DAY 105 - LAHORE DAY 2

We meet the captain of a local cricket team in Lahore

We were awoken this morning by our escort from the Punjab Government who was in charge of today’s itinerary. We had an invitation to visit Fountain House in Lahore, a charity organisation looking after people with Mental Illness. They’re doing great work here dealing with the Mental Health issues of people from all over Pakistan. Knowing most of the Islamic rules relating to conduct and women we had probably one of the funniest moments of the trip so far. When being introduced to the female manager of Fountain House in front of a crowd of Pakistani Officials, Fintan stuck our his arm to shake her hand, only to be left hanging with her awkwardly replying ‘I can’t do that’! Dave, Rhys and Chuck did their best not ot heighten the awkwardness by bursting out in laughter in front of everybody. Without a doubt, Finto will be copping a lot of abuse over this incident for the rest of the trip.

The TV Cameraman was nuts, going to extremes to get a good shot!

After Fountain House we had a brief stop for lunch in Subway in Lahore. In fact, every Fast Food Chain under the sun seems to have opened shop in Pakistan, all with armed security men outside. The man wielding a pump-action shotgun outside McDonalds was a classic example.

We found it really interesting t see the sign in the pic below, stating that goods made in Denmark are essentially made in Hell! This derives from the cartoons slandering Mohammed published by a Danish Newspaper. This led to huge anti-Danish sentiment in many Muslim countries and this is eveidence of it.

The anti-Danish sign in Lahore!

After lunch we went to Dawn News, the first English speaking TV station in Pakistan, who were keen to do a story on the drive. Their British presenter organized for us to play cricket and have a mess about against a local team. We were all crap at cricket and all the cricket obsessed Pakistani’s couldn’t understand how Ireland could have beaten them in last year’s Cricket World Cup!

Rhys, looking in great form on the crease, Ricky Ponting has nothing!

Next they brought us to a busy market, where we were filmed trying on some traditional Pakistani clothing. Rhys liked his blue number so much, he went ahead and bought one. With his huge amount of facial hair, he looks fairly Middle Eastern anyway so he could pull this off no problem!

Dave and Rhys in the traditional Pakistani kit

Finally, we went to Pakistan’s most famous monument, Minar-I-Pakistan, which commemorates the founding of Pakistan as a separate sovereign entity from India in 1956. We were watched by a huge crowd which was pretty awkward. The reporter explained to us that they thought we were royalty from overseas.

That evening, we met Ali, Dave’s Pakistani mate from Sydney Uni, who took us out to a nice restaurant where to our surprise; you were allowed to drink in if you brought your own booze. After this, we went for some Shisha, which is flavoured tobacco, filtered through water and smoked through a tall pipe. We all found this very enjoyable and relaxing and it will no doubt play a large part during our Middle Eastern leg.