“Pakistan! You’re joking! Why on earth go to Pakistan?” And this was 1980… In those days, Pakistan was off the tourist map; for the staid elderly tourist, it was somewhere in never never land, and the backpackers had not yet discovered its great potential; they only knew the hippie trail in Afghanistan.

“I thought you were going to travel across North Africa and then down to South Africa,” my friend continued in that same incredulous voice.

It was true, that had been my intention, but only the night before I had seen on the BBC, a documentary on the Kalash people of North-Western Pakistan. Flexible, history loving and lured always by something different, my imagination had been caught by the romance of the Frontier and by the exotic nuances of this remote mountain people. I had decided on a slight diversion. Read more about Maureen's journey to Pakistan here.