Entered Pakistan on August 14, met two men from Paris at the border crossing in Wagah named Abdul Rahman and Fou’ad. Their parents both come from North Africa, are devoutly Moslem, and they have grown up in this Arabic-speaking ghetto of Corbeil, a Paris suburb.

At the border it was wall to wall Pakistanis standing thick right up to the border line with India, held back by the peacock plumed border guards. Seeing us, the guards pushed the people back to clear a way through the throng – I charged ahead, running the gauntlet of “your country sir?” and “your good name?” and “hallo, hallo!” to check in at immigration and change less cash there than I should have. Note: the best place to change Indian money into Pakistani money is with the Pakistani immigration officers under the table (even though this seems shady – since relations between the two countries are so poor these guys are nearly the only people who have a high-volume exchange of Indian currency going – every one else is “doing you a favor.”).

The Pakistani immigration officers lied both about the banks being closed and there not being any busses running – they are all about cash.

Lahore was chaos, and we went to its epicenter – the Red Fort and Badshah Mesjid. We had arrived on Pakistan's Independence Day – flags flying on long poles from trucks covering in hundreds of riders screaming, pumping the loud music and throwing firecrackers. Throng pushing and staring, any pauses we made on our way and voila! Quickly a circle of fifty people around us looking wide eyed. Got taken by one man into the secret sanctuary of the Prophet Mohammad’s relics by two local men, took us over two hours to detach from these same men later.

Saw Lahore Museum, Starving Buddha from Ghandara culture, met Paki stud and girl-watcher, spent hours with him and his friend on the grass watching who came in and out of the museum. Joked with the owners of our guesthouse and their main man who we cruelly dubbed “Quasimoto,” ate organ meat from the ‘tak tak’ men outside (men with flat-topped grills who rhythmically beat the tops of the grills with two handheld steel scrapers used to dice the meat) sitting in the street. One bad incident happened with one apparently glue-sniffing street boy repeatedly touching my face while I was trying to eat, after the tenth time I shooed him away I finally made the mistake of throwing my cup of water on him. I felt cruel immediately afterward and he became enraged, returning to try and throw a rock at me. I had assumed that the reason he did not so aggressively pester the other guests was because they were not going to tolerate it – I felt he was singling us out at soft and pesterable as foreigners and I wanted to correct his misperception. Good logic, not a nice result emotionally or factually – I still have not figured this one out. I guess I could have bought him off with a coin or two (which is something I generally make a rule of not doing when asked or pestered).

The two French fellows and I went to see the tomb of a famous Sufi Saint named Data Sahib and saw the fantastic crowd packing his tomb and adjacent mosque. Free food, waves of pilgrims getting water, walking hand in hand with us, moving through the throbbing crowd of brotherhood where people bowed in front of the saint’s tomb, backing away rather than turning around so as not to offend. Saw people with long beards seated on the floor in a rectangle facing each other doing a practice called “zikir” which involved rhythmically moving the head side to side while hypnotically reciting maybe Allah, maybe some one of God’s other 99 names as a group. “This is not Islam,” the two Parisians said, “ this is like a fusion of Islam with Hinduism and Shiism.” They were appeared a bit bewildered by the display.

We had too many cheap mango juices at three rupees each (that’s four US cents a cup) and headed on our way to Rawalpindi the next day in the Parlor train.