Home > Notebook > Nightbus Across The Moon

Getting from Bam to Pakistan means taking a bus to Zahedan first. Rumors say that it is full of thieves (they stole most of the humanitarian aid for Bam after the earthquake) and opium smugglers. From Zahedan you continue by taxi to the border. Foreigners should be accompanied by armed escort but I was not.

Iranian side of a border camp is very clean and very organized. As much as it can be in the middle of desert. But once you cross through the gate in a tall fence with razor wire to Pakistan everything changes. Wind was gathering clouds of dust, the road disappeared, plastic was flying around and you could almost miss the two low shacks with corrugated iron roofs and Pakistani flag flying in the wind. The clerks checking passports were wielding obscenely big stamps and they took a picture of everybody. In the customs shack there was no customs business going – everybody just had to sign name and date in the book. And then I was in Pakistan in the back of a pick-up truck on the way to nearest town. Taftan, merely two kilometers away.

Lonely Planet says that Taftan has been – not undeservedly – described as hell on earth. And while it is a match for Poipet in Cambodia it still is a far cry from Pailin there. You can recognize Taftan by dusty streets and even dustier roundabout in the middle and buses to Quetta that are full. But wait few hours drinking tea in a restaurant and one or two may materialize not minding there were supposed to be none on that day.

So Taftan was not the most hellish town I've ever been to. The bus ride to Quetta was the most hellish bus ride. Ever. We left after dark, gray desert outside looked like a surface of the Moon. The road was potholled and in parts nonexistent, the bus cramped, air-con engine roared, lights on the ceiling colourful. The bus was shaking violently and I felt that I was sitting on a plane just before a takeoff.

Next to me was sitting old man from Baluchistan. He had big beard, was smiling all the time, was trying my sunglasses on again and again, shook my hand every few minutes, sung and puked on the floor and wiped his mouth with curtains. In the aisle was sleeping a boy, about five years old. All the way. His parents drugged him so he did not make noise. Two boys sitting in front of me took out a notebook computer in the morning and started playing Need for Speed: Carbon.

500 kilometers, 16 hours, few sandbars, many praying breaks and improvised repair of a gearbox later Quetta was like a mirage. Hotel with green garden a very colonial garden furniture seemed like a paradise ;)