Sunday August 10: Islamabad

Since none of our friends were recommending visiting Pakistan, it follows that none of them were recommending Pakistan International Airways either! Well, we took our courage in our hands and in late February we booked ‘Economy+’ (no expenses spared, and I do need the extra legroom – actually, it’s about the same price as ‘bog standard’ Economy with BA) on the Saturday evening flight LHR to Islamabad. Unlike BA, with PIA you have to reconfirm your flights at various points, and in France in late July we suddenly remembered that we were supposed to reconfirm the flight to Islamabad by 01 August, so we rang Mahmood and explained. “Oh, I’ll do it for you now on the computer”. About thirty seconds of clicking computer keys was followed by “Ah, there seems to be a little problem, do you think you could call me tomorrow”. Having convinced ourselves overnight that we had been ‘bumped off’, the next afternoon we rang Mahmood again. “There is some bad news and some good news. The bad news is that your seats, as the computer showed, have been re-allocated; the good news is that you have been upgraded to business class both there and back”. Result or what! Apparently the flight gets completely full, Economy in particular gets well over-booked, and PIA look for people to upgrade, and our early booking showed the appropriate commitment. As it turned out, PIA Business Class is pretty decent – you do not get a horizontal flat bed, but the seat does become flat, and does recline to a reasonable angle, and of course you get lots of room. Service was pretty good too (no booze of course), as was the food according to Mrs S who always eats on planes, whereas I had a reasonable night’s sleep. Indeed, the food on the return journey, which was a daytime flight, was very good indeed. So, ‘well done PIA’, and we arrived in Islamabad in reasonable shape at about 09.30 on Sunday morning.

Business Class passengers always get their luggage tagged “Priority”, and airport staff always ignore the tag. Consequently our baggage took about an hour to arrive – beyond the point where you start working out how you are going to survive in what you are standing up in. Still, the wait enabled us to comment on other people’s luggage,: some people had an incredible number of bags (how they came in under the weight limit is a mystery) whilst the sheer range of items was astounding – even including a hedge trimmer!

Even though we have been on several ‘independent’ trips before, it’s always a relief when the people who are supposed to be meeting you are actually there! Nazim and Eidjan were indeed there, complete with a KJTI sign, and introductions having been made, we and our luggage were whisked off to the jeep which awaited us just outside the terminal. Despite having Toyota badges and steering wheel, the jeep was actually a Willys Jeep of 1970’s vintage. Of the three brothers (Ehsan, Nazim and Karim), Karim is the jeep expert, and rebuilds them each winter, thus the original age is essentially irrelevant. More re jeeps later; suffice it to say that climbing into the rear was beyond my capability, particularly with a bad back, and so for the whole trip I sat in the front next to the driver.

We were taken to our hotel – Hunza Embassy Guest House – where we had a two hour sleep. The HEGH is a small inconspicuous six bedroom hotel in a quiet tree-lined road, though with an armed guard on the gate, in a quiet sector of Islamabad. At the time we wondered why we were not in a more ‘western orientated’ hotel, but the bombing of the Marriott Hotel after we had returned to the UK confirmed our later view that the hotel was in fact perfect for the job – it was quiet, clean, comfortable, and no-one would ever think of bombing or attacking it.

At about 14.30 Nazim re-appeared with our shalwar kamises. My two fitted perfectly, but Margaret’s were too tight for her to even put on. By and large Pakistani ladies are much slimmer and in any case, most people, particularly larger ladies, clearly have them custom made, which apparently costs very little more. Nizam promised to return the following morning with modified shalwar kamises for Margaret.

We then went off for a mini tour of Islamabad  in a small yellow taxi. All Islamabad/Rawalpindi taxis are yellow, about twenty years old, in advanced state of ‘bits falling off and/or not working’ and grossly underpowered and/or overloaded, but they seem to get you there. We essentially had a trip to the PIA office in order to re-confirm our return flights to the UK, and then on to see the Faisal Mosque. Since we were the only customers at the PIA office, it was not entirely clear why the re-confirmation process took so long, but we were to become accustomed to this concept in Pakistan. Islamabad is unlike any other Pakistan city in that it is a (largely) planned modern city, the roads are wide and planned and tree-lined and traffic is rather less and is thus able to flow much more freely – indeed it is actually able to flow at all! We had our first introductions to the fascinating and friendly Pakistani people.

The Faisal Mosque was built with Saudi Arabian money in the 1980’s when Zia Ul Haq was in charge of the country. Zia is largely seen by many to have been a disaster as he introduced strict/fundamentalist Wahabi Islam to Pakistan. The mosque itself is a modernist concrete building; it’s a bit incongruous and startling, but then why shouldn’t mosques be ‘modern’? Apparently the minarets looked so like missiles (they really do too) that the CIA at one point thought about bombing the place. Like all the Pakistani mosques we saw, it is largely an open-air affair, with a relatively small interior space (though large absolutely ‘because the whole mosque is so large). There were lots of local tourists visiting the mosque too. It was over 35 degrees, and as we were not yet acclimatised we drank lots of water and treated ourselves to ice creams.

Back at the HEGH we ordered a curry for dinner. From ordering dinner to it arriving took an hour as (naively) we had not appreciated that it would be cooked specially for us. Indeed, throughout our trip, meals were cooked fresh for us and this was an important factor in avoiding any major stomach problems.