Multan
Posted in English, Pakistan on 11/22/2009 01:07 pm by DaveOn the road to Multan everybody told us that Multan is safe. “Multan, no problem”, “Multan, safe”. So our expectations were quiet high. No police escort, freedom again. More opportunities to get in touch with locals.
We got disappointed. The local police chief seemed to have other ideas about the security situation. We had nannies all the time. And not just one policeman. No, it had to be a police jeep with six policemen! They always wanted to know our plans for the next day. Imagine five travellers who got used over months to always live in the moment, decide for the moment, people who don’t know where they will sleep at 6pm, but always find something and suddendly someone asks: When do you want breakfast tomorrow? What do you want to do tomorrow? What is your plan?
It was an experience. Imagine us going to the internet cafe. A jeep, two policemen in the front, four in the back, all with guns. All for a short ride to the internet cafe. And that in one of the supposedly safest cities in Pakistan. I may give you the image that Pakistan is really dangerous. But I think they were just übereager to protect us.
The only thing you can do, as always, is to make the best out of the situation. So we asked the policemen for a good and not too expensive restaurant, they brought us to one. They sat around a table, waiting while we were eating. We told them that we need to go to the hospital, no need for a taxi, they are our taxi, they even used the sirene. We want to see the shrines. They brought us there.
On the one hand, it was a cool experience, because it was so different. Always someone guarding you, we felt like VIP’s. On the other hand, always having someone asking where you are going is annoying, we felt like hostages.
