“Can you tell me” I idly asked our guide “where I get the bus to Amritsar tomorrow?”
I was leaving my tour group the next day and was to travel by bus from Lahore in Pakistan to Amritsar in India.
The question was an idle one as I knew that I’d easily get the information the next day. However if I got it now it would be one less thing I needed to worry about. It might also mean I could sleep in just that much longer, something I was looking forward to as for the last several days we’d been up before 6:00 am and late into bed.
Our guide replied with not exactly consternation but something close to it. Did I have a ticket? No. Did I know there might not be a bus tomorrow? No.
I’d read in the guidebook before I left that there were several buses but having decided to abstain from the carrying of such books I was now relying on my sometimes imperfect memory. I thought that perhaps I’d misremembered or – more kindly to me – that maybe circumstances had reduced the number. This was Pakistan after all and the security situation could change anything.
Well we’d better get you a ticket he said. So despite the fact that it was after 7:00 pm and the others in the bus were probably tired we did a sort of grand tour of Lahore to the bus station. Except when we got there it wasn’t a bus station. It was the back of a building which in the dark looked like somebody’s house.
The gates into the compound were closed but not locked so we pushed them open to find, not a ticket counter but one guard – with rifle – and a bus in the shadows of the evening.
Having talked to the guard for a little while our guide turned to me and said it was all fixed. Get here at 7:30 am tomorrow. He added that he thought the ticket would cost at least 1,200 rupees.
So now I knew there was a bus and that it was going tomorrow but our guide was unclear when the bus was to leave. Further not only did I not have a ticket – which was one reason we had undertaken this grand tour – I’d just found that it was to cost more than I had in rupees. I’d have to change money.
My earlier plans which had involved a good sleep in would have accommodated a wander out to a bank about 11:00 am should that be needed. However with the bus leaving at 7:30 any visit-to-the-bank-in-the-morning plan was out the window. The only way to obtain money before 7:30 am was from an ATM.
Now the problem with ATM’s in Pakistan is that some don’t take overseas cards, some don’t work right this minute but might in half an hour or so and some don’t work. That problem has a further complication because the ones that don’t take overseas cards don’t advertise this. So you don’t know if the ATM that is rejecting you is simply not working or doesn’t take overseas cards.
Your getting-money-out-of-the-ATM strategy becomes either 1: visit many ATMs in Lahore and ultimately you’ll find one that gives you money, 2: wait thirty minutes or more and the ATM that wasn’t working might be, or 3: go to an ATM provided by a big foreign bank. [This is really strategy 1 with hope added as the ATMs at big foreign banks can also suffer from the same problems as local ATMs but apparently they do so less].
So as of about 8:00 pm I had insufficient funds for my bus ticket and in addition to sorting that out I had another commitment. We were all going out to dinner as a group.
I tried the two ATM’s near the hotel with no luck but then realized that dinner could be turned to advantage. We were to eat some distance from our hotel so strategy 2 - wait thirty minutes or more - could work its magic while we dined on pilau, roti and meat or fish. This also gave us an opportunity to implement a partial strategy 1 - visit many ATMs - as there were likely to be some near where we were eating.
Unfortunately by the end of the meal – now getting toward 10:00 pm - neither strategy had worked so we had to implement Strategy 3 - go to an ATM provided by a big foreign bank.
Standard Chartered was the first target selected and after dropping everybody else off, the two of us who needed money together with the guide and driver commenced – or rather continued – our ATM tour of Lahore. Unfortunately Standard Chartered failed so we continued further into Lahore to where all the big banks were [apparently Standard Chartered wasn’t one of these after all].
Up we drove toward a Citibank. This one will work we were told and told ourselves. I rubbed my Citibank credit card even though that was not the card that would deliver me any funds. I was actually relying on Citibank’s poorer relative, my debit card from my credit union but it did have an electronic relationship with Citibank so a good rub was legitimate I thought.
We approached hopefully – what else could you do this late at night and when further options seemed out of the question – smiled at the ubiquitous guard who indicated that the machines were working [nothing to be relied on though - other guards had intimated the same even when the machines were obviously off-line] and inserted our cards.
And got our money.
Or I did.
My fellow ATM tourist ultimately also got his money from my ATM – we think the first one he tried simply didn’t have sufficient money in it for his needs.
With the tour of the ATMs completed we returned to the hotel and I said my goodbyes to the others. I had to get up early and they had found somewhere where they could have a beer - in the hotel’s “permit” room which is a room in which foreigners can drink alcohol.
So at 6:30 am I bounded out of bed. At 7:00 am I sped out to find a taxi. On the way out I was offered breakfast which I had been assured the night before would not be available until 7:30 am and got to the bus about 7:10 am even though I’d been assured a trip across Lahore would take at least 30 minutes at this hour.
I barged through the gates to find … one sole security guard with rifle. Absolutely no-one else was there. There was a bus parked where there had been one the night before so at least that looked positive.
The security guard did the security guard thing very pleasantly and then said I could wait in the waiting room. We didn’t have enough English in common for me to understand how long the wait would be and the best I could confirm was that the bus was going sometime in the morning.
As the morning progressed, a few other passengers arrived then somebody appeared in the ticket office. He however either couldn’t or wouldn’t sell me a ticket and seemed to suggest I should have purchased it the day before. After that interchange he went on stamping what appeared to me to be tickets.
Still later someone else arrived looking very official in his very clean Sikh turban and white top and trousers. He assured me I would get a ticket but I simply had to wait until 9:00. He was also able to tell me in comforting tones that the bus would leave at 9:30.
With that I went off and got tea, dhal and chapatti wrapped in newspaper. When I returned it gradually all came together.
Around 8:45 a few other staff appeared in the ticket office and it was indicated to me that I could acquire a ticket.
The ticket man slowly but cheerfully wrote out the ticket, sang to the guy sitting beside him [not working], explained to me what the song was about [I think, hoping to meet the man next to him - his "brother" - in the afterlife] and ultimately gave me a ticket. For which I paid not 1,200 rupees but 900. So much for the information provided by our guide.
With the ticket I was able to go to another person who examined the three pages of the ticket as though he'd never seen a ticket before, slowly turned over each page, thought about something or other and- again ultimately - gave me a boarding pass.
My luggage then had to be security-checked again. This time it was weighed as well and after it was weighed I was able to board the bus which I slowly gleaned was a special bus that the Pakistan Tourist board runs 3 times per week.
Clearly much more expensive than the local bus that I had originally intended to catch it was not particularly well patronised. There were about 13 of us on the bus but it turned out that my very clean Sikh was the Indian liaison officer for the bus and that several of the other people I had thought were passengers were officials of one sort or another whose job was to ensure the bus trip was without problem.
The bus did leave at 9:30 so I settled back to read a book and the paper mindful of but choosing to ignore a few blaring sirens which I thought were nearby. However puzzled by the continuation of the blaring sirens I looked up and found myself staring into the back of a jeep carrying several soldiers with rifles. Some of these were pointed directly at the bus but others pointed in the direction of travel and still others to either side of the road.
Yes for $A18 I was getting a security escort to the Pakistan border.
Not only were there sirens blaring and men with guns in the jeep in front of us but the cross-roads we passed were blocked off for us and there was another jeep with men with guns behind us.
Just how effective all this was fortunately wasn’t put to the test. The security escort didn't prevent us being slowed down by large over-laden wagons and we also went close to buildings which didn't seem to have been secured at all. If someone wanted to shoot or bomb us it seemed to be there were plenty of opportunities and the blaring sirens simply drew attention to us. So where and when we were was very well advertised to those with ill-intent.
Once the border crossing formalities were completed at Wagah, about midway between Lahore and Amritsar we continued our journey to Amritsar in the same bus. To my surprise the Indians also gave us a security escort. I suspect this was more a form of competition with the Pakistan security forces than need - the security situation is not as bad in India.
For the record we were held up many more times in India by slow-moving traffic so if that is a measure of success I think the Pakistani's did the escort job much better. But if it is measured in terms of blaring sirens and number of soldiers then the honours would be about even.
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