Lazy Email from Karachi!

(Email sent on Novembre 29, 2005)

Dear All,

(It is very nice to write that again after such a long time!! The thesis has been a bit slow this year and what better to get the creativity flowing and the motivation to finish, than a trip!)

After a few beautiful days in transit on Kho Chang Island (where I set a new record for just how fast a white belly can turn into a pink lobster like belly) we landed in Karachi! It has been wonderful. Today we begin our meandering journey up towards the mountains, with an overnight train ride to Multan. For the past few days though we have been residents at the Al-Haram hotel in Dadam, a fine establishment where we have been adopted as the local doctors no less! It has become quite a thing for us to get knocks on our door, only to open it and find a Pakistani man who will look us up and down while asking if we are doctors and could we look at his (seemingly) healthy hand. Hmmm. We also have a rather creepy waiter, who along with a porter and someone called a room boy, are busy fulfilling their duty to look after our floor of the hotel. This apparently means knocking on our door and asking for 30 rupees. The rooms though is nice, it has a very enthusiastic fan that takes off when there is a power surge, and some temperamental electricity - mucho sparking and crackling, less so charging of iPods. Our bathroom is divine, as first for me, it comes with its own uniquely squat toilet smell...so think it tastes!!!

At Al-Haram is located conveniently close to the Empress Market, so we covered up, hair and neck covered in our beautiful silk scarves, all very exciting, and headed down there. A beautiful colonial building named after Queen Victoria, Empress of All India, it is now buried in behind a mass of squirming hession and poo. We very quickly realized the potential for the burka and left. We also live very near a market that sells wedding dresses, shoes, jewelry etc. It is a magical wonderland of dress ups and we have now tried on jewels, seen the most amazing bejeweled and beaded silks and tried on shoes of all makes and descriptions. The lovely shoe man was very impressed to have two Australian’s as customers, apparently it has been his dream, so nice that he has fulfilled that at 70! We had a big chat about cricket, where I assured him that Joe Bloggs' form had been suffering and that Australia as a nation was worried, although speculation was that he was saving his strength for the game against Pakistan. Relieved he gave us more shoes to try and we left saying that we had parents to email. I may possibly have said that I needed to ask my Dad for money to buy shoes. The shoe man became very worried and offered us money, gave us his home number and said to phone him after 11pm, all the time shaking my hand with 100 rupees in his! No phone calls were made, and we were tucked in our beds under hurricane wind for the night by 10:30!

Sunday was spent riding jeweled camels along Clifton Beach. What was once the social spot of the British Raj is now an enormous building site, with plastic chairs in the black oil slicked sand with which water laps at them. The Pakistani government has warned against swimming due to pollution, but that was prior to the oil spill. Our camel was very well behaved, although there was something in his manner that said he was less impressed with the tinsel adorning him than I was! A wander up the beach took us to some upturned pallets on which you stand while washing off the petro chemicals. All in all, A romantic and inspiring outing! Happy Birthday Me!

Yesterday was Railway Ticket Day. A choice day, we sat in the offices of Pakistani Railways Sub Superintendent and waited for our concession passes to be OKed. We sat behind a massive leather covered desk and breathe in, hoping that the papers that has accumulated in various poles, wardrobes, shelves and drifts didn't all come crashing down on us. Everything was written by hand, and the office shared a typewriter! They wrote everything on the back of the papers left by the British Raj in 1947!

We are now off to Multan and bidding Karachi goodbye. We stopped at Dohbi Ghat this morning and watched the laundry being done on great rocks, the river has been dried in order to put a highway through, but a man in a loin cloth slamming sheets on a rock is a man in a loin cloth slamming sheets on a rock whether by a river or a highway I guess!

Karachi has been great, we have gotten very used to wearing the scarves and long clothes and have made many friends, a schoolgirl (driven to school in a horse and carriage) a long time administrator of Pakistani Railways who loathes the Taliban, the staff at Karachi Central Station, A taxi driver, some very find men who know how to wash a shirt on a slab of rock, and the blind community of Karachi (the visually impaired and foreign aliens go to the same office for railway concessions!)

Lots of Love from a newly 27 year old!

Dion