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Sunday, December 22nd – Rawalpindi, 15,369 km
It was next to impossible to get any sleep last night on the train. The five of us drag our sorry asses off the train at the station in Rawalpindi when it finally arrives at 8 am. After w collect our bikes and load on our bags, we make our way to the train station reservation office to see if they know where the Boys and Girls Club in town is or if there is a tourist information office. They don't know of either. Kate asks where we might find cheap hotels and the agent just waves his hands in a south-easterly direction, towards the centre of town.
The street traffic is a big crazy and we are not in our most conscious state so we decide to wheel our bikes along the sidewalks to look for a hotel. The sidewalk traffic is easily as crazy and congested as the street traffic, just slower - much slower. Vendors try to sell us things as we try to squeeze around them. As in most cities, there are several cheaper hotels within blocks of the train station. It
takes a few tries before we find one that can accommodate our bikes though, and that accommodation involved carrying them upstairs to the second floor and keeping them in our rooms. It is crowded, dingy and with questionable cleanliness, but at last we are here and we have beds. Mine sags like a hammock so I lay the mattress on the floor and sleep there for the better part of the morning and afternoon. 
When I awake, Vincent, Stephen and I head out and explore the local streets. They are noisy and alive. The major streets are wide and filled with every type of vehicle from bicycles and donkey-drawn carts to full-sized trucks. We find a couple interesting food markets and a few options for prepared food that look clean and safe and return to the hotel room to report our findings to Coen and Kate. Today Kate and Vincent are having more digestive issues than I am so we decide to eat food that we can prepare in the hotel.
Our naps earlier in the day haven't been enough to refresh us for long so we retire fairly early this evening. Tomorrow we will need to find the Indian embassy in Islamabad, Rawalpindi's sister city, and apply for our visitor visas as soon as possible. It may take a week for them to be processed.
PHOTO 1: Rawalpindi Railway Station
PHOTO 2: downtown Rawalpindi
PHOTO 3: street scene with a mosque in the distance
PHOTO 4: pedestrians on our street
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