Bounced back from the border to Pakistan (6 Dec, 2009)

He was the man who responsible the security of the train.


The yellow shirt guy was the man in charge. The other two were pilot (below) and co-pilot (above)

I was refused to cross the border on foot to Pakistan from India. The Indian immigration officer politely explained to me that there were 5 countries that were not allowed to cross on foot. China was one of them and Hong Kong......was part of China. I tried to talked through it and explained that I had no more Indian rupee and I was using Hong Kong passport bla bla bla. But it didn't work out. One way I could cross the border was to take a train next day (only two trains per week) from a nearby border town, Attari as suggested by the officer.

So I went to the Attari train station to check out exact schedule and planned to stay in the town for a night. The train station was very small and I hardly found any staff whom I could ask for. Luckily I found one and learnt what I needed to do next day. However I found out that there was no hotel in town. It meant I need to go back to the nearest city, Amritsar, 26km away from Attari. The worst was that there was no train for the day. Then he said there was a cargo train back to Amritsar leaving in probably 30min. I hesitatingly asked if I could jump on. He replied it would have no problem if he said yes because he was in charge of the train. Wow he was my hero. So I was the only passenger sitting on platform waiting.

After two hours delay as it happend all the time in India (which I didn't mind at all since it was a free ride), he finally gave me a gesture to follow him. I walked with a crew of 4 people to the engine. Yes I was riding in the engine. He told me that this was the cargo train from Pakistan, one of the two cargo trains crossing between two countries per day. 20km/hr was the maximum speed since the pakistani cargo train wasn't built for faster speed as explained from the pilot. The train was running slowly across the field. When the train finally arrived Amritsar after slightly more than two hours, the man in charge said "You were just in the mission".