😎 Likedeeler Survives the Wild Wild West 😎

The kind of stuff you find in Dara.

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The sound of gunfire kept guiding us toward the arms bazaar in Dara and when we finally reached the bazaar there were guns everywhere. Gun shops full of customers who would come out with all kinds of guns, handguns, rifles, automatic weapons and go to the gunshop´s own shooting alley, so the customers could try the guns.

Us tourists were of course not interesting for those shop owners, because though we could have bought guns, the owners would have sold them to us, after passing through the checkpoint back to Pakistani jurisdiction we would have been arrested immediately, so obviously we were no likely customers.

But there were other guys, maybe also working for those owners, inviting us to shoot some guns.
You had to pay the bullets and I thought it a waste of money but some of the tourists went for it, got some Uzi or some other automatic weapons and went to fire a few rounds, all the time protected by our old guard and his carbin.
I thought that was pretty ridiculous. Almost everybody around him had automatic weapons and he was out there protecting us with his old rifle, those other guys could have blown him to pieces if they wanted, but the atmosphere was actually quite jolly, big boys and their toys.

I don´t know what´s it like nowadays with the war on drugs, so maybe it is gone now, but in those days the other significant business in Dara apart from guns, was the manufacturing and trading of hashish and they had managed to elevate the manufacturing process to an art form.
We saw places where they had big machines, similar to a dough machine in a bakery where some dark mass was pounded and rotated and worked on by some metal tools, afterwards the hashish got pressed into bars of probably one pound, those bars got stamped with a nice dragon stamp, so you could actually see the image of a dragon on each bar, and then some golden powder was sprinkled over them, very aesthetic.

I am not exaggerating, there were literally one meter high heaps of those bars in the storage rooms and some of the tourist guys lay on top of one of those heaps and took pictures, what a blast.

John asked one of the owners about the price and the owner asked
“How many kilos?“
John said a few grams and the guy shook his had, laughed and said
“Minimum one kilo!“
So those bars were probably a kilo then.

Unlike the other tourists who had come to Dara to see the gun shops and gun manufacturing and the hashish production I was of course on a mission which went beyond that.
Remember the guy I had met on the plane from Kuwait to Karachi? He had been a resident of Dara and had invited me to visit him and smoke hashish together,
“No police in Dara!“

So when the other tourists and the guard went to another venue to look at, I made sure I was at the very end of the group and when they disappeared around a corner I fell back, went to a shop, got the business card I had received on the plane out and asked the shop owner if he knew this guy. He tried to call the number a few times, but nobody picked up the phone, so no meeting up with my Dara acquaintance, no hashish smoking. I was still feeling a bit disappointed when I heard an angry voice behind me.

“There you are! Come on, let´s go! You cannot stay behind, you have to stay with the group!“
The old guard was not amused.

Soon after my little stunt it was time to leave the crazy world of Dara and go back to the checkpoint. There the army checked if all tourists had returned and then we boarded the bus back to Peshawar.

During my time in Pakistan I did not meet many Western women travelling alone, mostly they were traveling in pairs or with a boyfriend, but on this bus there suddenly was a single Western girl. I had no idea where she came from, maybe she had gone to Dara earlier than us and stayed longer, who knows. It took a while till all seats, but the seat beside her, were occupied by locals and we were just about to leave when suddenly two Pakistani soldiers entered the bus and started to ask us foreigners stupid questions, wanted to check some bags, the usual nuisance. When they reached the female solo traveller and started to pester her, an angry murmur suddenly arose, the local men on the bus were not amused.

I had noticed already before on different occasions that the Pakistanis of the plains were a bit afraid of the tribal mountain people, but now even the two Pakistanis soldiers beat a hasty retreat and left the bus.

The conductor told me to sit beside the young Western woman who had just saved John, but at that moment I did not know that yet. The conductor wanted me as a Westerner to sit beside her in order to not lose a seat, because in that region it was custom that a man would not sit beside a woman who is not a family member in a bus, that would be considered bad form, so the seat beside her would have to remain empty. The conductor figured that this code of honour would not apply to me as a Westerner and grinned
“Come on, sit beside your wife!“
“She´s not my wife.“ I protested, because I could not be bothered to change seats.

But now also the other local passengers gestured to me that I should sit beside her as her protector and since I had seen the impression their anger had made on the two Pakistani soldiers a few minutes ago, I obliged.

After we arrived in Peshawar she disappeared and John and I went to our room.
After a while he suddenly took something small out of his pocket and grinned
“Ok, let´s chill, I scored some gear!“

It had the size and shape of a Wrigley´s spearmint and was wrapped in some tinfoil.
When he opened it, I could see and smell all the blackness of Afghanistan.

“Where did you get that from?“ I asked in eager anticipation.
“Remember the guy in Dara who wanted to sell only kilos? He gave it to me as a gift!“ John answered, very pleased with himself.
I snapped.
“Are you crazy?“ I yelled.
“What if those soldiers in the bus would have searched you?“
“Well they didn´t, did they?“ John replied very cool and started to make a joint.

I rolled my eyes, shook my head in disbelief, but a few minutes later, when the Black Afghan started to work his magic on me, all was forgiven.





Since this has now become a serious series of even more serious travelling, check out the last part too.
There you will also find a link to the previous parts.

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