7 years and dint encounter any sort of threat all this time. Dude was real humble. We rode side by side with this dude for a long time.
At omara we had dinner with truck lads, the guy ordered everything they had available at dinner. Our last proper meal was probably last night in burns road. So we ate like anything. After dinner, Ustad left and we chilled for a bit and then we started our journey towards gawadar. Ustad was from Batagram (located up north of Pakistan) the place we ate at was a truck hotel. ( the same hotel where we will spend a night at the rooftop on our way back- with view of sea, makran costal traffic and a billion stars )
50 kms from pasni, there was a FC check post. When we got there, it looked like they were waiting for us and they searched our bag. When they realized we are not a threat, I asked the guy, why you searched us and why not believe us in the first place. The guy said, a mazda driver complained of 2 boys on one bike in pant shirts. He complained that the bike has been following mazda for a very long time and they would rob the mazda. I was like, what? Then the cop explained that you must be trying to travel with a car in sight for a long time, I was like yes that?s how I was riding in pitch dark. So the mazda driver took us for robbers. I was pissed when they were searching us but when I got to know about misunderstanding, we had a great laugh and a cup of tea with those people. It was really funny situation.
After the FC incident we moved towards gawadar and it was about 300 kms from where the incident happened. On our way we encountered sea fog, which is worst, with low visibility it welcomes with you mist and dew, lots of it. While riding at night at makran coastal there is no street light kinda thing, like never and it takes ages to reach next settlement. We ran out of petrol couple of times. One time we were lucky, the reserve petrol got us to next truck hotel type settlement where petrol was available.
On our way back we ran out of petrol and on reserve we made it to next settlement, where there was no petrol pump. So the guy at truck hotel, took us to his village where people were so nice and friendly. The hotel guy found the petrol shop owner and made him open his shop to serve us. Amazing people the Baloch are (pretty much the same in North, but these baloch people, they were too welcoming, may be because they hardly meet any tourists to talk to.)
We arrived at gawadar at 4 am Wednesday 16[SUP]th[/SUP] sept. . Found a hotel at fazil chowk. When we woke up at about 1 pm, we dint find our bike parked outside. So I went up to the hotel guy and asked him. He was like, Sir wo ap ka bike tha? I was like lol yeah man what happened to it. He was like the cops took it away because no one claimed responsibility or ownership of the bike.(when we arrived in gawadar we were so tired that we got our room and went to bed right away, dint park the bike at proper hotels vicinity ) I was like damn man funny. Then I went up to police station and the guy handed over the bike to me. They dint even see my id card, or the book of bike to make sure if I am the owner. Very nice and simple people. If it was pindi, you would have to spend days figuring out the subaydari thing.
We stayed in gawadar for the next three days, and left for Ormara on Friday. 18[SUP]th[/SUP] sept. Ormara is also a coastal town. We left Gawadar at about 5:40 pm and made it to ormara city at 9:30pm where we were not welcomed at all. There was only one hotel and the bhuggti looking baloch dint rent us a room though hotel was all empty because nobody goes to ormara. Everyone going to gawadar from Karachi makes it in one go from Karachi to gawadar.
So we left ormara and spent a night at roof top of a truck hotel. And it was a beach view. One of the best nights of my life, I could say. Next morning we head to Karachi and arrived in Karachi at 5 pm on 19[SUP]th[/SUP] sept. Ride from ormara to Karachi was living hell because of the heat wave that had just hit the city. I heard it was 43 degrees. Any way the heat had killed us and we arrived at faisal movers got ourselves 2 tickets of the vary last row, to Islamabad, of 7pm the same day lol. I called my cousin, gave him the bike, keys and the book. Told him to book the bike on train after eid. LOL. Bus ride was not bad at all, besides the movies they play. We made it home to Islamabad at 11 pm on 20[SUP]th[/SUP] September.
We visited iran border as well, which is about 80 kms from gawadar and it?s a mean hot ride.
Got to see the fish market in gawadar, damn they have some huge huge fishes. Waiting to get loaded or unloaded.
Before the trip we heard all the stories about Baluchistan from people who have never set step in Baluchistan. But when we stepped foot in Baluchistan it was all different. Plus, the coastal region is all safe in Baluchistan, the danger part that is to whom it is concerned, would be in the interior region. Baluchi people have a very sweet accent when they speak Urdu.
At Makran Coastal Highway sea does not run parallel with road. It does at a few places, like 3 or four different places for like 3 to 4 mins tops. That is it, so Makran Coastal isn?t all by the sea. You ride through sandy mountain area for a while and then its just a straight road by the sand.