Attacked by heat and rats

Oh, how great is the longing for a cool breeze, for cycling between icy snowfields, for a refreshing shower, for an old-fashioned Dutch winter. The wet, humid heat preceding the monsoon is worse than anything we've ever experienced. So we get up again at the Godforsaken time of four o'clock and drag ourselves to Pakistan's north, where the Mountains are and where the thin, cool air doesn't senselessly attack our indispensable energy-supply.
Up to the village of Kharian the route is flat and boring, after which it gets a little undulated with some trees and greenery. There are a lot of men on bicycles, who ride past me, position themselves next to Peter and start talking to him. Most of the time in Urdu. They can't grasp why Peter doesn't understand them, everybody does speak Urdu? When Peter explains that we don't get taught Urdu in our European schools, they look amazed. Our speed usually is too high for them and most of them give up quite fast... until I overtake them again. A woman! Male pride gives a lot of extra strenght and sweating from ear to ear they pass me again, loudly shouting for the attention of the onlookers ("Look, I cycle with whites!") and swagger between the two us us for a while. To my annoyance.
At seven o'clock we friendly reject an offer to join the highway police for breakfast, we want to profit as much as we can from the relative cool temperature now. Two hours later we accept some cool drinks though, offered to us by two joyful men on a moped. It's warm enough.
Around the villages lie cow-dung-cakes everywhere, artfully drying on walls and trees. Free fuel for the stove.
In the meantime we cycle from gasstation to gasstation, to feast on the cold water of the filter-machines, on the inside as well as out. It's too hot to cycle and in Lalamusa we search for a hotel, helped by an elderly German-speaking man. The village has a continuous powercut-system: two hours on, two hours off; day and night. This is the recipe for a sleepless night, so we cycle on and grit our teeth.
The climbs are getting longer and somewhat steeper and the unbearable heat makes us feel nauseous and faint. When we are about to literally fall off our bicycles, we are stopped by the highest traffic-police-boss of the region. He thinks it's irresponsible to cycle in this heat and seats us in his luxurious airconditioned Landcruiser, where the temperature is about twenty degrees Celsius lower (!) than outside. An empty minivan is stopped, the bicycles loaded in and this way we let transport ourselves to Jhelum, twelve kilometres further. The boss, Abdul, recently went to France to have a course in client-friendly service-concepts and today we gratefully pick the fruits. Wouldn't a course like that be something for the French themselves?

The next morning we are sensible and take the train to Rawalpindi. Today's temperatures threaten to reach 43 degrees again and after a sweaty night, thanks to four power cuts, we feel too weak to move. The Sialkot Express is very cheap and the tickets are purchased within minutes. Unfortunately the porters forbid Peter to load our own bicycles and before he can do anything he sees how our faithful steel horses are cramped forcefully between the other load. His fantastic copper horn, bought in Bombay, breaks and shamelessly he abuses the porters. This is the umpteenth time our things are damaged or destroyed bacause of unnecessary force of others.
Through an eroded hilly landscape and a lot of tunnels we reach Rawalpindi after a couple of hours. Here we'd love to file a complaint, but the processing time of two months by the head-office and the obvious lack of interest make us change our minds. It's useless, these people obviously haven't followed a course in France yet.
We cover, fast as snails, the twenty kilometres from Rawalpindi to Islamabad, that turns out to be a modern city without centre or atmosphere. In our hotel in Sitara Market we get visited by a rat in the evening, after which we complaint to the manager. A little while later an employee, armed with a stick, comes to chase the rodent away, who has disappeared long ago in the wide cracks between wall and window. I have diarrhea for a change and the first monsoon-rains fall hissing on the overheated town.

We take a rest for two days, waiting for the continuation of the rains and complaint again about the returning rats. It would be a small effort to fill the cracks, but we're talking to deafman's ears.

The second night a rat gnaws a ten centimetre big hole in one of Peter's rear panniers and again we are furious. We get another room and the manager promises to have the pannier repaired watertight. When nobody comes to collect it we do it ourselves the next day.

We buy vitamin-pills and medicine against amoeba-dystentery and only want to leave. It rains cats and dogs all night and the water pours into our room via the closed window. When we carry our bags into the lobby, the hotelmanager hovers around us; the feelings of guilt drip from his face like monsoon-rain. Finally he has the courage to say: "One thousand rupees, please." This courage quickly disappears when I remind him that he didn't fulfill his promise to have the bag repaired and tell him that he is a bad host and an even worse manager. He can forget about his money and we're leaving. The man desperately shakes his head, but doesn't protest.

From Islamabad we choose the road to Murray, Pakistan's most popular summer resort in the mountains. In only fifty kilometres we ascend over 1.500 metres, waved at by Pakistani tourists in fancy cars. The landscape is green and it finally gets cool.

The wheel that was spoked in Lahore turns out to be too feeble and when we reach Murree it's askew. In Feroz Palace we talk the huge room price down with 30%, but the still too large amount of 800 rupees certainly is worth the room and the view.

Peter aligns his wheel and then we can start enjoying. Of the quiet and mainly the delicious cool temperature between the fresh greenery of the mountain village Murree, even if it's only for a day...