Islamabad to Iran
From Islamabad, I rode only to get to Iran, and expected it to take me about four or five days through different conditions, with route decisions based on the attitudes of the local authorities. I had to organise enough cash to get me to the border, and through Iran to Turkey, because there are really no cash machines that accept Australian cards in Iran, or the desert areas of Baluchistan for that matter.
I took out about 2000 rupees and 750 EU and headed south to Multan, then west through Dera Ghazi Khan. An official at a boom-gate told me I wasn’t allowed to ride the stretch beyond his boom-gate and that I’d have to take an alternative route south to Shikarpur and then back up north through Jacobabad to Quetta, which looked on the map to be about 150km extra… I wasn’t happy so I put on the face that got me into trouble by the army in Laos “I don’t understand you, and I don’t want to turn around”. After maybe 15 minutes of waving me away his colleague let me through with a “it’s your funeral” look on his face.
Baluchi police officers – is that John Cleese??
I passed through the boom-gate and headed west towards Loralai, with a police escort provided to me by the Baluchistan authorities. The first escort I received was from a cool old guy on a scooter with snazzy sunnies. I could hardly keep up with his little 90cc postie bike as he flew around the mountain bends. It was novel to have protection, but I don’t think we could have done much in an ambush… at best I could have pulled a “throw sand in the eyes” move, being in the desert and all.
Plenty of sand to throw… A wicked sand storm on the way to the Iranian border
So this was the beginning of a few days of extremely non-sensical escorts and some mighty strange police characters. At one checkpost the police chief (a guy of about 20 wearing clip-up Adidas pants) told me that I’d be murdered for sure, then did that thing where he’d laugh as though he was joking, then put on a serious face again and say “No, you will be murdered.” I pretended to have large bollocks and told him I didn’t care because they’ve probably all got muskets or something and couldn’t hit me from three paces.
Some kids at a tea stop (mud house) between Dera Ghazi Khan and Quetta
An old Baluchi man
The town I “shoulda” stayed in that night was Loralai, however I decided to push on to Quetta. About 5 minutes after the decision it started getting dark and I knew if I was out after dark that I would “definitely” stand a good chance of being murdered. I tried a new tactic and rode up to the police station in Sanjawi and said “Excuse me please kind police officers, I am looking for a hotel.” To which they responded “No problems, you can stay here!!” Well, that was great except that the police chief took a liking to me and took me fruit picking, showed me fashion TV and then asked me to sleep in his room. I politely declined and put my tent up in the police grounds. The next day I left VERY quickly, although they tried to give me a police escort again and had me bailed up in the next towns police station for an hour.
Children playing in a small town on the way to the border
I spent about 10 minutes in Quetta, where a man suggested that Osama was actually in Pakistan and not Afghanistan, and that he was living in Quetta if I must know… I didn’t want to know so moved on 
The stretch between sunny Quetta and the sunny Iranian border was sunny and hot to say the least. I rode through dry, dusty towns and police checkpoints, accepting tea from officials until I came to Dunbaldin, the One Good Town before the Iranian border. I was hot and dusty, after riding through a dust-storm or twelve, so decided my trick of riding up to the police station was in order. Oh, did I forgot to mention that I’d nearly run out of money and had enough for fuel to just get me to the border, the main reason why I wasn’t staying in hotels. The police station experience here was much better, and the good folks cooked me dinner and let me stay on the ramparts with the rest of the company. It was amazing sleeping under the stars on the ramparts of a police base in the wilds of Southern Pakistan, and I’d consider it one of my best experiences of the trip.
Tea shop owners cooking up some food
The next day was basically more sandstorms until the border to…. guess where
Cheap fuel retailers on the Pakistan side of the border