When I first waved back to him I was cautious. Too many strangers in Dakar had ulterior motives, and this guy from the distance seemed to be another. But this wasn’t Dakar. It was the Island of Goree, 3 km offshore of the monster city.
Approaching historic island of Goree, near Dakar
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Taking a shit my arse smelt like Moroccan cooking – it’s true … My shit was alluring, scented with lemon and herbs and not at all offensive as it wafted into my nostrils like I was ready to eat yesterdays meal again. Tagine. That conical-clay-vase of simmering casserole: pickled lemon, tomatoes, olives, peppers, carrot and in this case fish; other times chicken with potato. Yum.
Classic Moroccan cuisine – Tagine (fish)
Talking of nice arse – Fatima, the Moroccan woman I shacked up with for 4 days in Adagir had some booty to adore … best arse this side of a Chicago blues bar.
And so how did I meet her you ask?
I was in a café on the street of Adagir’s New Talborjt district, eating dinner. A Moroccan man with a limp soon sat at the table next to me and preceded to play tunes on his cell-phone – from some pop-rock to Pink Floyd – Wish You Were Here – to trance and techno and I could see him glancing my way, hoping for my attention but I knew he was looking to sell – SOMETHING and so I ignored him and ate. But after maybe 15 minutes of this charade I heard Salaam Aleikum – thrown my way – Peace be Upon You – and so I replied with Aleikum as Salaam – And Peace be upon You – and so that was how he began to sell me hashish.
And so now a spliff … am too wasted too write … Later.
Well yuk, as the day/evening wears on and the shits become more frequent and texture-less I realize that my first bad belly maybe approaching – but I reckon it’s the alcohol, as I been really overdoing it these past days (months actually, if I include Korea) ; with Fatima shacked up in our total sex mission it was beers - at least 10 per evening – plus a bottle of whisky with Redbull, or a bottle of Tequila done in shots -across galaxies of frantic animal orgasms, of which little I remember – ouch, sex for money with little recollection only a week after – must consult my audio diary but do remember it be mad hard-porn, her licking my arse out like a lesbian starved for oral sex and our 69s were just too hungry. She drunk alongside me, glass for glass, and fucked much – cappuccino smooth skin and wired afro Rasta hair and that killer smile and arse rounded well and that Mohawk-public hair pussy that she joking pointed out matched my hairstyle; yeah, really intense. We connected like young lovers crazy on hot, inter-racial heat.
And now the summer fog from the Atlantic has come in over the desert cliffs and hill-top villages to smother the sunset in Sidi Ifni, 7:26 pm. I lock out a mosquito trying to zip in thru the patio door. It’s not hot like the other evenings; overcast mostly; here middle of summer at the western-most reaches of the Sahara nearby and … don’t know what the fuck I’m on about now … Thinking pussy, but Morocco is not Thailand.
And Morocco is how I remember it – but it’s gotten more modern in the big cities, the youth more sexy and hip but some scapes are still wretched and broken down, and then there’s the gorgeous traditional villages, and the yeah, touts and hustlers are still here annoying tourists and also many French expats have set up glossy cafés, hotels, tourist ventures – yet despite time and the march of modernity most of Morocco remains crazy and exotic like an India chaos with more edge.
Crazy things happened here with me and my last true love Robyn, back in 1991 traveling Morocco (but that’s another story) and now everything is familiar but fresh as I venture to different corners than before – that was before I got fucked-up on this smoke and thought about serious stuff like past love but I suppose it’s hard to avoid when you revisit a country for the first time in 17 years and the last time here was with her.
Time to revisit the toilet …
VIDEO ART: Islam – Peace be Upon You
I have had the pleasure of travelling across much of the Islamic world – these images are from Iraq (1989) & Yemen (2005).
>>> ENTER art exhibition here (or click image)
Here I am in Yemen awaiting the verdict by trial under strict Islamic Shira Law. Am facing serious charges of fornication, sodomy and using banned substances. The outcome will be either: 1) Deportation 2) Flogged a dozen times 3) Stoned to death ??? (So pick the right answer and I’ll post you an Arabic-language Koran, FREE; cos I’ve bought a stack in my rush to repent).
Fortunately, the trial of MRP is not that dramatic.
Old city of Sanaá from my guesthouse roof-top
Acquitted … 6 injections in the butt solved what 3 courses of pills had failed to do – relieve my swollen and infected gums around my left wisdom tooth.
The very real possibility of a pulled tooth wasn’t something to excite me – what when they have to smash it from the jaw bone. I have to say that the pain was the worst I have ever experienced in my entire life: from my throat to my ears shrieking tearing that could only be dulled by a week on 24/7 super painkillers (forget aspirin or paracetamol; ineffective). But the best drug of them all was the celebratory beers I consumed that last night in Aden.
Young girl with her version of Barbie
Went to the ’sailors club’ in the old British port on the other side of the Aden volcano. It was discreet. Could buy beer and spirits inside … and there were women there !!! Without veil !!! Somalis mostly, some drinking in the smoky, worn surrounds looking out to the harbour and a supertanker gliding out in the sunset seen from where I sat at front table alone in this empty-ish place. Two Russian sailors, a few Arabs, a barmen, several women – a couple of young black babes and a few very worn out ones milling around, drawing closer to me after my 3rd can of beer.
Then entered a black-draped Yemeni – wow, look at her – eyes smiling and she sat down next to me as the English speaking Somali, Sonia – her in jeans, introduced me to Arwa. Sure she was Yemeni, from Sanaa and once married (probably to an old guy who died – because she was only 16). Anyway, I assumed they were all hostesses serving drinks and smiling at men’s jokes for a tip … but that was not the case.
Jibla: Queen Arwa’s tomb is housed in the (left) mosque
Back in the 11th century in the southern central mountain town of Jibla there was a great and benevolent queen called Arwa, who ruled wisely and justly, built schools, roads, bridges, mosques, made last peace and ushered in a period of great prosperity for her people and even today, she is still spoken of very highly; I know this cos I visited her city and tomb within the mosque some weeks back and now I had this young beauty of her namesake next to me and offering her body.What was I to do; the oblivious.
The Arabian Nights fantasy was not disappointing; mutually ecstatic, one of the highlights of my entire sex life … watching her flip off her black cloth to reveal her skimpy nightie and our embrace of tight-hugged dancing to Arabic music on the TV before we got bed-bound … but I will leave the rest of the encounter to your imagination as it will get too-beautifully pornographic.
It was a very weird situation: a secret taxi in the club grounds left for a secret hotel, checking into the hotel while busting for a piss and her secreted in the side door, her riding veiled in the taxi backseat as me in the front rode across our hot, humid night.
With this steamy incident in mind – theoretically, I could be tried under Sharia Law – as I had joked about earlier but it was not meant to be. Insha Allah.
Ancient mud-skyscapers of Shibam, Wadi Hadramawt
… I am now in the searing desert in Sayun, in the great Wadi Hadramawt – the longest canyon in Arabia where villages of mud-brick tower houses and mosque minarets cluster amid palms and fertile fields running along the vast desert floor, a few miles either side the endless, mighty, canyon cliffs of hard rock guarding against the hostile plateau above and all around.
I came here in a shared taxi – crammed with two women and their dozen kids from Al-Mulkala, the famous Hadramawt region port on the hellishly-humid Arabian Sea coast, five hours, up the mountain pass and then across the empty plateau of howling hot winds, here – where Freya Stark, the lone English woman travelled by donkey to Wadi Hadramawt back in 1935 & 1938 (check her books). My hotel window looks to the white, towered, fortified palace of Sayun, where she’d stayed as a guest of the Sultan.
Looking after dad’s AK-47, Jibla
Wadi Hadramawt has a long history: think the Queen of Sheba stories and the famous frankincense route from the coast of Oman and Yemen across the deserts of Arabia to Rome or over by sea to India and beyond and you’re half-way there.
Amid the branching wadis (dry river beds/ canyons) off mighty Hadramawt hide caves and art dating from the Stone Age and ruins from civilisations that they call the cradle of Arabia : 12th – 1st centuries BC cities that grew very rich from the frankincense that the – entire known – world craved so much.
Today I spoke – briefly – to a old Javanese-descended Arab here as I ate my fried tuna and rice at a local restaurant for back in the middle-AD centuries merchants from Hadramawt had sailed to India, Singapore, and even Java (Indonesia) exposing new regions to Islam and continuing their trade.
And talking of ancient trade: I am mighty glad that “the world’s oldest profession” exists – albeit, small-time & super discreet – here in the lands of Islam. It appears the saying – “people are people”, is indeed true the world over.
Love, flowers & Arabian fantasies – MRP
travel article 1997 / travels 1991
IN BANGLADESH, Mother Earth fluctuates fast between friend and foe: the mighty rivers that flow from the Himalayas give life, while seasonal storms reap death.
What happens in faraway lands is usually irrelevant when watched on telly in New Zealand. However with recent storms in Bangladesh and New Zealand, such headlines jolted me back to when I was caught in one of Bangladesh’s worse-ever cyclones.
While the world witnessed it on T.V: I’d watched from a window within its path.
Bangladesh is roughly half the size of New Zealand but home to 117 million people, making it the world’s most-densely populated country, with 813 people per sq km! Located between India, Burma and the Bay of Bengal – where monsoonal winds whip in from the west, often devastating the southern coast of Bangladesh.
Most of the country is flat, with the crowded deltaic lowlands supporting much of the population. Here the great rivers of the Ganga, the Brahmaputra and the Meghna flood to replenish the intensively-cropped land. From the Ganga River alone, over 1.4 billion tonnes of silt is washed down from the Himalayas each year – nearly fives times that of the Amazon. Upon these low-laying deltas and islands of fertile mud, farming (and fishing) communities thrive, but it is these areas that are most prone to cyclones.
The rivers and their many tributaries are the main mode of transportation in Bangladesh and so in the city of Khulna, I boarded a battered colonial steamboat to Dacca, capital of Bangladesh.
The journey took 28 hours.
Amongst the masses on the upper deck was like a street scene from Calcutta. People filled every space: babies crying, women cooking, goats bleating, hawkers shouting, Muslim males praying as others slept, as the engine droned endlessly. It proved impossible to sit anywhere, until an old man offered me some space on his cardboard – it kept our butts off the damp, rusting deck.
Beside us an elderly Muslim couple shaded from the sun beneath a sheet, tied between the railing and a wall peg. The woman was asleep, slouched against her husband, shrouded by black cloth and veil, only her henna-laced hands exposed to the outsider’s eyes.
It is the Muslim dominance of Bangladesh – at 86% of the population, that saw the country’s creation. Following the Partition of Hindu-dominated India in 1947, East Bengal (as Bangladesh was once called) united with Muslim Pakistan to become East Pakistan. But tensions between dominant West Pakistan and Bengali East Pakistan later ignited into unrest and war in 1970. Supported by India, East Pakistan soon gained independence to become Bangladesh.
Since then military regimes have dominated government, until 1991, when democracy arrived with the change from a Presidential to a Parliamentary system, ushering in Bangladesh’s first female Prime Minster, Begum Khaleda. (Sheikh Hasina, another woman, leads Muslim Bangladesh today.)
COX’S BAZAAR began as a colonial town on the east coast of Bangladesh, founded in 1798 by Lieutenant Hiram Cox of the British East India Company. In recent times it has become a quiet holiday town, noted for the world’s longest sandy beach – stretching 120 kilometres to the Burmese border. I had reckoned on some laziness in the sun, but it wasn’t meant to be …
On the day of my arrival, April 29th 1991, it began to rain. During the evening it sharpened to a Wellington Southerly -torrents of rain and gale-force winds. Gusts shook the old hotel, rattling windows. Outside, palm trees buckled and flapped. Roofing iron clattered, bits crashing, things cracking. Along the corridor windows broke as roaring wind accelerated like a Jumbo jet. The windows in my room ripped free – shattering glass; wooden frames bashing, curtains sucked out, as wind and rain and leaves flew inside. Wave after wave of shrieking winds, that lasted 3 or 4 hours, reaching its zenith about midnight.
Next morning I woke confused, surrounded by water and leaves – the windows broken, the concrete floor like an autumn swimming pool. This was no dream. The wreckage beyond my room was immense.
A gentle breeze caressed Cox’s Bazaar as I wandered damaged streets, where bloated cows lay stiff, where children looked frightened. Banana plantations were shredded. Palm trees torn loose or bent like spiked umbrellas. Buildings had walls ruined, iron roofing scattered. A shed that was a shop sat on its side; thrown down a riverbank.
On the edge of town whole settlements had been washed away by huge tidal surges. Boys waded chest-deep through swamped areas, clutching salvaged bamboo beams. The pristine beach was littered with debris; scores of fishing trawlers sat wedged amid homes; dense rows of mature pines were snapped like matchsticks. Two women wept as they searched the sand, their fingers mining where their home had been. They found a pot.
Days later there was still no electricity, no running water in the hotel. I washed from well-drawn water, and drunk the same mucky brown stuff – aided by purifying tablets. Meantime the locals began repairs; the clang of hammers across the tranquillity.
I now realised the enormity of the storm having read a Bengali English-language newspaper: “Wind speeds averaging 120 km per hour and peaking at 250 km per hour; 139,000 dead; 1.7 million made homeless.”
The pressure of Bangladesh’s increasing population and the resilience of the human spirit ensures people return to rebuild and take their chances in this, a hazardous yet fertile land, where cyclones and rivers shape the rhythms of life.
He’d just locked the keys inside his truck. What a plonker! And what a hopeless position: parked as it was in front of the gate – which the guard had just unlocked and now the truck totally blocked the access point between Iran and Pakistan … cornered near Afghanistan. A high fence defined the frontier, mesh and barbed-wire running out and into the barren hills and cramped against the wire were Afghani refugees living in a dusty, iron-sheet, canvas and timber squalor.
Razor ridges on the road from the Iranian border into Baluchistan
The German had offered me a lift. But now, with his truck stuck, I was sure I would be catching the train to Quetta. (The capital of Baluchistan: the vast desert region of western Pakistan. Baluchistan is a rugged, arid land bordered by Iran in the west, Afghanistan to the north, the Arabian Sea in the south and the greener Sind province of Pakistan in the east.) I’d rushed to make the once-a-week train; I didn’t fancy waiting for the next departure. Or one of the old, agonising and infrequent buses which left the border.
I strolled through the gate and into Pakistan – the truck still blocking it. Other vehicles couldn’t pass. Fortunately, there were none waiting this early in the morning. I greeted the Pakistani police. They were friendly, smiling, asking questions as they shaded on the veranda of the customs hut.
Surrounded by dark-skinned police, in black uniforms and black berets (with red insigna), I felt elated to have reached the Subcontinent. Historically, I’d now entered India. But politically Hindustan, or land of the Hindus, was still 1500 km east. For the last two days dark-skinned people had been prevalent in Iran as I’d neared Pakistan. In Kerman, I’d given a woman – begging with her child – 1000 rials. However, this brought another woman with child, screeching and shrieking at my feet. These women made me wonder about the immense poverty I would encounter in India: What would I do when everyone wanted money?
Now, stamped into Pakistan, I wandered back into the glaring sunlight. And no sooner had I, when the money changers rushed me–shouting and arguing for my attention.
“Change! Change!” “Dollar. You ‘ave dollar?” “Iran rial, I change.” “Good rate, I give best.” “No mista, do not listen to this man – “ ” – How much, you say?” “I give more!”
I changed the last of my rials for Pakistani rupees. Meanwhile the truck remained stuck in Iran, inches from Pakistan. Still the German cursed. Confused Iranian guards ran round with wire and other objects that might open the door. The German pulled at the rubber lining the window. I offered my Swiss army knife. And suggested: Smash the window with a rock. But he wouldn’t hear of it. Eventually he stripped the rubber, opened the small triangular window, then pushed his arm through and unlocked the door. The borderguards were impressed – and I suspect, a little relieved to have the gate clear as other vehicles had arrived.
Dry flood plains of Baluchistan
I had a lift, again. We drove past the immigration shack to the custom’s building round the corner and stopped. Inside, they inspected my pack briefly. Then with our passports checked and stamped again, the official followed us back the to truck.
During the next hour customs checked the truck’s contents with the descriptions on the carnet, while scores of dust-coated cars (Ex-Kuwait like I’d seen at the Turkish/ Iranian border) arrived. A Mercedes 180 came strapped onto the roof of an old bus!
Returning guest-workers and their families waited for clearance. Customs took awhile. Killing time, doing essentials, young adults and children gathered with jerry cans and plastic bottles on the soaked soil round the water pump. One guy washed dust and grime from his arms, face and feet. Another scrubbed his sandals; others cleaned windscreens, checked tyres, ate and relaxed before the drive across the desert. A happy vibe bounced around the vehicle park. It said: We’re relieved to have nearly reached home.
I watched the activity while the customs man inspected the truck. First, everything inside the rear living-unit. One stove. Two fridges. Three spare wheels. A second engine, tool box … And then inside the cab.
The flat-nosed Mercedes freight truck had a green cab and the rear was dark-blue, with a flower painted and circling a lone plastic porthole. A black panther – like those kitsch 70s bedroom posters, sparkling eyes, mouth open and stalking – gazed from above the cab’s roof.
The driver, Kris, said he’d painted both pictures. He was a solid guy who tended to waddle, rather than walk; being top-heavy, like a body builder who’d neglected his lower half; his muscles were obvious in his faded black singlet. He looked like someone I’d met before: shaggy brown hair touching the his lower neck, blue eyes, sharp nose, whiskery face and moustache.
Kris said the first 160 km of road was a trail of tyre-grooved dust. Old tracks, piled stones and the skeletons of buses kept us on route. Otherwise, it was the perfect place to get lost. Imagine a flat and empty landscape halved into two colours: dust-grey sand and stones – like rough sandpaper and pale-blue sky.
Driving this desolate stretch heading east, we crossed paths with six Baluchi’s going north. One man rode, while the others led laden camels–sacks and blankets. We stopped. They stopped. We smiled, shook hands and exchanged greetings. “Salaam akeikum” – ‘Peace be upon you.’ “Wa aleikum asalaam”, they replied. ‘And peace be upon
you.’ Beaming in the eyes of both parties: the surpise of having encountered each another. Here two worlds collided. Them with Allah’s time-tested transport and us, with our recent man-made machine.
These men wore traditional garments – of a style perhaps unchanged since man’s creation? The bearded chief resembled a biblical prophet. He dressed in clean white robes and in turban with flowing tail. He held a sturdy wooden staff. The rest wore knee-length mostly grey–shirts and baggy trousers, with round-flat caps or loose turbans. Only Allah knows where their leader led them, so much space, so much sky.
Men of the desert
Speeding across the blank expanse our truck sent dust whirling. But the trail wasn’t good, and more often the pace was slow. Many ruts and holes. Kris had driven this route before and this was now his fourth time. And his last. He said, “I’m sick of it. Too much hassle and it is too lonely. When I saw you, I was very glad to see another foreigner–zat is why I ask if you want the ride.”
I asked Kris about the hassles involved with driving from Germany to Nepal. And he replied, “The police always stop me in Iran. Zey see a European truck and zey search for a long time and are always wanting things. I am sick of zis…”
In Germany Kris (a mechanic) and friends brought old trucks, loading them with second hand appliances and setting them up as campers – to avoid custom’s restrictions. Later they sold the lot in Kathmandu. But it had been Kris who’d done all the travelling.
“Once,” he said, “a friend took the truck across Turkey but when he reached the Iran border, zey turn him back. So I had to fly from Germany to drive the truck for him.” “Did he have a visa?” “Yes. He had a visa from the embassy in Germany.” “Why was he turned back then?” “Zey gave no reason. But there was a diplomatic problem at the time between Germany and Iran, maybe zis was the reason. It did not matter anyhow, zey let me in. But I think it was because I had been to Iran before…”
Parking off the road for the night, we later slept. By mid-morning we’d reached the asphalt. It was pocked with holes. The slow and bumpy road stretched before us, weaving as the landscape became rugged.
It was weird, startling, even spooky. A rock-strewn plain patched by scrub and yellowish weeds. And breaking this mustard-and-grey carpet were mountains; rocky, razored and near-vertical from their base, forming in a series of serrated ridges, curling the land like dragons. The road passed between two spikes and beyond the nearest ridges, the distant peaks were misted in a blue-grey haze.
Later, in a panorama of gravel and barren sand-swamped hills, we stopped alongside two camels chomping on green thorny bush. Watching over them were two boys. One about ten and the other in his early-teens, both dressed in dejembas (knee-length shirt; with loose trousers). Kris gave them some stickers, demonstrating what they were by peeling one and fastening it to the windscreen. They invited us for chai, pointing to a mud-and-stone flat-roofed house nestled beside a hill. Kris declined.
The boys who liked their stickers
The landscape was silence and the road empty. But we did encounter the odd Kuwaiti car or Pakistani truck. The trucks were gypsy caravans on modern chassises. Some had cabins built of wood with ornate panels and tassles around the windscreen and doors. Heavily-decorated and brightly-painted Allah praises, murals and motifs ran around the high wagon-like cargo bins. Fairy lights, metallic stickers and chains clung from bumpers and tailboards. Signs were painted on the back of each truck: “Please use horn”. And like some warning, they thundered past us – we never overtook them. Their drivers drove fast and crazy. After several battles, it was always us who pulled over to let them pass. We stopped either for trucks or to stretch, or to refill our waterbottles from the rear tank.
Driving into Dalbandin around dusk, we halted for chai. At the tea stall we met a teacher. He showed us to a basic restaurant. They served mutton curry with rice – or the reality, sticky bits with spicey soup and bones. Anyway, it seemed like a meal after two days of biscuits. Before leaving I visited the outhouse, where I flicked a lighter to see where I was stepping. Of course, the long-drop reeked something horrible but at least turds didn’t cover the dirt. Around the pit, hundreds of cockroaches – 2 inches long – scuttled for cover as I squatted.
Before we departed Dalbandin the teacher reappeared with a lump of charas (hash). After two hours we turned off the road, careful not to park where the sand was too soft. Then without papers, Kris carefully loosened and emptied a cigarette, mixing tobacco with pinches of charas before repacking the cylinder.
Now lying in our sleeping bags on the truck’s roof – excessible by a skylight – we smoked, gazing at the stars.
Silence, except my walkman playing softly … But alarmingly half-way through the first smoke we thought we heard someone shouting. Looking down, we saw an armed soldier walking around the truck. He asked what we were doing? We told him: Just parked for the night. He said okay, and bid us good night.
And not until the morning did we realize in this total emptiness that there was a police post just across the road! It had been invisible last night.
Kris had checked the ground but still we managed to get stuck in the sand as we left that next morning. The rear wheels spun and dug in. He revved-hard and we wound deeper. After scooping sand from the tyres and placing some wood beneath the rubber, we tried again. We jolted forward. The small plank snapped. Sand sunk around the axel. Kris told me he’d nearly lost a truck in the sand before – it seemed we were to repeat the lesson.
Truck stuck ! (Kris on far-right)
It was looking ugly … Fortunately, a man from the station offered help. Within minutes we had seven men armed with a spade and two lengths of wood. They dug us out. Free; we thanked them. Kris gave out Western cigarettes and matches (which he carried to give as gifts).
For hours the road coiled across rugged hills as we began climbing towards Quetta. Mountains of rock devoid of trees. As we twisted towards the top of another range of boulders, tussock grass amid reefs of jagged rock – the corner ahead came into view. A crashed bus. It lay on its side on the slope, having punched through the stone wall flanking the road. Surprisingly it had stuck – not tumbled into the gorge.
The road wound hills and later followed a river, through steep cliffs of layered wave-thrashed rock. Pebbles and reeds lined the river. But further, the water dried-up as we drove alongside a wide floodplain dotted by shrubs; red-brown and green blotches reaching to rounded, gentle hills a mile off. T
Throughout the journey the scenery was desolate and barren. Stunning landscapes. But nature aside, the only sights were rail bridges and tracks occasionally following the road. At times the line burrowed into cliffs, travelling through tunnels built by the British early this century, and bove the entrances small stone forts (with crenellated walls and turrets like a Medieval castle). A hint of the troubled times had by the Brits in this wild corner of Empire.
Trucks rumbling beyond an old British railway fort
In Nushki (I think it was this place as it is only one of three towns on route to Quetta) we saw green trees and lush vegetation amid rundown brick and shanty buildings. Shoe-box-sized stalls and sack-and-timber shelters were crammed infront of old brick houses – looking half-finished or falling apart with paint fading and fragile timber lean-tos and awnings tacked on; rugs and clothes hanging from roofs and wires. Nuskhi was drying out. I think we’d missed a downpour. The roadside was muddy and swamped by large puddles, forming temporary lakes around houses, shops and cigarette stalls, causing donkeys and carts to circle round.
And when we stopped at a stall a crowd of 40-50 gathered. Males of all ages came to watch the foreigners and admire the truck. Men and boys. Some wore turbans. But most had round-flat caps with a wedge cut in the front, embroidered with motifs, flowers and studded with tiny mirrors.
The crowd …
After travelling 620 km – three days – across Baluchistan we entered Quetta that afternoon … The main street was thick with cars, trucks, packed buses, swerving bicycles, diesel-coughing rickshaws. The hustle and bustle like a photo I’d already pictured, like a scene I’d already visualised, and now finally India seemed within my reach …
