saturday 17th, third day in Pekhawar

I went to Charsade today...Attia aur Sandleen ke lie!!!! so indeed I have some pic of the city and river banks, where we came to eat some fish barbecue. yummmy! there was very nicely decorated baots cruising on the river while playing some nice music..either Bollywood or pashto...
Tonight we had a nice diner on a roof top, with some live pashto music...a nice day...again!

sunday, wedding day

This morning i had the surprise to have the visit of IS bhai, the famous gs flooder...
then i went to a wedding in a village. I loved discovering the simple life if people over there. As a women i could see women dance and sing...and all their nice attires, colored clothes, jewels and mehndi! i even had mehndi done on my hand by the most beautiful women...my first time ever!
We went from the groom house to the bride house where ladies performed their dances...the groom took the bride, then we her finally at her inlaw house....crying! some weapons were fired.
Many women could not englishe or urdu, but the few i talked to were very very friendly, and they all wanted me to come to their houses!
i had a nice day, i won't forget all those nice people soon....

monday, arrival in karachi

I took the plane from peshawar to karachi. I finally the fighting plane based there from the edge of the take off road.
We flew over the nice mountains, and as a former hydrology student i was very interested to look at the rivers patterns from the sky ...trying to figure directions and strength of the flow...
i got off to the luggage claim very quickly and was delighted to get my luggage first then out of the airport someone waved at me...but not someone i expected...anyway I found 3 unkown guppies! DM, Janwar aur Loonatic...later ImranQ joined us...so 4 new guppies met at my arrival, it felt great!
later on i was delighted by my first ever experience of life in a real pakistani house, in the city.
totally different from europe...

Karachi....fun city..nice guppies....1

We had a guppy meet tuesday night, with Seema, Hammad, Janwar, Loonatic, Golden Scorpion, Decent Munda and ImranQ.
We went first to pizza hut to eat a little and begin to chat...my most difficult here is to follow a conversation btw native urdu speakers...i catch words here and there, some gestures...smiles...but the full pictures allways seems very far away in another galaxy..........
hopefully my level of understanding is increasing a lot here in Pakistan!
thereafter we went for a fun bowling party...nice music, very modern dance music, and good lights...it was fun...especially for me cause I am such a desperate case when it comes to play bowling....it was my first time...and i still have no clue how to play *bummer*
then we drove to the seaside..and i enjoyed walking barefeet in the arabian sea, on the nice dark soft sand of karachi beach...

Karachi....fun city..nice guppies....2

On wednesday, i went to Imran house for lunch..there was a power break at that time, so no elevator and no fan! one have to remind it is 35 in the afternoon to understand what no fan means......
then we went for shopping cause i wanted to buy salwar qameez...again! but it was really annoying cause it seemed nothing was pleasing me...i hate clothes shopping!...finally found something nice...and too expensive...anyway i wanted to have a nice evening then...after some talks in a nice park aith imranQ i went back home....and was really pleased to see that no matter how late it was...still the night was only beginning....so we, ImranQ, DM, koidost, looonatic, Janwar and me, went for diner....after a long drive we saw Mela was closing...around midnight....so we drove on the highway..till a nice open air place, we sat on carpet with cushionsm and had a very tasty diner...yummy! on a big screen was played some clip of bollywood music...
after we drove to the seaside and had lots of fun over there...i got some really funny pics! lol...then we went for a last chai in the city around 5.00AM...then time to sleep....
nights in karachi are soooooooooooo much fun...we had breakfast at 2.00PM today cause...we got up so late after that funfull night

last day in Karachi, thursday 22 sept

We went at the sunset to the port...I looked the nice pinkish light of the setting sun enhanced by reflection on the quiet water...that kind of sweet and warm light makes me feel so good! it was an amazingly pleasant wait before we could take a boat to go to an island, where we enjoyed the beach while the sunlight was disappearing...
i took wonderfull snapshots...from Janwar, DM, Loonatic and koi dost...and they also did cause i'm on some of them

later at night we went Bowling again!!
this time i enjoyed really much cause i finally learnt how to throw the ball thanx to koi dost, who was not there at our guppy meet bowlng session...and discovered i had to pick the heavy ones, not the light ones, in order to get them straight on the path!...
we ended up again on the seaside...had some more golguppay, but they were not good, then some nice qawa, and some interesting chat...

friday 23 sept

i took a plane to peshawar ...say bye to karachi and all the fun and long entertaining nights i had over there..
i was very happy to be back to peshawar, but when the plane was getting down we crossed a thick dark layer of clouds...I saw peshwar and the field around looking wet, and a big wall of rain appraoching our plane...then we went up again and few minutes later the captain told us that due to bad weather we were redirected to islamabad....i was sooooooooooooo sad...wait, wait again to be back to Peshawar
then another annoucment told us we had to go till lahore because weather was bad in islamabad also!
then we reached the nicely built lahore airport...mughal style, like red fort of agra or dehli!
we stayed there a while....finally went back to peshawar when it was night...some 3 hours later than scheduled!

Nowsheera saturday 24th september

We drove to Nowsheera today, we took some very good faluda ice cream in a small shop in the city, before heading to a river.
there we had a nice lunch of grilled fish and chicken, and bread, on the river bank!
we were only disturbed by massive crow crowd...we threw bones at them, and some of them were also on the branches above us...as a result to thank us for the bone one crow sh1tted...on mamba!

Kohat 26th september

We went to Kohat , in the morning, we went to a small hotel there to take tea...with french fries!...weird breakfast!!
then we drove away crossed a tribal zone...very beautiful landscapes of countryside, then reached a lake, tanda dam. When i stepped into these clear green warm water i knew i had to swim...i suplicateBM and ASA to let me bath,arguing that i had a tchador to cover after bathing in salwar qameez...so i did it!swim a bit, with guys telling me to go out of water quick!!
That lake was really pretty, we climbed up a path, so called adventure track!, and took some good shots from up...awesome lake really!
then in the afternoon we went to the village of BM...very pretty quiet place, whose speciality is guava, yummy!
In the guava garden ASA and BM showed their climbing in the trees skills!! but i personaly found more interest in the delicate perfume of the only rose there!

buddhism in pakistan...27th sept

So we went to some buddhist monastery ruins today....a big part of the fun was GS driving and losing the way to that aim...anyway it was fun hearing his punjabi friend talking loud at him, though i did not understand most of what he said...but he seeemed quite sure he would have done better....but we drove a long way along a river and that was great!
then i enjoyed the scenery from that hill where the ruins laid
i saw some bats again! took some shots, then we ate a very unhealthy lunch: biscuits and crisps with soda!...a crisp fell on the ground and many ants ran there to eat it!
on our way back we reached a village where a friend of my friends was living so we visited him. many children were around us looking at us as we were some zoo animals...that was funny!
i was allowed to meet his family, so i saw her pretty european looking wife, and naughty young kids! his mother, the granny of the house, was very strict with kids...far more than all young mum i had seen so far, i guessed granny are autority more than mums in pk

Oct 8th, 2005 at 12:46 AM-return from pak......

I went back from pakistan on the 29th september..actually i left pak on the 28th...
i traveled by road from Peshawar to Islamabad....BM, ASA and a friend of them came along so the long road was fun!
We stopped on the wey in a small place to have tea, and some nicely decorated trucks stopped there, so I took some shots especially for truckdriver...lolfinally we arrived in islamabad, i thought it looked like some alpine valley cities cause of the pine trees and muntains in background..but more americanised, cause of the large streets and modern buildings...it seems to be a nice city but i was there just a few hours...
I met again by chance Wran Alak...first and last days in pak, i met that guppy by chance!....th world is small, so small!
and I finally met barbie!! what a cute meeting!...i really like that guppan...
then i had to go back home....i hated it, can't write about it cause too painfull, i cried so much when i left...couldn't stop crying...i wrote a poem to get rid of my sorrow, before entering the plane....http://www.paklinks.com/gs/showthread.php?t=194659

#56

buddhism in pakistan...27th sept

Nov 13th, 2005 at 09:46 PM

i put my blue jean, and my japanese coat on, then my loved sneakers.... i should call them flying shoes......
I got out and as I them on i began to fly, as usual, my feet barely touched the ground as those magic shoes made me run and jump...and fly over the asphalt and the earth...

ever experienced so intensely the mere daily shopping for food at the market?

I looked at me in the mirror before going out...and those matching gold hair and ray on the jacket let me wonder...are you back european girly?...yes i guess, falling leaves and chilly cold wind brung me back to the roots, I'm the wandering wild free once again.

Nov 15th, 2005 at 11:54 PM

It is frightening......I had never felt that before....this missing feeling......this attraction
I had never realised during my whole stay in India and Pakistan how much english language had taken space in my brain......being stuck in france, i have to talk and write and read most materials at school, with friends and family in french....so after few weeks i realised how much I missed english...... i crave for english! as soon as i can i plunge into english mag, net or book, I do it........and when i get to talk to english with someone I won't quit untill the other force me too!!!!.........
i feel so lonely, that almost no one else actually can good english over here around me.........

Dec 15th, 2005 at 11:19 PM- thought of the day

everything in life is dangerous because when you are born you are bound to die

May 27th, 2006 at 04:55 PM - water miracle

One of the most desertic region of Rajasthan recovered 5 rivers due to the hard work of villlagers.
They digged water collectors and dams at the bottom of hills to gather rain water. Then water can infiltrate into the soil and make the watertable rise, giving birth to rivers that had disapeared.
Disappeared? yes an old man from this region (80years old) told the initiator of the project Rajendra Singh about this ancestral technique to fight against desertification and increase irrigation opportunities. But the old man said that after independance villagers got divided by elections and forgot to work together on water projects and rivers disappeared, transforming the region in an almost desert and forcing young men to work in factories in towns.

Source : Geo juin2005, "Le rajasthan se remet au vert"

I found that news extremely interesting for 2 reasons:

-fisrt it clearly shows the limit of political democracy. I mean political democracy is an invitation to division, and therefore a big brake to collective work. BUT collective work is needed to maintain good quality of life and good social relationaship within a community. hence political democracy is not favoring human developpement.
-second it clearly shows the extremely negative impacts of colonization on rural communities in the third worl during the second half of the twentieth century. At this time colonial powers such as UK and France received the "moral and economical support" from the USA. USA kept on the colonization process over poor famers minds, especially through TV and radio extension even among poor countrisides. These colonial powers imposed their views about agriculture and land managment on local farmers and led to ecologiacal disaster, because western engineers and scientists were not MORE clever than dozens of century old techniques used localy to better life in hard climatic environements.

Jun 3rd, 2006 at 06:18 PM-war and warcrimes, no differences

anyone who think that war is a pc game is a child!
anyone who think that war can be conducted without such barbarian acts is nothing more but a daydreamer!
utopia are bad for health (look what happened to USSR, and other marxist daydreamer!)

high hopes are noble, but human nature is not noble!

there are laws because human like to do the opposite!

it is not possible to make war without having rapes, torture, and mass killing of innocents, because it's in the human nature, and soldiers are human!

maybe we should have only robots in army, that day i will still be in doubt because robots are made by human anyways

music as a drug- Jun 9th, 2006 at 04:05 PM

it's maybe the 6th time in a row i listen to that song "island" from Heather Nova

she sings like a siren in this song

i feel like in a ocean of nostalgia

this waves of bitterhappiness overwhelmes me

and i feel like writing me, naked and openhearted over there

i am not Noor, i have no name

I am a cameleon, i fit in the landscape, and change name and identity depending on the environment

and i have no other self identity than those words i am gonna lay in following posts

Jun 9th, 2006 at 04:14 PMeurope- my country!

I am a european
I was born and raised here
My ancestors are all rooted to that beatifull and wealthy land
When i utter a word it's most likely to be in a language belonging to my forfathers land, be it english, german, french, or norwegian....apart from some urdu and pashto, i rarely speak something not european

basicallly i hate the same things in europe than america, and love the same things about europe as about america, with some light differences


love: the long summer nights ,dark blue, the long pink sunsets, the low winter midday sun, the scientific knowledge, the technological improvements of life, the freedom

hate: mass media, the communication wars, the pollution, the technological dependance, the narowmindness (€, £, $=value),decaying people

Jun 9th, 2006 at 05:29 PM-wild call

i have allways dreamed of perfumed flowers, swinging greenery and crystal clear sea

I have allways preferred the company of plants and birds to annoying fellows

i have allways listened to my basic needs and instincts
i have allways annoyed people by my careless attitude

how can i be happy, more happy than them? cause nothing is so serious, everything is easy when you don't think too much

i like to go back to basics and explain anything at a simple level, by taking easy steps to get to more complex issues later, i discovered a while it was math principle, and got suddenly more friend to that past hated subject.

As i am primitive i am happy as long as my BASIC needs are satisfied, nothing more (two first level of maslow pyramid).

BUt i'm extremely hatefull towards the people who threaten my basic survival: all those who like to poison my air (car drivers) and try to killed me (not only me other member of my family), because they are too lazy to move their a$$es.
I am proud t have a fat a$$ cause most people with slim a$$ are too lazy to move it, at least mine is full of strong muscle that makes me get in the train faster than those techno dependant fashinable slim muscleless a$$es

true i don't like people who replace the grass where i love to sit for a meditation and lay for a nap by asphalt

i don't give a damn about cultural norms, i know how to learn them and repeat them like a parrot, which people like, but i don't respect them in my heart they mean nothing to me but jail

i hate this cultural stuff that makes human , human, cause i'm deep inside still an animal, wild and free, and when i'm jailed in a zoo i feel a little weird

i have hoped and prayed, to be and still be the same over and over again, and to never loose my mind after "growing up"
i was careless smart child full of dreams, and now i am a careless smart grown up full of dreams...so i am human for real, cause these dreams are benchmark of my humanity, but i just like to keep it simple.

i can like all those things that humans make to make their lives "meaningfull", "fullfilling", "less brong"


but i am a wild animal, and like all wild animal, i travel, migrate, so i don't OWN much. ownership is not much valued to me, and things we gather all along the way are best kept preciously, not wasted.
the materialistic civilisation built by marketers makes me sick
people who chase materialist stuff can't understand me, and i can't understand them, we are aliens to each others.

Jun 9th, 2006 at 05:48 PM- my feel good secret

what to do to feel better instantly?

look for the most intense light around and look at it
take my pocket mirror out of wherever it is
look at my eyes, its green shade, like grass, leaves and hope
look at my eyes its little brown stains, like trees, cause i'm a forest lady and my eyes reflect it
i love my eyes, and i feel good to have them