We carried on for a while through the desert until we came to another large primitive town where we stopped for breakfast. Turbaned locals roared up and down the wide main drag on light blue Neval motorbikes (we were told that they were stolen from the Russian Army in Afghanistan) as we went into a fly-infested café for tea and bread. Winty soon had the waiters hopping about so we were assured of good service.
All day we continued through the desert on a crude tarmac road passing small, isolated mud villages, people on push bikes (bicycles) and grazing camels, black goats and sheep. We raced with other multi-coloured jangling buses, some carrying sheep on the roof! At the lunchtime stop we asked if we could ride on the roof, and when we set off again, the three of us were perched above the drivers cab behind two metal decorated peacocks.
The bus laboured over the mountains (our route across Baluchistan crossed the Chagai Hills and Chiltan mountain range) and our driver revitalised his ebbing energy with more hashish. At the next stop we decided to return to our seats inside the bus. We sipped ubiquitous Coca Cola (this and Laughing Cow cheese triangles - https://www.thelaughingcow.co.uk/history/ - seem to get to the remotest places on the planet) as the rest of the crowd prayed to Allah and two Germans from another bus strutted about in full tribal garb posing and smoking like film stars.
With 20 miles to go, the coach, like the driver, was beginning to flag. We passed another Customs Post (where more baksheesh was called for by tubby docile-looking border officials with antiquated rifles) and began to climb again, when the bus gave up the ghost. We left the coach with steam pissing from the radiator and walked up the hill, following the ever boisterous Winty.
Eventually the bus crawled up to meet us at the brow of the hill and we remounted to trundle rapidly downhill into Quetta in the failing light of day. Quetta is at an average elevation of 1,680 metres (5,510 feet) above sea level, making it Pakistan's only high-altitude major city. The city is known as the "Fruit Garden of Pakistan," due to the numerous fruit orchards in and around it, and the large variety of fruits and dried fruit products produced there.
At the bus station Winty and the Iranian (one of the only Ayatollah Khomeini supporters we had met) shot off to catch the Karachi bus. Our intrepid trio, Jan Verdich, George and I, took a 3-wheeled bike/cab/tuk tuk into town. On the Jinnah Road I asked in a posh hotel, I asked for the price of a triple room and an English fellow who overheard recommended the El-Imran Hotel for economy and cleanliness.
We found the place and booked 2 nights in a pleasant room for 126 Rupees (£1=20 Rupees). We returned to the Jinnah Road for a meal (curry and rice with 7Up for 70 Rupees for the three of us), which George and I enjoyed but Jan most definitely did not. We returned to the hotel through the darkened streets where a few stalls remained open and a pitiful wretch moaned from a cart for alms.
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