(Daniel) When we woke up this morning, I emptied the fuel from the sedimentors and the fuel filter in an attempt to try and solve the problem of the ever reducing engine power.  Then we took some biscuits, and the remaining mugs given to us by the Cappadioccia air balloon people, and left these as presents to thank our hosts.  Then we got back on the road and headed for Quetta, I drove very fast, and the road went from two lanes to one, to a half a lane in places.  Very often the road was under construction and we had to detour across the desert to get back to a good stretch.  These roads were beautiful and the Wolf lapped up the sand and gravel.  The trailer seemed to be coping very well also, although the lower ground clearance did catch once or twice.  We were stopped at every checkpoint, and had to fill out our details over and over again, the bureaucracy showing its face everywhere!  As we drove today the Wolf would not go above 89 km/h and struggled to get to that.

Eventually we arrived in Quetta province, and at the final police checkpoint the officers insisted on giving us an escort into the town.  We gave them the name of the hotel and followed them into the Melee of Tractors Donkeys Horses and motorbike rickshaws that filled the streets.  It didn’t take long to get separated and after this happened twice the police gave up and drove off.  We carried on into the town, and eventually found the Bloom Star Hotel that was mentioned in the Lonely Planet.

The rooms were average, and the rates not as keen as I hoped, but there was a central courtyard to get away from the craziness of the town, so we took them, and then walked out onto the street to find some food.  Unfortunately we decided to by some fried food form a stall, chillis in batter, samosas, and various other vegetables fried in batter also.  We ate these and then walked back to the hotel, on the way I could feel my belly starting to complain, and hoped that this would not get worse!  Gabby stayed in the room, while Rowan and I walked to the bank to get some cash, meanwhile I sorted out my cancelled bank card over the mobile phone which had finally started working again. Along with speaking to Nick, to ask him to check with Land Rover about the power loss issue. 

Quetta is a very interesting city, with a tribal feel about it on one side, and a huge military presence on the other.  On the way to the bank we saw many strange sights, gun shops (I asked and I could have bought one with out a licence) and many odd foods, strange medicines, rivers of sewage with people searching around in them for god knows what!  I also noticed that we hardly saw any women, infact I would say that we were maybe lucky to see one woman to every two or three hundred men that we saw.  I am sure that this means that the women are inside, but it is a strange feeling, and I wonder what this means in terms of equality etc.  Anyway we found the bank and sorted out our business, then walked back to the hotel.  Gabby wanted to email, so we all went an internet shop and checked these on antiquated systems running windows 95 and getting no more than 19kbps!  Hotmail struggled to work, and my own email system would not go at all with these systems. 

While the others looked at their emails, I spoke to some guys in the café, and was sad to hear more stories of woe.  They all wanted to know why the western world assumed that anyone living in Pakistan was a terrorist.  I could see in my minds eye the kind of sad saps that spend their entire life on internet chat rooms, they are never going to be the most worldly wise people and are our personal ambassadors to people like this who are just trying to learn about the outside world through the new freedom that the internet offers, only to find that the simple people in the outside world are being fed information by the media that makes them assume that there is such a place as “the axis of evil”, and that it is around here somewhere, rather the truth. That the Axis is a metaphor for the corruption that has got so bad that it can justify the killing of innocent people and make countries enter into pre-emptive wars justified through fears conjured up by greedy governments trying to make their own job easier.

While we talked night fell, and dinner time came around again.  The three of us went across the road from the internet café to a local restaurant and ate a selection of excellent curries.  I could feel the earlier street food still brewing in my belly and had to cut my meal short to go back to the hotel where it became apparent that I was not in the best of health internally!  I returned to the restaurant, but the others had. gone, so I took a walk around the city again, finding on my way back, an off license, where I was able to buy beer, our first for many weeks, and I rushed home with the bottles chinking away to show the others what I had discovered!  It is amazing how alcohol has gone from a perfectly normal thing to an illicit drug in these countries.  I mean still many people drink, but I actually don’t want to drink, as it makes me feel like I am doing something wrong here.  This place would be very good for someone who wants to give up drinking, as it feels much easier not to drink than to face the looks from people who know full well that you don’t have ten bottles of coke in there!

The others were as happy as me to see the beers and we toasted to a new country as we drank them before retiring to our rooms and bed.

Distance driven 250kms

(Nick) I received a phone call from Daniel today, informing me that the team had arrived safely in Quetta last night. Quetta is the Capital of the Beluchistan desert.

Daniel did report that the wolf had suffered some sort of problem, where there was a loss of approximately 20mph off the top speed.  Daniel's message read : "Any news on the lack of power issue. I have to drive to Lahore tomorrow and can only get 85kmph. Is it the fuel filter. There is one apparent miss. It just seems to run out of steam and at full speed has flat spots where the sets faulter. If you can confirm fuel filter I can change now."

After speaking to Tim at Harwoods Land Rover in Coulsdon, he was able to offer the suggestion that the problem may be the fuel filter. After the dreadful fuel in Iran (pay less than 1/10 the price the rest of the world pays, get rubbish!) the fuel filter may have clogged. The advice Tim offered was to change the filter, if it did not improve the situation, then the filter wasn't at fault, and could be re-used later, otherwise throw the old filter away.

This did fix the problem, and we are grateful to Harwoods Land Rover for their continued support.

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