Himalayas & China 2005: 6 - Peshawar to Swat, Pakistan

Thursday, September 22, 2005

Yesterday we had a fairly easy day of it. We were unwittingly late for our 10 AM pickup, as no one had mentioned the half hour time change at the border, but we ran into Ali as we left the restaurant so were not as late as we could have been. We headed downtown to walk the famous bazaars of the old city of Peshawar - pronounced Pesh-AH-wer, with the accent on the middle syllable.

Peshawar, with a population of 4 million, is the fourth largest city in Pakistan and capital of Frontier Province, the province we'll spend the next few days driving through. Although Urdu and English are the official languages, Urdu is the language most spoken, so although many people understand some English, many are not fluent in it. Signs are in either one or the other, or both. Urdu was the language introduced by the Moghul Empire to have a common language in all their territories.

Shops here are concentrated by the items they sell. There are streets of pharmacies, streets of jewellery stores, streets of rug merchants, streets of clothing stores and so on. It was interesting to note that there was not a woman to be seen in the area which sold appliances, furniture and electronics. Major purchases of this kind are the business of men. The merchants in all shops are anxious to please once approached, but no one was pushy.

It is sad to see the beautiful old colonial architecture being allowed to deteriorate - maintenance of buildings does not seem to be a factor. The 400-year-old Mahabat Khan Mosque is an exception; it is completely surrounded by shabby buildings but is in pristine condition.

Frontier Province is heavily populated by people of the Pushtin Tribe. As was the case in Afghanistan, these fundamentalist people require their women to be completely covered - including the eyes. The eyes are covered either by a heavy veil or a crocheted grillwork. The favourite colour is a sky blue, and in some crowded market areas there is a sea of sky blue bobbing along, broken by a few other colours.

It made me wonder how a fellow would find his wife. It seems a bit like trying to find a blue Volkswagen in a parking lot full of blue Volkswagens with no help from a license number! I think I'd be inclined to put a number or other identifying mark on mine, as the penalty for going home with someone else's blue Volkswagen is pretty severe. This is born out by a translation of a letter to the editor of the paper Khabrain, which defended a woman whose leg was cut off because she was guilty of zina (fornication). The writer was angry at the paper for defending the woman. He stated that the woman should have been killed along with her lover, as that would have been the Islamic way.

Progress through the bazaar wasn't too bad in spite of the intense heat, until we hit the streets of the jewellery merchants; then things slowed to a crawl as one small shop after another was visited. I was missing my travelling partner, Tim. We could explore the largest of bazaars in 15 to 30 minutes! In the end we left the area having purchased only a suit of clothes (called a shalwar kameez), which including pants, long tunic and a scarf for Marilynn for $8.

Today we also started at the leisurely hour of 9 AM, stopping at the Peshawar Museum. It has a large collection of artefacts from the Gandhara period, when a large amount of Pakistan, part of India and part of Afghanistan formed a Buddhist country. These were the same people who built the forts, cliff villages and Buddhist statues in the Bamiyan area of Afghanistan. Their reign lasted from 300 BC until 300 AD, although their culture continued until almost 800 AD.

We then drove into the Swat Valley, stopping to climb to the ruins of the Takht-i-Bahi monastery, one of the major sites during the Gandhara period. The roads to this point were rough pavement, but that deteriorated into rough dirt when we hit miles of roads under construction.

We bumped our way to the top of the 1,600-meter (5,250') Malakand Pass and stopped for a photo session. I'm amazed at the number of 1950s vintage trucks with enormously high-stacked loads crawling over these passes. Above us was the British Fort that guarded the pass, apparently still in good condition. A little later we passed Churchill's Picket, a fortified outpost on top of a hill where young Winston Churchill stayed when he was a reporter covering the tribal wars.

Our destination tonight was the Swat Serena Hotel in Saidu Sharif, the administrative capital of the Swat area. The whole area has a population of about 80,000. The comfortable five star hotel used to be the guest quarters of the King of Swat, who now holds only an honorary position. Swat was an independent kingdom until it became part of Pakistan's Frontier Province in 1974. The hotel, as had been the case with the hotel in Peshawar, was not very busy. Apparently tourism was killed in Pakistan with 911, and in this area it is still suffering due to some fundamentalist violence.

Friday, September 23, 2005

Another 9AM start took us for a drive up the valley of the Swat River until it narrowed into a canyon at the town of Bahrain. Here we experienced the first rain of the trip, a thundershower in the hills. We are well into the foothills of the Himalayas here, and the weather is comfortably cool.

When the rain started we had been walking along the winding main street of town, where the back of the buildings on one side of the street are perched on the top of a cliff that drops into the raging Swat River. Ali volunteered to go back and get the vehicle and driver, leaving Marilynn and I standing under the overhang of a building. The barber came out and motioned to me to have a seat on comfortable cushions in his shop. Not being sure how a woman would go over in the barbershop, I gestured to indicate I was with Marilynn. It didn't seem to be a problem, so she was soon taking everyone's photo. Men were heading out to bring their friends back to be photographed. By the time we left it was impossible to move in the small shop - it was packed!

Traffic in Pakistan is not unlike that in Afghanistan. Horns are used liberally, and when passing it seems that the onus is on the car coming the other way to hit the shoulder to avoid the otherwise inevitable head on collision. Surprisingly, the system seems to work, as I've yet to see an accident.

The pickup truck taxi is quite a sight. These are standard Japanese size pick up trucks, with a second higher deck, plus rear and side running boards constructed on them. They regularly have up to 40 people on board, clinging to the sides and back, on top or crammed inside. That is the same number that fit in a full sized bus! They are so top heavy that when swaying their way through traffic one cannot help but be amazed that they don't fall over.

Marilynn has been having a real photo fest. She has now taken 2.5 gigabytes of photos - that is something over 500 photos, and the trip has just begun! She will be kept busy going through them all when we get home.

Tomorrow we head further towards the Himalayas, to the town of Besham pronounced be-SHAM