Getting to Romania from Hungary was no big deal, a little bit dirtier place with a little worse roads, but no big difference, European-quality accommodations etc.
When we got to Bulgaria it got a bit dirtier again with slightly worse roads than Romania, but still not bad, e.g. Burgas is a beautiful and clean city.
In Turkey the way things work got different in many aspects, we glanced the first piles of garbage in some parts of Istanbul, and basically there were no trash bins any more. Then, going deeper into the Asian part of Turkey, people started to look different from us, the cars were honking more and more, but still was not a different world from ours.
In Iran the strange things started: lots of garbage on the streets, cars honking basically continously, not caring about lanes and red lights, people ate from the floor and the cleaniness of the hotels became questionable. But Persians are fundamentally clean beings and very friendly and helpful, and the country is in many aspects very orderly.
And then we entered Pakistan. Well, if we ever had a cultural shock during our trip, this was it. The Iranian side is asphalted, a little dusty but generally in order, while the Pakistani side is more or less just sand and garbage. In Pakistan the cars are very different (not mentioning the steering wheel being on the right side), perople have very different looks and mentality, sometimes taking a sh*t on the street. Excuse me, I don't want to look down upon the Pakistani, they are really cool people and all as I'll tell about them later, I'm just trying to picture you the difference as we felt it. It was a cultural shock for sure.
Some words about the border crossing, someone might be interesed how it went: we took a night bus from Kerman to Zahedan (the last bigger city in Iran on the way to Pakistan) then a friend we met on the bus helped us in getting a taxi to the border. For some reason there were no buses going there and all taxi drivers wanted to fool us. Finally our friend found some ambulance people who were so nice to us that they took us to the border for free. On the way there there were military stations in every five kilometers because this is a territory with problems. From one of these stations a soldier accompanied us for safety. They looked at our papers every some kilometers, once they even took them somewhere for 10 minutes, but meanwhile we got some food from our ambulance friends :) These Iranian people are the friendliest nation ever. I mean it.
So finally we arrived to the border with military escort, and our friends left us. We walked by some trucks waiting there, then in the passenger part we walked by an approx. 100m queue, or actually two of them, waiting for the 1-1 border guard person stamping their passports: one queue for men, one for women. All men wore pyjama-like clothes, which is the traditional Baluchi dress.
The Baluchis live in Baluchistan, which is the Eastern part of Iran (approx. the east of Kerman) and the Western part of Pakistan (the part which is said to be dangerous for bomb blasts and kidnappings of which we were afraid). The Baluchis are Shias while the Iranians are Sunnis so they have a bad relationship. The Pakistanis are also Shias so they have no religious difficulties with Baluchis but they have problems because some of them smuggle drugs in the desert.
But these people in their beards and pyjamas are a really friendly nation, really just one or two of them smuggle drugs, so love them and don't be afraid of them :)
The queue went really slow but our military escort (who didn't speak English and wasn't friendly at all) waved to us to follow him all the way along the queue, directly to the booth. We showed our documents, they scanned and checked them in 2-3 minutes, then we were free to go. They treated us quite VIP, but noone in the queue seemed to have hard feelings because of it, they were just staring at us as at aliens :) Then, on the Pakistani side it was a very good surprise that everyone spoke English (with a strange accent though, but I got used to that in a couple days), and also that we still got priority in every queue, even though there were long queues too. We managed to change money (and after some bargaining the fooled us only a little) and I traded my Iranian Lonely Planet for an Indian Rough Guide with an Australian guy on a motorcycle coming from the other way. He even added an India and a Delhi map. After about an hour we finished at the border and we could enter Pakistan.
But not alone. Because we got a Chinese man which was a fellow alien at the border so the officers just kind of joint us (luckily for us as he spoke Urdu!) and also a very funny-looking little soldier with a big gun who was our escort and we were told that he would accompany us everywhere in Baluchistan, so for about 1 day. I'm so sorry I didn't take photos about the border (it was forbidden) neither took a photo about our escort (I forgot), because we've seen many funny and interesting thigns. Anyway, this was our bus:
Our bus left at 4PM and we arrived to Pakistan at 11AM so we sat in a restaurant to wait. Our cultural shock got deeper: the "restaurant" was kind of like a normal old house with multiple rooms, where we got one full room for the three of us, a small carpet to the ground and the food (chicken biryani, very tasty) on it. Our Chinese friend helped us with ordering foor for us and stuff. Here we are sitting in the restaurant:
Our bus trip took 16 hours, so starting at 4PM it reached Quetty at dawn. In the bus we couldn't really sleep as about every hour we crossed a military station where the two of us had to leave the bus and the full bus was waiting for us while we each time had to scribe our various data to a huge book. It would have been funny if we didn't want to sleep. But like this it was not funny. Seriously, if I ever got an own house I'll buy one like those huge books and if any Pakistanis visit me I'll bring my big book and they will have to write all their data in it. Seriously.
There was only one incident when I felt they wanted some bribe or something at a checkpoint: it was about 3AM, bus stopped, we got out with Judit, we walked cross the road (with military help), jumped over some big canal, and there were some soldiers sitting there in the dark. They looked more suspicious than the others and may have even mentioned some money. Of course they also had a huge book to scribe our data. The guy who seemed to be their boss looked like he had been sleeping before we arrived, and just when I was finished with scribing my data I yawned and looked at him real desperate like "Why the hell do we have to do all this?", and he was just yawning at the same time so our eyes met, he looked at me quite understandingly and told us we were free to leave and gave me an apple. :)
Quetta is a plain, dirty city, as far as we saw it from the rickshaw between the two bus stations. (By the way this was our first rickshaw trip :) We arrived at dawn and our next bus to Islamabad (the capital of Pakistan) was to leave in the afternoon. So we laid down on some chairs in the waiting room and had a few hours sleep. I hate being homeless so I felt terrible.
But after it we jumped in the bus to take the last and longest, 26 hours long part of our trip, spending our third night on buses in a row. It was very tiring but it was worth it as it was the first time in our lives to share our vehicle with a cock (an animal):
Finally, only 10 minutes before reaching Islamabad I felt such an urge to go to the toilet, probably because of the Pakistani food or something, that I just set my teeth and tried to find out how far we were. I was told we were already in the outskirts of the city, but after 5 minutes I felt it's impossible for me to wait another 10 minutes So I took a deep breath to be able to stand up without shitting myself and I stumbled to the driver and told him to stop ANYWHERE. He told me it was only 10 minutes more but I told him I can't make it. So after thinking for a moment he stopped by some part with a tall grass and I took care of my business really fast. Well, it was not nice :) But at least after this I could take that 10 more minutes to the station :)
Finally, you get a real authentic Pakistani truck. If someone didn't understand what I meant by cultural shock, maybe they'll understand from this :)
