FIRST IMPRESSIONS

We left Denver on Oct. 29th, with four large duffle bags (almost 32 kg each) for the Gordons, plus our personal suitcases. The flights over were great, British Air all the way, with a few hours layover at Heathrow. (We decided we don't like that airport!)
We landed in Islamabad at 5:40 a.m. but it didn't feel that early, since we had been on a plane for almost 20 hours. You lose 12 hrs. flying that direction. Mike Gordon was there to meet us, so we travelled to our guesthouse~Mike called it the Comfort Inn. It was very nice, but not quite like our hotels.
First of all, you don't have a shower stall. The bathrooms are all tile, so there may be a curtain~or not~and there's a drain for the water. So you have to watch where you put your clothes, because everything can get wet during the shower, including the toilet seat!!
The thing that was the most different for me, though, was the driving! They drive with their horns!! There is constant beeping! If you want to pass the car in front of you, you have the choice of passing on the right or the left! (Plus they drive on the 'other' side of the road) The lines on a highway are only suggestions, so you can drive right in the middle of the road if the guy in front of you is too slow. They pass constantly, beeping all the time!!
We had lunch at KFC, which was kind of familiar. The chicken wasn't quite the same, and didn't seem to be cooked all the way. But for supper we went to the Kabul Restaurant, and that was alot better. Had great kabobs there. It was so nice to have Mike with us, because he can speak pretty good Urdu. Alot of people in Islamabad speak English, though, so that was nice, also.
The driving through the bazaar was even worse than on the main roads!! It's like a small alleyway, but you can drive wherever you can squeeze through!! Lots of honking!!
Like the Gordons warned us, there are swarms of men all over the place. As we were driving through town, there we men on the sides of the road everywhere!! They are the ones in public, not the women!! Women 'belong' in the home, and that's alot more evident in the villages. Islamabad is alot more liberal, but certain parts of the bazaar there are no women allowed to shop!
Women are not allowed to look at men, unless you know them. So most of them walk around with their head covered with the dupata, and look to the ground! That was very hard for me to do, and sometimes I just figured I was a tourist here, so I could look around. It is such an injustice to women, the bondage they are under. But I'll write more about that later.