From Lahore (we stayed at the Grace Hotel) we took a taxi through Charring Cross square (?) to the Wagah/Attari Indian border and cleared Indian immigration. The border area was awash with colour - 100's of men in orange and red robes with boxes of fruit and sacks of potatoes on their heads. We had our passports checked 4 times on both sides of the border - lots of military insignia, shiny shoes and big moustaches. We were even offered a cup of Chai on the Indian side; a nice gesture (although the goods never actually arrived...) The Pakistani's even had one of those wind up phones you see in Pink Panther films. I was congratulated on my profession ('computer programmer') a number of times (it's all very proper and formal here).
On the Indian side the moustaches seemed even bigger. And there were lots of turbans. We met 3 English blokes in 'Original Lahore' shirts - apparently this is a great Pakistani restaurant in East London, Commercial Road (must check it out). They had been charged to have their bags inspected on the Pakistani side. Ha! The porters in this side wear green robes. They were queuing up for sacks of potatoes from a number of big trucks, which they then ran down the 100m stretch of border and gave to their Pakistani counterparts on the other side. Once we had officially entered Punjab, India we left our bags with a nice Indian man and headed back to the border for the 'closing of the border' ceremony. I was amazed just how popular this event is - 100's of locals from both sides were seated (separately) on stadium style seating. We were directed to the VIP area thankyou very much. Lots of amazingly tall men in uniform and amusing head gear were prancing around getting the crowd excited. It's incredible how popular Ringo Star is in this part of the world. We had at least 30 minutes of everybody chanting his name. Kerry thinks the lyrics were 'Hindu-stan', but I played along by shouting the names of the other Beatles - might as well get into the thing. From the Pakistani side we were treated to some very loud, cheesy 'Pakistan is great' pop music which sounded like a local 'Venga Boys'. For about 20 minutes we had lots of whistle blowing, shouting and lots and lots of foot stamping. Once things had calmed down we collected our bags from the nice man (and paid him a little Baksheesh'), then took a taxi the 30km into Amritsar, looking for a beer. In Pakistan the 30km distance to the border cost us about 8 quid. In India the same distance cost 4. We didn't find any beer. Typical.
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