Leaving India

Currently at lat/long: n31 33.920 e74 18.256

Amer Hotel, Lahore, PK

21:25 (GMT+4)

No word from DJ, yet, on this Chennai newspaper article mystery. Perhaps his new wife doesn't let him read rubbish like my ranting on the Internet.

I rolled up to the Indian border expecting the worst but got something much better, "not the worst." So that was good.

First of all, no-one could quite comprehend that I wanted to see the Customs people first. "No, no, immigration!" Always, when negotiating borders, you get stamped in or out then the vehicle gets stamped in or out (hopefully, both you and the vehicle heading in the same direction).

So I simply ignored them and walked over to the Customs people and stated my case and waved my magic letter from Delhi Customs. This caused much consternation and debate before I was asked to sit and the one Customs guy went off to find someone who knew about these things.

He came back, there was some to-ing and fro-ing and they decided that because my carnet was valid until the end of August then there was no problem, they would sign me out. Did I have the note? What note? The note from immigration? No, I've not been there yet. So I toddled off back to immigration and had myself signed out of India.

I came back over to the Customs guys who now had a pad of "Customs extensions" forms for me to fill (one) in. Hmm, this suddenly doesn't look like the rapid turnaround they'd promised ten minutes ago.

So I filled that in and it was added to the mix of paperwork which now had to be taken away for confirmation because suddenly they recognised that there was a six-month rule. I sat down again and got a second cup of tea. In the meanwhile I had been asked to bring my bike around the building, a good sign, but on return I found the seat where I'd left my jacket soaking wet. A bit of a panic as I thought I might have burst my CamelBak by sitting on it. I think in the end the weight of the jacket sat on the mouthpiece might have let it drain the contents. In placing my jacket on the next seat to examine the problem I also seemed to drench that as my jacket promptly released quite a lot of water it had soaked up. Ho hum.

I had the opportunity to ask why it was so quiet. There are buses on Mondays and Thursdays but otherwise most IN and PK go by train (a few km south) and so largely the crossing is for foreigners. Not a lot of them hanging about today.

The excitement of trying to flood the Customs Hall over lunchtime dragged on and eventually after several hours they agreed to stamp the bike out of India partly, I think, because they decided that I'd only been in India for three months... Phew! Of course, the was another half-hour delay when I asked where my letter from Delhi Customs had gone, a photocopy of it was retrieved then a bottle of Tipp-Ex was found to remove the comments by Customs staff and the ineffectualness of Tipp-Ex on photocopies was demonstrated. Or perhaps the Tipp-Ex had simply decayed in the heat. I was free to go.

At the actual border crossing, the Indian soldier checks your passport then just three yards away the Pakistani guy checks your passport again. Normally there's hundreds of yards (if not km between the border posts). I asked if they were allowed to talk to each other, the PK guy smiled and said no.

The Wagha side might have been a bit quicker had they any power. There was a sole (foreign) woman travelling in the other direction.

Back here at the Amer Hotel I've been greeted enthusiastically by the staff I remember and several people I don't. I obviously had an influence when I was here last October.

I spent a couple of hours scraping dirt off the chain, which looks as though it has been grinding its way through the rear sprocket again, and soaking it in oil to clean and perhaps lube it. Clearly, I am not a chain person.

What I had forgotten about at The Amer were the decaying bathrooms and the bugs. I'm on cockroach-watch here in the restaurant. So far I'm winning.