A few days in the life of a traveller

I had a few weirdly interesting days earlier this month… 😉

I am currently in Pakistan and after a couple of hot days in Islamabad I decided to move north to Gilgit-Baltistan.

#The bus ride

The bus to Gilgit can take one of two routes. A long one following the Karakoram Highway that is prone to rockfall and landslides and a shorter one across the Babusar Pass at 4170 m, which is the one my bus driver decided to take this time round.

We made very good progress until just before the pass where we were stopped by police as the road on the other side was deemed too icy for us to continue. The going theory was that we wait for the sun to come out to thaw the road a bit. Failing that, we would have to backtrack all the way to Mansehra and switch to the Karakoram Highway, which would add 12 hours or more to our journey.

After a few very long and very cold hours of waiting, the weather started to get worse so some of the young Pakistani men decided to confront the police about at least letting us try to cross. One of the young men winked at me as they exited the bus and said:

We’re going to protest now. It worked for Gen Z in Nepal, so why not for us?

After a few heated discussions the police relented and removed the road barriers to let everyone through. Everyone that is, except us. During the protest one of the young men had apparently abused and pushed a policeman and they intended to detain him. This was immediately followed by a violent outburst from the guys mother. Weirdly enough there was never any talk about detaining the mother, even though she was much more violent than her son 🤷‍♂️

After this, the police decided to let the youth go, but stubbornly refused to let us pass and wanted us, as punishment I guess, to take the Karakoram Highway. Later I was told that they only changed their minds when some people noted that there is a foreigner on board and that it would reflect unfavorably on Pakistan if they forced us to turn back 😆

#Assassinations and demonstrations

As a result we arrived quite late in the afternoon in Gilgit. I got myself a room and then made my way to the SCOM¹ office to finally get a SIM card. Since it was a holiday I was told that the SIM would only be activated on Monday at around 14:00. The WiFi in my guesthouse was broken as well, so for the time being I was on a forced internet break.

On Sunday morning, I just had breakfast, the news broke that there had been two assassination attempts. Earlier in the day, a judge had been attacked and a short while later an imam. He was only grazed near the shoulder, but his three bodyguards had been severely injured. As a result a type of curfew was imposed. Mobile networks were shut down and all the shops had to close, but some ignored the order. Therefore, my SIM did not get activated on Monday as planned, or so I thought…

Late on Sunday afternoon, while I had some chai, small groups of people turned into bigger ones and before long a fairly large demonstration had formed, demanding that the police do more to ensure the safety of their religious leaders. The atmosphere got a bit heated but everyone remained peaceful. Eventually I was joined by a few protesters and some policemen. As they argued, they tried to explain the situation to me, but due to the language barrier, it all remained a bit murky for me. I guess it’s time to finally learn some Urdu…

#Bureaucracy woes

Tuesday arrived and my SIM card was still dead. There were still a lot of police checkpoints around, but most of the shops were opening again, so I headed back to the SCOM¹ office. They told me to go to the PTA² office to remove my phone from some sort of blacklist. My old card from last year was apparently still registered to my phone and that, having now two cards in my name, wrought havoc on their systems.

On Wednesday afternoon my guesthouse finally got their WiFi sorted, but more than a week later, neither the PTA² or SCOM¹ have been able to fix the issue with my phone, despite me going to their office every other day 🙄