Travel can bring such joy and the experiences you have along the way, hopefully gives you a better understanding of the world we live in. Great natural wonders, delicious food and drink, incredible people and random acts of kindness are all a part of this incredible addiction. You do your research, read about local scams, download all your apps (yes I actually said that), choice your places and away you go. What you don't do is plan for the unexpected because you can't, especially when the unexpected spirals out of control to the point you just need to ride it like a wave and hope you hit the beach softly.
I had a flight booked with Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) on June 27th for the one hour flight from Gilgit to Islamabad. Then the next day I was to fly from Islamabad to Tashkent in Uzbekistan. The plan was to fly to Islamabad, grab a hotel by the airport and catch my flight the next day. Well planned but boy oh boy did my plans go to shit.
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| The Gilgit Airport, I have not idea why is exists |
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| The Medina 2 Hotel, my last night in Gilgit |
First, I was warned by more than one person online that PIA was notorious for cancelling flights out of Gilgit. The local hotel owners who I guess wanted to reassure me that everything was OK in Pakistan sold me that I would have no problems. I ignored it all but somewhere in the back of my mind I had a "but what if" thought creeping into my consciousness.
I moved to the Median 2 hotel, which was a 10 minute walk to the Gilgit Airport. It was a nice enough place with a lush green courtyard and breakfast was free and not a buffet. The downside was there was no AC, only a fan and it was hot so sleeping became almost impossible. I finally got out of bed at 8:00 and was cleaning myself up when the tell tale "ping" came across my phone. It was an email as when I read the send I just knew what these fuckers were about to tell me.
"We are sorry but due to technical difficulties your flight from Gilgit to Islamabad is cancelled and there are no further flights. Please contact PIA for any assistance."
FUCK! How did I not take the constant talk on the Redditt and various travel blogs I interact with seriously. Hoping for the best is not a realistic option you big donkey! FUCK. Well I did have an option. I took the overnight bus to Gilgit from Islamabad a few weeks before so I jumped on the NATCO website hoping there were buses leaving today and that there were seats available. Boom, three buses, leaving at Noon, Three and Five. The bus I took to Gilgit leat at 3PM and arrived at 6:15 AM, just over 15 hours which was the standard. Using this logic I thought that the noon bus was to early and arriving in Islamabad at 3AM would just suck, so I grabbed a seat on the 3:00 PM flight, using my new found naive logic that I would arrive on time. FUCK!
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| What I was expecting as I had on my trip to Gilgit |
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| What I got. |
NATCO buses are all modern, clean and comfortable, so are the many competitors that deliver tourists and locals along this route. I figure to settle in, get a bit of sleep and then catch a cab to the airport, clean myself up and be drinking a beer in Tashkent for dinner...ummm NOPE. First the bus the pulled up was a battered and bruised 30 year old relic of a bygone era. Some windows were busted and when I entered there smell of travel in a bus that has not been cleaning in 30 years hits me right away. I walked to seat 33, kicking old water and coke bottles that were tossed in the aisle, to find some douchebag sitting in my seat. Now first of all, the bus driver was helpful and very accommodating. When he saw me talking to the guy in my seat, who would not move, he argued with him but Nope, not moving. The driver turned to me and said "This is Pakistan" and walked off. So be it, the seats were so small that it did not matter, I was not going to sleep much. FUCK!
We were I thought fully loaded and ready to go. There were four seats behind my row that were raised and nobody was sitting there. So I moved back a seat and that was another bad move. It was hard and when I realized that these seats were over the engine my seat had already been filled by some new guy. Another dude got on an sat beside me along the window and three young kids climbed in and filled in the two seats beside me. I was angry, uncomfortable but ready to get going. I knew what this trip was all about and I just wanted to get to Islamabad. The young guys were funny and taking photos of me, as they do, and were getting off 2 hours down the road near Fairy Meadows, a national park that was on my list of places to visit, but maybe next time. We roarded down the road and I felt every bump in the road. There was NO way this bus had been serviced, especially the shocks and suspension in at least 10 years, if not more. I also knew the the road we will be travelling, the Karakoram heading south was under construction and rough, very very rough going. It was the exact opposite of the completed Northern section that took me to the China Border. I was in for a back breaking bumping ride. FUCK!
There are security stops along the route and after a couple hours the young lads got off the bus freeing up the seats beside me. The guy next to me on the window side moved fast, hopping over me and into one of the seats. Another guy got on and sat beside him, window seat, leaving me a free seat beside me, or did it. We moved 50 metres to the next checkpoint to allow a guy who was getting off duty onto the bus. Yes he was fat and yes he was heading towards the seat beside me. He poured into the tiny seat, did his best manspread and settled in with a smile. "What is your country?" These guys have zero social graces or sense of their surroundings but they are friendly. One guy in front of us decide to play music, without headphone naturally and a guy opposite him started watching a movie, no headphones. FUCK!
Sunrise was 430 and I used that time to look at google maps for our location. We were not even close to Mansehra let alone Abbottabad, which were hours away from Islamabad. I started to get antsy. We finally got off the bumpy and banged up Karakoram and onto the what they call the motorway, which is essentially a well maintained highway that leads into Islamabad. I am doing the math in my head. Ok, it is 530 in the morning, my flight leaves at 11:50. If we get to Islamabad by 9 I can still get to the airport by 930, get cleaned up and all is good. I settled into the now snoring fat guy beside me, my spirits a bit lifted after a brutal night of bouncing around and no sleep, plus having to shift in my seat every 5 minutes and battling for an bit of comfort. I stared straight ahead down the aisle onto the wide open highway. The driver was clipping along at a nice pace for 30 minutes or so, and then it happened. A police blockade, on the fucking highway!! Come on universe, a detour. FUCK!
This was no little off ramp detour. We drove through so many small villages along the route that there was no speed possible. The busses started lining up like an old fashioned convoy, at one time I counted 9 of them from various companies and two very nice NATCO buses, come on man really. We went up one side of a mountain and down another and since that was so fun, we did it again. 6:00 became 7:00 and I am playing "time math" in my head. Ok, the latest I can check in is one hour before the flight leaves, so that means 10:50. If we get to Islamabad at 10 I can still make it by 10:30. I was watching google maps and the onramp to the motorway was getting close. Ok we can do this, lets go go go! We were closing in to the motorway when all the buses started slowing down and turning. They are turning the wrong way! The guy beside me turns to me and says "we eat and drink tea now'. We are stopping for breakfast? We have been on this bus for 16 hours and you are hungry and need tea. What about getting to the destination. Sure enough we pull into a bus yard and everyone gets out and to a person, including my seat mate, we all just stood around staring at each other. Nobody was eating, nobody was drinking tea. It was just mild acceptance to everything. Tick Tock Tick Tock. FUCK!
It was now closing in on 7:30 and we were still over an hour away, and we we just on the outskirts of Mansehra. My mind was playing time roulette. I scratched my head in thought and I felt a scab at the top of my scalp. I picked at it and my fingers were bloody. Damn it, this is from when I banged my head on the dresser of my hotel room the other day, as you do. There was no blood at the time but I guess it scabbed up. Now of course I scratch it and with a bit of blood on my hand my bus seat neighbors start to get excited. They all start speaking quickly in Urdu and one says to me he will tell the bus driver. I had to physically stop him, which freaked him out. These are some crazy overreacting people. We are still three hours from Islamabad and I am refusing to accept defeat. I have not slept, my body is sore as hell, the guy beside me is starting to ripen and my head is bleeding, while I notice row by row everyone starts looking at me as if I had the plague. Then I farted and almost shit my pants. FUCK!
At 8:30 we enter the outskirts of Abbottabad. Although I am still doing mental gymnastics with the time in my now healed head my hope takes one more hit to and finally gets knocked out. Our magic bus starts to slow and pulls over onto the shoulder. The driver gets out while every eye on the bus peers out the window. He comes back into the bus, walked towards the back of the bus and pulls out what looks to be a large lug wrench and a 5 foot metal pole, I guess to use as leverage. Do we have a flat tire? As he walks out a long procession of male passengers follow him. He bangs around on the left side of the bus and the remained of the passengers head out. He starts banging on the right side of the bus and I peek out and there is a crowd standing around watching him do whatever it is he is doing. The thirty minutes parked on the side of the road killed any hope that I had to make it to the Islamabad Airport on time. I was defeated, but the good news is, all the passengers returned to the bus like a "Band of Brothers" having watched the driver do whatever it was that he did. It was a good thing they stood around and watched. FUCK!
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| If we stand around it looks like we are helping |
Our tale is not over as there is one more event that happened which just tied this journey into a nice neat little bow. We were turning into a NATCO station on the outskirts of Islamabad which worked for me. I did not really want to have to deal with the Rawalpindi bus station, the second largest in the world. I was happy to jump out here, catch an In Drive (Uber) and get to the hotel that I had booked while pondering my next move. We were about 25 metres from the station, pulling in when the bus choked, heaved, hissed and stalled. This sumbitch ran out of gas. That was not the best of it. Our Band of Brother got out and pushed the bus the last few metres into the gas station that was located at the NATCO station. I SHIT YOU NOT! I stole the picture below but you get the idea. Just picture an older beat up bus and add about 10 more dudes. Yup, that is how my 19 hours bus journey ended. We ran out of freak gas. FUCK!
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| I grabbed this photo from Alamy, but you get the idea. |
I had had enough and needed to get off this bus. I grabbed my rucksack, which I luckily brought onto the bus with me instead of storing it underneath in the cargo areas. I jumped off the bus and the hot Islamabad air felt like a spring breeze. This is when I saw the boys lining up to push the bus. The driver came running over very concerned that I was leaving. He was honestly concerned as he had been the entire trip. Checking on me at rest stops and making sure I was ok. I lied to him each and every time. I told him I needed to get to the airport (another lie, my plane was on the tarmac without me) and he accepted that. I ordered an In Drive (uber) and the first driver would be there in 5 minutes, then 4, 3, 2..driver cancelled. Holy shit, let's do this again and yes the second driver cancelled. Screw it, I am going to sleep at the gas station. The third guy showed up, drove me the 45 minutes to "Top City", a new area being built up around the airport. I paid him his 1100 Rupees ($5.50), checked into my hotel expecting it to be just a flea bag shithole. It was not. The Ambrina Hotel is a brand new hotel surrounded by to many construction projects to count. There are a scattering of shops that are open as well as a grocery store. I counted 11 new banks when we passed security into Top City. That tells you something.
Everything we shiny and new and I was greeted cheerfully by the gun toting security guard, then the hotel manager and the front desk crew. It felt like a nice warm hug at the end of a long brutal 24 hours. I will tell you that none of this is embellished, this is a true account of what happened.
With a bit of post traumatic perspective I recounted that my chubby seat mate plus 6 others around me and we all suffered together and at times each of them asked me if I was doing ok. One guy who spoke English well said to me, "this bus is shit". That was funny. We shared water, snacks and the pain of the journey. Each of them made sure to come shake my hand as I stood on the side of the road waiting for my cab. Finally and the most important point. If you are on the road long enough, sometimes nothing is going to go to plan, no matter what. Heck that goes for everyday life but when you are in a foreign country with absolutely no control of the situation and you realize that you have been defeated, you just need to "ride that wave in baby" and hope the beach landing is soft. In my case it was.
What I have learned along the way is in a situation such as this, as insane as it had become it was beyond my control so there is no reason to freak out. Nobody cares that I had a flight to catch, or that my ass hurt, or I was tired, and I really wanted a beer, nobody cared at all. I had problems to take care of so take care of them, one at a time. I am not being glib but have been through worse while on the road and lived to tell the tale. Sure it is going to cost me a few $$ for a new flight, so the solution is not to do a few other things that I had planned to strike a balance, and that is how I try to keep sane when my world is anything but.
I snapped the photo above at the Gilgit bus terminal as I waited for my bus trip to the great beyond. I wondered how terrible things were for him to be sitting there so incredibly dejected. It was just over 19 hours later and I felt all of his pain and anguish. The difference is I ended up sleeping in a huge comfortable bed in a room with strong AC. I can not say the same for him. Perspective is everything and there is always a solution.