The last day to Islamabad hopefully, we were about 100km away from they city. We left our campsite and unluckily André had received a flat tyre for some of the big thorns. At these stage we’re all pretty effective at repairing flats so it wasn’t long before we were going again.

For me this day was by far the hardest. Not kept any solid food down for the last three days was really catching up. Knowing that we could make it to Islamabad to day helped me along though and I didn’t want to have to cycle again tomorrow.
It was too bad then that the hills had gotten steeper and longer and the wind was blowing fiercely in our faces. There was a really great view from the ride, out over the rolling hills and valleys and gorges carved into the soft soil but with almost no energy each climb was a challenge.
It was like yesterday, riding for a while and then pulling over to the side of the road for a break or to get sugary drink. Tried to eat something at the start of the day but it came right back up after a big climb.
We might have been able to make it all the way had the sun not come out, but it did and it was hot. The hills, wind and heat was too much and at the bottom of another climb I had pull over and lay down.
A guy on a motorcycle came over to see if I was ok. He had perfect English, lived there in fact and was back on holiday. He said we were only five minutes from the next town and could get a ride on a bus there to Islamabad. He then pulled me to the top of the hill with his motorcycle and was off into.
He was right, we were able to get a bus these last 50km to Islamabad from this town. I don’t know if we would have been able to had we not press-ganged two students who came up to say hello into helping us find the bus station and then catch the bus. They were able to find out which bus we should take and then explain to the driver we wanted to put our bikes on, made our day a lot easier.

So we had to take a bus the last 50km to Islamabad but it was ok, we had made it most of the way there by bike and in my state I didn’t feel too bad about having to ride the bus.
We got into Islamabad nearly. The bus dropped us off between that city and Rawalpindi its sister city. We got in contact with Frank, our host here and then cycled the final 15km to meet him at last. Frank was a well travelled Dutch fellow now living and working in Islamabad, he was also hosting two German hitchhikers at the time also in the city to get visas, it was great to finally meet some other western travellers out here and compare experiences of Pakistan.

Andre and I with Frank to my right and the Germans Lisa and Andy behind