We had breakfast early at Pervez’s farm house and hit the road by 8:30. We would have gotten going earlier, but we forgot Tom’s cupcakes (again) and had to send a runner back for them. They were delivered to us enroute by a motorbike courier. We wove our way through Sunday traffic in Islamabad, but though is is a work day for some, traffic was very light. Pervez said this was the way it was in the good old days (10 years ago) during the week, but no more.
There was lots to see on the way out of town and we took many snaps.
As we entered the salt range, we saw (finally) a major accident – they had brought a crane up to pull a car back up out of the ditch. It apparently slide/ran off the road on the mountain side and into a drainage channel that was at least 6 feet deep. Only the trunk was visible from the road. The second car of folks (Tom and the Brooks) said the car was already on a flat bed trailer when they came by, so the extraction must not have been too onerous. We went up the range and back down the other side – the rock striations are pretty fantastic.
We pulled off again at Bhera and hung out at the little rest area off the highway for a bit, waiting for the entourage from Lahore - our own little slice of heaven. A wedding came through and many busses. When every bus pulled in and sounded their horn, droves of salespeople swarmed the bus with trays of goods, from oranges to popcorn to french fries to sodas and coconut. Didn’t seem to be many takers, but then it was tough to follow the commerce. Finally, Shezhad and his posse pulled in. Tom, Julie and I were to ride with Ali from I2C (the sponsor of the Agile workshop at the university) so he could ask questions about Story Points and Release Planning and oh so much more. In return, we got treated with the Pakistani view on the War on Terror. I think we ended up with the better side of the bargain.
Once back to town, we were dropped of at our new hosts – Bhatiar and family over in the DHA. Since it was Sunday and everyone was off, there were cricket games going on everywhere. It was quite ingenious to see all the different things that folks were using for wickets. We had a later lunch with our Host family an checked our emails and then a short rest. We were due to the Spring Carnival in Eden Avenue for the evening and so trundled off to that obligation.
We spent a little time at the rotary Polio Eradication booth and then had dinner with Satwat’s club at Javel’s house to talk about the potential for an Eden Avenue library and then followed it up with a brief stop at the musical evening at the carnival. We all got introduced again with many pictures and Julie sang to the community and then danced a traditional Pakistani line dance with about 50 kids. What a night.
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