India Overland with Swagman Tours, London to Kathmandu.

Rawalpindi to Amritsar
We made a brief stop at Islamabad the capitol of Pakistan before setting of across the Punjab to Lahore. The country is getting flatter now as we enter the Indus valley en route to Lahore the second largest city in Pakistan after Karachi. We are making good time the weather is great and its a good day to be alive, one of my favorite tracks is playing. We are well on our way Lahore and everything is going great just the sort of time something goes wrong and "Murphy" (as in Murphy's Law) is with us today. On a long slow rise I get the feeling that the engine is not pulling as hard as it should. On the flat it goes OK but as soon as the road rises we lose power and the speed starts to fall. Fred and I agree it feels like lack of fuel, could be a blocked filter or the fuel pump has a problem, we decide to pull over and check it out. The filter is fine so we think it is the pump which will take awhile to fix and is a dirty job. As we are only about 30 minutes out of Lahore we decide to push on and keep our fingers crossed. It goes OK but is slowly getting worse, so Fred slide the Gardner engine cover back while we are still moving to get access to the fuel pump is right on top of the engine.	Gardner engine mounted on its side under the floor in the center of bus.
The pump has a manual prime lever on it which when operated by Fred improves the fuel supply and gets the engine up to full power. It works, but, isn't there always a but! The lever is about 2" long and has to be cranked though about 90 degrees which is OK for about 1 or 2 minutes by which time your hand is ready to fall off. A quick queue is formed of all the men, each one get 2 mins on the pump, then someone else takes over. You have to kneel down in the isle of the bus and reach down into the engine compartment over the top of a hot and smelly engine. In this fashion we made the last few miles into Lahore and found our way to the Braganza Hotel near the railway station. The Braganza had been a nice building in its time but was now run down and in need of some TLC. It had a large garden and most passenger opted to camp while the well heeled took a room at 10 rupees per night , about 60 cents. The family that owned it were Christians and had lived there for many years. The old man was always going on about when the British were there, he still drove an aging Jaguar his last link with the old country. He regretted that they had left and how the place had deteriorated since 1947. We were here for the best part of 2 days so lots of time to fix the bus before we moved on.	Mosque Lahore
There was a nice little Chai shop next to the hotel were we crew had tea that night followed by a cold beer back at the hotel. Fred has had news from Norm and he wants him to go direct to Delhi to sort out some problems with a tour that is coming through from Nepal. I wasn't feeling crash hot so turned in early and by the time Jos came to bed I was on fire laying in pools of sweat. Malaria can be dangerous but is always unpleasant with raging fever. The next day was no better I was hardly aware of what was going on around me, the doctor had been called and Jos accompanied by the owners son went to the local chemist to get my medicine. The owner of the hotel made it his job to see that I was comfortable giving me the quietest room at the back of the hotel. By day two I was feeling much better and although still weak we packed ready to set off for the Wagah-Attari border crossing between Pakistan & India. As a thank you I presented the old man with a litre bottle of Johnnie Walker Red Label whisky, he was so thankful that he cried and would not let go of my hand. It was to become a regular thing that I would bring him whisky and he would make me feel like one of the family.	Malaria mosquito
Fred and Geoff had fitted our spare lift pump so everything was running fine as we made the 30 mile trip to the Pakistan crossing point at Wagah. This is one of the slowest border crossings on the trip. It is not that they are slow it's that they just need to make you suffer as you are going into THAT COUNTRY (India), and once on the other side you have just come from THAT COUNTRY (Pakistan). We have that old "where are coming from?" "What is your occupation? " "what is the purpose of your visit?" "From which country are you coming?". The girls also get "are you married?" "Do you have any children?" To which if you answer no they want to know "Why you aren't married and don't have kids?", "You will be too old soon". India and Pakistan don't like one another and this dislike is played out at the border each night. We witnessed this spectacle from the Indian side, at 3.30pm both side goose march soldiers out to their respective gates and with lots of stamping and rifle waving slam the gates shut signaling that the border is closed. We are now on the Indian side and have the task of getting though customs all over again. The immigration bit is slow but next bit proves to be worse. They want to check every bit of luggage and I am finding this very frustrating as I don't feel the best.	Closing of Gates at Wagah
I can get very vocal when I'm pushed and while venting my spleen about the delay the head customs man a short Sikh gentleman came up to me and asked "What is all this FUCKING?". I must have said it a few times and he knew it wasn't a compliment. After all the passengers were cleared they wanted to check out the bus. Our little Sikh man came over and asked us if we had any "Pista", I had a sinking feeling as it sounded very like Pistachio to me. We responded with no we don't have any pistol. He said "have you any Pista", we gave him the same answer hoping that would be the end of it. They wanted the roof unpacked, this is looking very dodgey they will find the 108kgs of Pistachio nuts. When the nuts are unloaded he says "you told me you had no Pista" we still keep up the "I thought you meant pistol", but they weren't wearing it. Now this presents problems, Fred is off to Delhi and I am too weak to drive the mountain road up to Kashmir. One of us is going to have to own up to this and it make sense if its me. This will leave Fred free to go to Delhi and Geoff can take the troops to Kashmir. I had to make a statement, ( page 1, page 2 ) the nuts were impounded and then I'm told you will be issued with a "Show Cause Notice" to appear in Amritsar court tomorrow and the bus will be detained until after the court appearance and any fine imposed is paid.	Pista - Pistachios
A small addition to this incident. You may or may not know that the only car made in India at this time is the Hindustani Ambassador, it is protected by import tariffs so 90% of the cars running around are Ambassadors. It is really a 1956 Morris Oxford. When they went out of production in England the whole plant was shipped out to India and they are still being made today. What has this got to do with our journey, well at the time things made in India were not of the best quality, particularly small precision parts like carburette jets. Norm had given us a package before we left which was to be picked up from us by an Indian friend in Delhi. When we asked what was in it Norm said "500 Morris Oxford carburette jets", what do we do if any one asks what they are, his response was "just tell em there spare parts mate". Well they made us open the box, asked what they were, and when told "Spare Parts" said OK and moved on to the next item. I should have told them the pistachios were part of our food supplies and said hands up those who love pistachios, we might have got away with it.	Hindustani Ambassador.
We all got back on the bus and were escorted by the whole custom's team, who, as customs was now closed were getting a free ride into Amritsar. It was dusk by now and we dropped Fred at the side of the road and wished him well on his journey on the overnight train to Delhi. We swung past the bus station and Geoff and a few of the passengers got tickets for a late bus that night to Srinagar, he then sent them off to see the Golden Temple. All this time we were dropping of customs officers at different points. There were very chatty and could not apologies enough for having to detain us. I drove the bus into the police station where it was impounded along with my passport and most of the passengers luggage. I was given a receipt from a large folder which then had to be signed 3 times by different deptments which required me to be lead up two floors to another office full of large dusty ledgers. They asked if I wanted a lawyer to represent me at the 11.00am hearing tomorrow, I said "no I have someone who will speak for me". It just so happened that one of the passenger was a Rodney Griffith M.A. (Oxon), Cert of Ed (Oxon), Member of the Inner Temple, Barrister, Former Lecturer in Law , Liverpool University, Fellow of the Royal Soceity of Arts, Fellow of the Royal Geographic Soceity, he stepped forward and gave his name as my lawyer. This caused a bit of a stir, I thought they weren't going to let him appear but that wasn't it at all. They had never had a real English Barrister at the Amritsar Court and this was not a moment to be missed by the local legal fraternity.	Golden Temple of Amritsar
The trip continued