Welcome to Pakistan

It's late here and I've got to be up before any sane person (3:30am Kabul time), but I wanted to update briefly while things are fresh in my mind.

So yesterday I flew into Islamabad to take care of the getting visas for the group of faculty members that I will be leading to Bangladesh next week. There is no consulate in Kabul, and they only accept them in person, thus my trip.

I flew UNHAS, the United Nations Humanitarian Air Services, in a little narrow plane that was two across and about ten rows deep. They had to weigh each of the passengers to insure that we weren't overweight.

I got into Islamabad fine, was picked up at the hotel by my guest house, and then was too exhausted to bother going out. I had room service in and watched a DVD that I'd picked up in Vietnam. The bed was fabulous but the air conditioning went off multiple times in the night, with every power outage, leading to waking up repeatedly in a pool of sweat. Such is life.

Anyhow, I headed to the consulate in the morning and they were talking about the Danish Embassy, not sure what the commentary was, but I was quite clear that I wanted to be anywhere but the Danish Embassy! Once I was at the Bangladesh consulate the guy behind the visa gate wanted nothing do with me. Little did he know that nine hours later we would be fast friends.

He wanted photocopies of the passports, which isn't generally required according to their directions. One of the guys standing in line was nice enough to offer helping me to get the photo copies. He was a business man with a trade company working between Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Canada. He exports textiles from Asia, and imports aluminum and other metals from North America. He was a very nice guy who was kind enough to escort me to at least five photo copy machine shops, one after the other being useless without power.

I made it back to the consulate and then camped out, missing lunch and nearly falling asleep as I read my book. Once I finally was able to connect with the Secretary things were moving along. He looked through all the docs, signing them and so forth, and then told me to come back tomorrow.

I kindly explained to him that my return flight was booked for the morning, since his office had said they would be able to issue the visas on the same day. He then directed the first guy, who had made it clear he had better stuff to do, to help me out. I then proceeded to spend all afternoon in a smoked filled office with two guys plugging away at getting the visas processed. After about a billion signatures and what-not we finished the task about about 5:30. Mission accomplished.

One of the guys was nice and asked if I had anyone to take me around the city. I took him up on his offer and planned to meet him later. I then headed out to the main road for a taxi and waited in the sun for about five minutes before another businessman rolled down his window and asked if I needed anything. He was sweet and drove me to my guest house.

I scarfed down some local snacks and then met up with the guy from the Bangladesh consulate. We jumped in a tiny taxi, where the wheel well was where a wider persons hips would have rested. He took me up to the nearby mountain with a view of the city. This was clearly a very popular destination, with many families enjoying the views. I was clearly the only foreigner around. People looked on with curiosity, but were very kind with their eyes. After that we headed to a lakeside, where still more families were enjoying the dusk fall. Then I headed back to the guest house and am now ready to crash. Not bad for a brief but full visit. I've got to get some sleep, so there won't be any proof reading for now - please forgive me.

Cheers,

Miel