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Lahore - Delhi
E.Route : Lahore - New Delhi : ETD 0700 : ETA 1700 : Dist. 325 m.
A.Route : Lahore - New Delhi : ATD 0801 : ATA 2140* : Dist. 322.5m.
- Depart Lahore 0801
- 0909 - 1135 Frontier clearance
- 1229 - 1235* Crew change.
- 1409 - 1430 Refreshment stop.
- 1459 - 1504 Crew change / bog stop.
- 1742 - 1747 Ice-stop **.
- 1901 - 1906 Lost bucket stop ***.
- 1920 - 1925 Crew change.
- Arrive Delhi 2110
Est.A.Spd 32.5 mph : Gross A.Spd. 24.60 mph. : Net.ASpd. 32.5 mph.
Stop time 3.13 hr : Speedo TD 9771.5 : Speedo TA 10094.
Comment : (*) - times Pakistani throughout. ATA is arrival at Rabindra Rangshala, not Delhi proper ( there being no clear indication of distinction between suburb and centre, and no real stop before arrival at the site). ** - Ice to bathe Don W's hand, inflamed by insect bite. *** - this appears to be the reading in the log - it is not unlikely, as a fair amount of equipment went out of the open door. If memory serves correctly, this one was never seen again ( it was probably grabbed before it hit the ground). Another day of travel along the Grand Trunk Road between rows of trees and innumerable dusty villages.
Jim Lindsay's diary:
22 August
This was the great day we reached our target, or at least it should have been. Sadly there
were no Khyber Pass moments. It was a fairly humdrum journey and had more than its share of
delays.
The hotel contingent from the night before did not get much of a welcome from the others when
we came stamping in about 0530 and started sorting things out for the journey. When we were
all ready to go we were duty bound to wait for Sarwar's Uncle and his sons to arrive, although
to his credit they arrived promptly about 0730. A lot of group photographs were taken and
then we set off.
It took an hour to get to the frontier and another two and a half hours to get through Indian
customs. Part of it was simple bureaucracy - technically a levy of 100 per cent of value was
levied on the coaches and to get round this one person per contingent - Fay as leader or Gordon
as the driver on duty - had their passport endorsed with "Imported - one bus - for re-export".
I don't know what would have happened if we had lost the thing. Fay might still be paying India
for it. In the meantime we fought off an army of little boys with buns anticipating the
greatest day in their biscuit-vending careers, and made polite conversation with almost as
many beaming officials welcoming us in. There were lots of handsome signs about the Porterage
Union, and we could also see the lurking porters themselves, a dingy lot who could have been
extras in a film about hard times under the Raj.
The little boys kept trying to get on board and were told forthrightly to get off, only to try
again and again. Otherwise they were obviously fast learners. When we came back a couple of
weeks later their sales cry of "Bread and Biscuits!" had been transformed into "Bread and
Biscuits. Piss off! Bread and Biscuits!"
Eventually the formalities were done and we escaped. We had gone the long way round by
Ferozepore, probably because of strained relations over the frontier. When we got back to
the Grand Trunk Road after Ludhiana it was very much as it had been in Pakistan. There were
carts, pedestrians, and wobbly cyclists, all endangered as we were by the notorious truck
drivers of the Grand Trunk, who then as now played a kind of high-speed chicken under the
influence of one substance or other.
For no reason anyone could see, one of Don Winford's hands had swollen like something from
one of the Quatermass films, and we stopped frequently to bathe it. Every time we stopped the
landscape looked deserted, but it could be guaranteed that within a few minutes a crowd of
silent gazers would have materialised from nowhere.
It was dusk when we got into Delhi and we endured the now-traditional process of fumbling our
way through town until eventually we reached journey's end at the Rabindra Rangshala after
2100. We were by no means the first arrivals and the newspapers had been and gone, so that the
photographs in the next day's papers did not included Cuddles, but the important thing was
that there was still a reception committee with soft drinks and there was still food, which
we gobbled like pigs. After that we summoned manners enough to be polite to the bunch of
students who had been assigned to be our hosts. And then to sleeping bag.
The dam we didn't see by Liz Y
We had to adapt quickly to differing climatic conditions. Arid, high altitude areas were easier, but
it was much harder when intense heat came coupled with high humidity. In Pakistan, it was a real
challenge to cope with this combination. It had been hot and steamy around the Caspian, but our stay
there was more limited.
Our little coach wasn't designed for these conditions. It was difficult to ensure a flow of air, even
with the door and all the windows open. The drivers had a small fan, but there was no such relief for
the rest of us. As long as the coach kept moving, it was bearable. One time we had a short stop to buy
supplies in Rawalpindi in the heat of an early afternoon. I remember a wait for stragglers to return,
while the rest of us, ready on board, grew grumpier and grumpier as Cuddles morphed into a steamy
oven.
All we could do, short of leaving people behind, was to drive round and round to keep the air moving.
It wasn't surprising that on many occasions we just wanted to get on with the long journey ahead. The
thing was that there was too much to see and we couldn't divert to all the enticing places we heard
existed along the way. One such place was the Mangla Dam on the Jhelum River, a tributary of the Indus.
Construction began on two major dams in the northern regions of Pakistan in the 1960s. Only the Mangla
was complete at the time of our visit.
Now a bit of an argument developed on board Cuddles. There were hours of travel ahead to get to Lahore,
that night's destination. Those eager to see the dam argued that we might never have another chance to
see it, that we should seize the time even if the diversion delayed us for a couple of hours. In the
end the noes had it. We were all too hot, too sweaty and just wanted to get on with the journey.
It may seem pointless to describe a dam we didn't actually see, but perhaps it's relevant to say something,
for a couple of reasons. First of all the dam brought notable benefits in terms of irrigation for local
agriculture and electricity generation in Pakistan. But, secondly this came at an enormous social cost,
which led to interesting changes in the demography of our own country.
The dam was designed by an eminent British civil engineer, Geoffrey Binnie, and the British Government
was one of the foreign guarantors for the project. As part of this guarantee, some of the displaced
people were offered compensation with work permits to come to the UK. 280 villages, together with the
towns of Mirpur and Dadyal, were flooded and about 110,000 people had to leave their homes. Many people
came to Britain. Today around 70% of the British Pakistani community originate from this area. Although
we may not realize it, all of us probably know someone in the UK whose family came from this part of
Pakistan.
We had two nights in Lahore. We were getting more acclimatized to the humidity. Our camp was in a local
sports stadium and there was the luxury of showers. It was refreshing to have a shower but the effect
only lasted for about 5 minutes before we were hot and sweaty all over again.
Onwards to Delhi ...
The road to Delhi by Liz Y
Today the main border crossing between Pakistan and India is at Wagah on the Grand Trunk Road, but in the 1960s
the principal crossing was at Ganda Singh Wala, some miles to the south. This explains why our onward route was
via Ferozepore and took a little longer than we might have expected. Officials at the border gave us a warm
welcome. There was a bit of lengthy red tape and some hanging about till this was sorted, but it was morning and
we had the rest of the day to travel.
A scene from the border re-plays in my memory. A punkah wallah sat cross-legged on the veranda of a small cabin-style
building. Through the window I could see a customs officer seated at a large desk and busy with paperwork. Above his
head, the punkah swung steadily to and fro, as the man on the veranda tugged up and down on a rope running over a
pulley at the top of the partition. Apparently the word punkah derives from a Sanskrit word for the wing of a bird,
evoking an image of flapping wings beating the air. Deafness was once a sought after quality in punkah wallahs. I
suppose they often worked in the same room as their employers and might overhear private conversations. This punkah
wallah sat outside under the shade of the veranda but in the humid heat of the morning sun. I don't know whether or
not he was deaf. In any case, it was probably worse indoors on the rope end of a punkah!
Another memory is of spicy vegetable samosas, hot, crispy, freshly cooked at a stall. I can't recall whether this
was actually at the border or at an early stop after this. Samosas were inexpensive, easily affordable. Currency
exchange rates were much in our favour in the East. Anyway we figured there was little risk in eating street food,
if we saw it cooked on the spot.
Ahead we had another long drive, destination Delhi. There are two things which stand out in my memory of this journey.
The first is the impression from the coach window of flat, lush green fields, buffaloes and a surprising number of
people. In the 1960s, country areas in northern Europe appeared thinly populated and working animals were a rarity.
Farming was by then highly mechanised with tractors, combine harvesters and other machinery, easily managed with a
small workforce. Here in India, farming was still labour-intensive, requiring many people to work on the land. I
wondered how the British countryside had felt in the past, whether it had once seemed crowded and busy like
this.
The second thing which comes to mind is the alarming sight of Don W's hand, swollen like an inflated rubber glove,
after a bite from an unidentified insect. It took us some time to make radio contact to get medical advice, as the
airwaves were clogged with banter between other coaches. Comexers were supposed to reserve radio contact for essential
communication. Radios worked within a 30 mile radius. I don't think Don got proper medical attention till we arrived
in Delhi, but we did manage to buy some ice to soothe the swelling.
For us the border crossing between Pakistan and India was no more arduous than any other crossing on our journey.
We were met with warmth and hospitality on both sides, and daily life and people did not appear to us very different
in the two countries. But, that day we had crossed a border of huge traumatic significance to people in both countries.
In the uncontrolled mayhem of partition in 1947, up to 2 million people died, as an estimated 14.5 million fled in
panic to cross the new borders in either direction.
Many people we got to know in India were about our own age. We were all of a new generation to grow up after 1947, and
events as they had unfolded were before our time. We Comexers knew some of the bare facts about partition, but it was
from older people there was most to learn. About a week after our arrival, I was asked in conversation with P, a
middle-aged man, about how we had found Pakistan. He told me that his childhood home had been in Peshawar, but he had
had to leave with his family in 1947. Sadly I couldn't give him the detailed picture of Peshawar he would have liked.
Our visit there had been too short.
I came to see that partition was an unhealed wound for many people. The border had been drawn up in haste, a "line
in the sand" which cut across communities. Colonial policies of divide and rule, religious separatism and political
expediency had all combined to produce a situation of conflict which endures to this day. Before events of the 1940s,
many people, Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs and others, had been strongly opposed to partition. The histories of India,
Pakistan, Bangladesh and Britain are closely entwined. In 1969, our generation hoped that the future would heal
the divisions of the past. Perhaps, despite all that has happened, it still can and will some day.
