One random day, we unexpectedly received a call from Mahmood. "You attended one of my talks and showed interest in travelling to Pakistan. I am putting together my tours for this year and wondered if you would like to join us?" We thanked Mahmood for call but told him we were still intending travelling independently.
Visas needed to arranged and although people do do it themselves, as novices we decided to pay the extra and go through an agency. At this point world politics started to get in the way! The first country we needed to a visa for was Iran. We were travelling at the wrong time of year to go through the Stans and even we weren't up for going through Afganistan, so we needed to get through Iran. Our research revealed a beautiful country with friendly people who want to encourage tourism. Richard was in regular contact with an Iranian campsite, who were very proud to tell us the places we should see and share with us all sorts of information about food, weather, customs and anything else we wanted to know. They were genuinely looking forward to receiving English visitors. Unfortunately though, the powers that be were not!
The trouble was, that the whole of the rest of our trip was dependent upon getting through Iraq. If we couldn't get the Iranian visas, we couldn't get anywhere. There was a long period of uncertainty, whilst our Agent liaised with the various authorities and waited for the diplomats and politicians to do whatever it is they do! For some reason, unbeknown to mere mortals, the Brits and Canadians were no longer being allowed in. Whatever it was, the Aussies and Dutch seemingly hadn't caused the same offence as they were still able to get visas???? In the end we had set our own deadline and say that if situation was not resolved by a certain date then we would have to change our plans. Precious time was being wasted by waiting and there was still so much to do.
Our self set deadline came. We heard of two Brits doing the trip on a bike, one had had her paperwork dealt with on one day, her fellow biker the day after. She was allowed in but he wasn't! Subsequently, he then spent a month sat on the boarder waiting. We don't have a month to waste like that in our trip. When finally he did get in, it was fully accompanied, no choice of route, straight in and straight out the other side. Not what we wanted at all. Time to come up with an alternative plan.
There was a point when I was starting to think that somehow Richard and I were having an adverse effect of world peace as a whole! Every time we came up with a new destination, within days some event or another would kick off. Did we really want to spend six months touring around Europe? We would still have fun, see nice things......but. What we wanted was to do something that we won't do when we are older. God willing, we should be able to tour Europe either on the bike or in Fay for many years to come. What was needed was.....a call to Mahmood.
We were in luck, he had two spaces left on the last tour of the year. No later dates are available as the passes close due to snow, which can reach to within a foot of the top of the telegraph poles. (Where there are telegraph poles!!) Ok, if we are not finishing a Pakistan trip until the end of September then we will be heading out to Europe for the remainder of our time in the winter. Not much of plan that, wrack those brains, Trace where there's a will there's a way.
Sent from my iPad
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