Day 26 (Hyderabad)

A very pleasant drive from Karachi to Hyderabad where the landscape continued to be a sprawling desert scene with very little greenery and lots of dust clouds. We passed through a lot of small villages where we were instant celebrities with kids and adults alike coming out in their droves to wave and smile at us.

We had a stop at a cemetery where the graves were marked with mounds of rocks rather than the normal graves we have at home. Where there was a family buried together there was a wall surrounding them. It was a very serene place. After the cemetery we drove on to see another mosque (this one Loonie and I passed on because we'd forgotten to keep our headscarves out of our rucksacks). When we got there the place was swarming with police, one of whom gave the two of us an armed escort to the toilet (weird!). Once the rest of the gang were finished up inside, we hit the road again to try make progress toward Hyderabad – but something weird happened....the police started following us in two jeeps, then one overtook us and drove in front forming a convoy. I hadn't expected this at all – thought since we'd flown into Karachi we'd miss out on armed escorts because we weren't near the Afghan border.

The convoy stuck with us, two jeeps with 5 guards in each the whole way to Hyderabad, even stopping when we had toilet breaks and when we did a detour to go for a boat ride on a lake. Nice day out for the guards really, instead of normal police work they got to have a go on a speedboat full of tourists. As much of a novelty as I found it to have these guys clearing a path for us to drive through quickly, I wondered what the impact of that disruption would be for the locals and whether they would ever be in a position to have the same kind of treatment. I put this to Amjad who explained that the convoy was government protocol for all groups of tourists in Pakistan and something to be happy and fell priviliged about and take advantage of rather than get offended about the attention.

The hotel didn't have any internet access so Arshad took 12 of us on the bus with an armed guard and a motorbike cop in front to a net cafe. But as the power kept dropping we didn't get to do all that much because we had to keep logging off and on. When we were done we met the family of the owner who were fascinated by us. This same thing happened back at the hotel where the owner's sister and her three daughters arrived in to meet with us once we were done with dinner. The girls chatted away asking questions about where we are from and what our thoughts on Pakistan were.

The only other real excitement from the day was seeing a gecko in my room when I popped back after dinner. The blasted thing crawled into my sleeping bag liner and all over my ankles at around 3.30am..it frightened the bejaysus out of me so much so that I was up jumping around trying to get the liner inside out to get it out...when I managed to get calm enough to try to get back to sleep I cocooned myself in the liner and eventually drifted back to sleep.

For photos from Hyderabad click here.