Pakistan crumbling & rusty: a train journey

In his last despatch from Pakistan the NYT's Declan Walsh travelled on the crumbling railway system and IMO provides a vivid, human portrait of a country I suspect many SWC readers would prefer to ignore:http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/19/wo...pagewanted=all

There's also a photo series - some tell more than the author writes

Friends have travelled on Indian railways and they bear no comparison to Pakistan - they gave up trying to book long journeys, the booking office didn't even have a computer.

I travelled from Karachi to Islamabad by train in 1995. The journey took 28 hours, as scheduled, and despite the General Strike and attendant heavy paramilitary presence in Karachi I never felt threatened at all. It was a great way to get a feel of the country.

I am not so sure I would have the same positive experience now.

On tablet at moment, but IIRC the article's author just got expelled from Pakistan.

I wonder how much this article or similar antispin reportage with candor led to it?

A commentary on a still functioning, if hardly modern part of Pakistan, its railways and on a journey for the intrepid - this time a lady:http://roadsandkingdoms.com/2015/a-r...e-in-pakistan/

As long as the people of Pakistan continue to swallow the force-fed narrative that they are better off than people in India and Bangladesh, true or not, they will gladly suffer such crumbling infrastructure and poor/non-existent services of all kinds. The rich, on the other hand, have it quite good but pretend they do not, sort of like a bigger North Korea.