Why Our Trip to Hyderabad Cost 5000 Rupees

I wanted to take a moment and explain our trip from Karachi to Hyderabad in a bit more detail. An hour after finally getting McDonalds at the Airport, Megan and I were ready to head out. It was 6 am and the day was about to begin. So we headed off to the taxi stands. Terry had told us that we needed to get either a Metro Radio Cab or a White Top Cab. As we approached the booths a fellow came up and asked if we needed a cab. Since I was told by Terry not to take any random cab, I tried to ignore the fellow and went to the White cab’s window and asked how much it would be. The reply was 5500 Rps. This was way over the 3700 Rps that Terry had told us it would be, so I went to Metro Cab, and they as well were well above the price Terry gave, priced at 5250 Rps. The fellow kept pestering me saying he could do it for 4000 Rps. Liking his price I told him that if he let me use his cell phone I would think about it. He leant me the cell phone so I called Terry and told him the situation. Terry again advised me not to just take any cab, but get an official cab from one of the legit businesses regardless of how much the cost was. As I was talking to Terry I did notice that the fellow had bloodshot eyes and may not be the best choice. Hanging up the phone I politely told the fellow that I was told not to use his services, but offered to pay for the use of his phone. He blew me off and left. I went back to the Metro Cab and asked why it was so expensive they mumbled something about it being a petrol day and not a CNG day. I had no idea what this meant, but I told him we would use their services for no more then 5000. He agreed on the price and I paid him in advance. Then without warning two men grabbed our bags and told us to follow them. Megan and I looked at each other knowing that this also meant that a tip would be expected from these men who carried our bags, and we had no idea how much was normal. After we found a cab and loaded the bags in, I did the stupid thing and asked how much they wanted. The bargaining I did on the cab price didn’t matter after that. The one guy said 500 Rps each. That seemed a lot in my mind and I had already given the one guy 100 Rps, without thinking I gave the other guy 500 Rps, he left happy, but the guy I gave 100 Rps to started begging for more. Our cab driver had to tell him to stop begging and he finally left. Good for them, taking advantage of tired foreigners. I found out later that 20 Rps is really all one would give them. Regardless, they provided me a service and for $6 I got my bags carried and put in the taxi. I felt a bit safer after we climbed into the cab. Less safe after the cabbie didn’t understand my request for a phone and grabbed the address out of my hand and said, “I know where this is, it’s all okay.” At this point I was too tired to try and get a cell phone out of the guy and just hoped Terry would figure out we had gotten the cab and were on our way. After thirty minutes of painfully trying to do small talk, thanks to the cabbies limited english (It helped that Megan had a limited vocabulary of Urdu), Abi was a sleep and Megan tried to sleep, so I sat in silence trying to stay awake and alert. All of a sudden the cab came to a stop and we pulled over to the side of the road. I did notice that the cabbie was looking at every gas station we passed and figured it was just out of petrol. He said some words in Urdu, which I can only imagine were curses. After trying to start the car a few more times he jumped out. Told us everything was okay and started pushing the cab down the road. I tried to get out and help, but he insisted I stay inside, and that he had everything under control. Luckily for him it was down hill. He was pretty coordinated too as he was steering and pushing at the same time. I had my foot ready, close to the break, just in case we needed to stop suddenly. Fortunately we made it to the gas station that was 500 m behind us. After we got there, the cabbie jumped in the car again and rummaged around for piece of paper, mumbling something about a phone number. Apparently he had no cell phone and was going to ask to use someone’s, but he had lost the number of the person he was trying to call. After 10 minutes of searching he finally found it. I was still unsure why he didn’t just pump some gas into his car. The cabbie told us not to worry again and ran to the other side of the lot and started talking to some people. Fifteen minutes later he came back and told us it would be 15 minutes more. I asked to use the cell phone he had borrowed, but the cabbie blew me off and said it would be fine and then left again. At this point I started to imagine the worse. What if he was calling in some friends to rob us or kidnap us? It was at this point I stopped carrying how much it would cost to use my TELUS serviced phone and pulled it out. I tried to text Terry, I told him where we were, and what we were doing, and hoping that stalling in the middle of the road was a normal thing in Pakistan. I got no reply back, and realized after we were in Hyderabad that because it is a Canadian carrier I had to dial +92 in front of the number before it would go through. True to his word the cabbie came back 15 minutes later and tried to start his car again. This time it worked, “See,” He said, “It is satellite tracker.” I found out later this was normally installed in cabs to stop theft of the vehicle. If no phone call is made to extend the distance, the cab will automatically shut off after it reaches a certain point. Hyderabad was obviously too far. Why the cabbie didn’t call to extend the distance before we left is beyond my understanding, but at least he was able to fix the problem. We started out again, and made one more stop at a petrol station, which I was happy about seeing as the cab was on empty. It was nice that Megan could just hold Abi on her lap as there is no need for car seats in Pakistan; child safety is the least of their worries. This meant Megan could feed Abi as we drove and so we were able to keep her happy the whole way to Hyderabad. Once we reached Hyderabad the cabbie of course had no idea how to get to Terry and Joanie’s place (our hosts). He had to pull over and ask a lot of people. Eventually we just got close enough for Terry to spot us from his roof. He ran down and showed us how to get the rest of the way. When we stopped Terry quickly questioned our cabbie to figure out what was going on. The Cabbie explained everything in Sindhi. Regardless of the way our trip ended up I felt obligated to tip the cabbie (that and just before we got to the address he was begging us for money to help him for something). I gave him 500 Rps, which probably after seeing how much I gave our bag handlers didn’t seem a lot to him and he still had a frown on his face. Once the cab driver left Terry explained the satellite-positioning thing, as well as said he would follow up on why it cost the 5000 Rps, so much more then quoted. A few days later he found out that it was because it was a petrol day. It all started a few years ago when natural gas was promoted as being cleaner, more efficient, and cheaper then gasoline.

Clock Tower Market

Everyone quickly upgraded their vehicles to run off of both. Since everyone started to use CNG including huge industries, Pakistan started to have a natural gas (CNG) shortage, and to deal with this the government has decided to shut off CNG supply on certain days (very similar to how the government has dealt with the electricity problem, which has made the industries have to use CNG to get by. I will write more about this shortly). This means that on the days that CNG cannot be accessed the price for transport goes up. This is why we had to pay 5000 Rps. Not that I am complaining, after all, where in Canada can you pay a cabbie $50 to take you for such an exciting ride for 3 hrs?

Just in case you want to picture it...

A pretty happy baby despite the long layovers... Somebody got some sleep.

McArabia- Canada is missing out

It's dusty here

Karachi Mcdonalds

 To elaborate further on My McDonald’s experience...

As we were waiting in the Karachi Airport waiting for the sun to rise so it would be safe for us to leave. I decided to go on a little adventure to the McDonalds across the street. It is an adventure, because I am in a foreign place, have no idea how to speak the language, there is a road between the McDonalds, and us and I would have to leave Megan and Abi behind with all our baggage. After getting Megan’s permission to leave her and go (as long as I bring back a hot drink for her) I decided to wait until 4:30 am. This way it helped pass the 45 minutes until I got to go on my adventure and once I was done the adventure to McDonalds there wouldn’t be much time to wait until we finally get to continue on to Hyderabad.

            Finally, it was time to go. So I took off with Megan sitting with strangers (plenty of women and families so I felt she would be safe, not to mention the security at the airport all carry Ak 47s or equivalent). I started to walk towards the big yellow arch, thinking how many people would denounce the idea that I would venture to go to a McDonalds; after all there is a McDonalds in every neighbourhood back home and for that much who really likes their hamburgers? Well, I thought to my self, who cares what people will think, for starters I like Mcdonalds hamburgers, and besides this is Mcdonalds in Pakistan, how many of my friends can say they’ve been to Mcdonalds in Pakistan? Regardless, I need this adventure to keep sane. The day we left which was just a muddle in my mind at that time, I had stayed up all night getting ready to go (I might elaborate why I stayed up all night, but this is about McDonalds) then there was the “try to sleep in the airport/ airplane all while sitting up and trying to make sure your safe and no one will steal your stuff or kid nap your daughter/wife” not very helpful. So I had very little sleep in the last 48 hours and I needed Mcdonalds to help me stay alert. So I left and crossed the road, tried to look confident. I walked in, looking for similarities and differences to the McDonalds at home. This Mcdonalds offered yoga and Taekwondo among other things as its regular morning program. The Menu was written in English and Urdu, and was a bit different, there was no option for a McRib, but there was a McArabia. I decided to order the McArabia since that other than the Chicken Big Mac there was very little difference then a McDonalds in Canada.

            Now that I was ready to order I waited in what I thought was the “line”. However as I was standing there many people came in and just “bugged in front of me” I thought this very rude. Then I started to realize that this was just part of the culture. I took note of what the last guys did and followed suite pushing my way to the counter and getting someone to take my order.

            I really wanted a coffee, so I asked to replace my drink for a coffee in my meal. I guess they hadn’t heard of such a thing. I was told I could not do that yet. So I just kept the coke and added a coffee and a hot chocolate. I was a handed a receipt and I went to the side to wait for my order. I waited and waited. Finally there were two cappuccinos put on the tray I asked if they were mine and opened one to see if they were indeed cappuccinos. One of the McDonald workers said something to me in broken English and took the cappuccinos away. Next a McRoyal was put on the tray with some fries. I told them I needed it to go and I had ordered a McArabia. So they took my order away. About 15 minutes later I finally got my McArabia and fries with one coffee in a bag. This was relatively good except there was no Hot chocolate, so I showed them my receipt and they finally gave me my Hot Chocolate. Another customer turned to me and smiled saying, “This is Pakistan.” My order was complete and 30 minutes later I walked back to where Megan and Abi were waiting.

            My first experience of Pakistan’s slows fast food.

            What an adventure! What a great way to help pass the time.

Until next time…

Now this is the story all about how

My life got flipped, turned upside down

And I'd like to take a minute just sit right there

I'll tell you how We came to be in Pakistan...

It was quite the adventure. Lots of waiting around. Qatar had problems figuring out whether Abigail had a ticket it or not. We spent 4 hours waiting for our tickets, which was fine as we had a 10 hour layover in Montreal. We tried to sleep on benches, as we hardly slept the night before. We got woken up by people sitting down next to us and asking us to watch their bags. Finally Got on the plane. 12 hours later we got to Doha. In Doha we had to wait a few more hours. Finally we boarded a plane to Karachi. Landing in Karachi was fine, we grabbed our bags headed out of the baggage area to find ourselves in the open air of Pakistan. It was a bit intimidating at first, but we started to figure out where to go. We had to wait at the airport until 6 am for safety reasons. Terry (my mentor here in Pakistan) advised us to wait until it was just about dawn, as there has been quite a bit of crime in Karachi of late. So we waited from 2am when our plane landed to 6 am outside. Good thing it was pretty warm still. We only got mobbed once by children and eventually their parents touching Abi and pointing at her. Almost felt like we were zoo animals :). 

Abi was great. Mcdonalds was across the street so I eventually ventured over there to help bypass the time. My fast food eventually came 30 min later. It took awhile for them to get my order right. Another customer turned to me and said, "This is Pakistan!" 

We made it through the night and got a cab to take us the 3hrs to Hydrabad. but our cab driver had no phone, and so when the car stopped working halfway to hydrabad we were stranded on the side of the road. That was okay though as the cab driver pushed us the half a km back to a gas station. That is where he borrowed a phone to ask someone to turn off the satellite tracker that prevented his car to go further. There was a bit of time I thought the worst of this situation. That this guy may be calling in a gang to mug us or that someone would see a couple of easy targets and take us out. 

Fortunately non of that happened, and he was able to get the car going again. We made it to Hydrabad, but the driver ha don idea how to get to Terry's house. After asking quite a few people we made it close enough for Terry to spot us and he came out and helped us out the rest of the way.
Now we are trying to rest up.

Until later...