Our adventures on the Karakorum hadn`t finished yet, however for as we slept that night, we were awoken by a thunderous noise. Our hotel which fronted a mountain stream in which locals and passing truck drivers had been cooling from the hot sun as we arrived was now a raging torrent and lightning lit up the sky like daytime. Outside our window we saw the man next door anxiously pacing up and down for hours as the ever swelling river looked likely to sweep his fragile structure away. Eventually about 4 a.m. silence returned but we were anxious that the many little streams we forded on the road up would be now impassible.

Incredible as it might seem we awoke the next morning to bright sunshine and beautiful weather while the raging torrent from the night before was now merely a fast flowing river, albeit now brown with all the mud washed down. All seemed perfect again except for an ominous line of parked trucks outside the hotel. Inevitably there had been a landslide and once more the road ahead lay blocked. Our luck was with us, however, for it had been cleared by the time we had finished our breakfast and we were able to make our way down off the highway without any further delays. It`s ironic that having traveled safely over so much tricky road that it was later that day on a good surface near Islamabad that John had a crash. I was up front following a car at high speed when an oncoming van overtook in front of us. Breaking fiercely to avoid getting tangled in what I thought was an inevitable crash, John who was close on my heels had no room and his brakes locked up sending him crashing down the road. Fortunately the bike only suffered superficial scrapes while John was all right also getting away with just his knee skinned. Unfortunately it has been slow to heal since as the trousers constantly rubbing on it aggravates it but other than that he is as good as ever. Once more he showed incredible presence under the circumstances but we were both glad to get into Islamabad later that evening.

We took the opportunity to rest up there for a couple of days. Islamabad, which was created in the 60s is in some respects like New Delhi but far less frantic and essentially is a residential enclave for the elite with no trucks allowed in to its broad well laid out streets. It was an ideal place to find relaxation from the hectic pace of all the other towns and cities here and is in stark contrast to every other place about. Imran Khan`s house was near by though neither of us felt like cricket. From Islamabad we headed back south to Lahore and headed west then towards Iran.

Pakistan still had some adventure left in store for us before we parted though and leaving the luxury of the Holiday Inn in Multan we thought we would find equal such accommodation that evening in Quetta, from where we would set out for the border but the planned two days soon turned into four and both those days and our time across much of Iran proved tiring. Leaving Multan for Quetta we opted for the shorter route over the mountains which we were told was good and which would save us an extra day or so we thought. Right from the outset, however, it looked like our reaching Quetta that evening was becoming increasingly unlikely. For the first couple of hours we made painfully slow progress as we rode through an endless succession of villages on poorly surfaced, crowded roads so reminiscent of our early days in India and yet there is something absolutely absorbing and memorable about traveling in such conditions as you jostle with carts and people and animals for the space there is.

At one stage coming towards us we met a fellow traveler on a bicycle, our first encounter with any such soul since landing in Katmandu and his pace through this landscape seemed more appropriate if equally purposeful. Eventually the string of villages gave way to open clear roads and for a while we made good progress across open desert before coming to the mountains. We have crossed countless mountain passes on our trip and they are all similar but this one was tiring to the degree that for a road there was just a single ribbon of frayed tarmac on which you constantly met trucks that drove you off it onto the gravely edge or in one case with John off the bike. It took us two hours nearly to get over it and so when we reached the other side we were looking forward to a less demanding section. Unfortunately that was not to be.

The entire road ahead of us now was no longer a road for instead of having been repaired in sections it was completely dug up. Initially our progress was reasonable other than the odd muddy section where streams crossed it but then unfortunately it all became like this as the heavens opened leaving it a quagmire. We also had to cross a number of rivers and one in particular was well deep. About 4 in the afternoon we reached a collection of shops and houses that passed for a village here and stopped to enquire how much further to Quetta, only to be told 15 hours. The rain had since stopped but the horizon looked ominous so with no hope of making our destination we gladly accepted the offer of one of the men there to stay in their place for the night.