12-Sep-2004 -- This is the 14th out of 29 confluences on our tour from Germany to China, the story continues from 30N 71E.

On the twenty-second day of our tour we started at 7 a.m. in Multan and headed for Lahore near the Indian border. As usual, I had a hard time convincing Guang and our Swiss fellow traveller Joko to visit a confluence. They may like confluencing in general, but they both are not so keen on making detours as I am. But at least I was able to talk them into one confluence visit a day.

At a town named Pattoki we turned off from the main road towards Cunian. In Cunian, we turned northward towards Bhai Pheru. In the village Gurmukh Singhwala at a distance of 3.1 km we tried to find a track to the confluence. Our first trial did not succeed at all – after 1 km we ended up at a dead end with the people looking suspiciously at us. After we returned the main road, we tried another track. This time we succeeded, but at a distance of 616 m we had to leave our Toyota behind due to severe road conditions. With Joko's Jeep we made it to the point, after going down a steep grade onto a former floodplain; now it is a dried out salt lake. At the confluence we saw some mysterious plough furrows. They looked a little too unmotivated to be useful for farming.

On our way back, we lost our way, but somehow we made it to Lahore. The big city of Lahore appeared to us not as the cleanest and safest place. While walking through the crooked alleys of the ancient town, people had fun throwing firecrackers at us. At that day, there was a festival (one of the Imam's wives' birthday) and the habit of lighting firecrackers happens to be normal on days like this one.

CP visit details:

• Time at the CP: 12:40 a.m.
• Duration: 1 h (until we were back on our route)
• Distance of car parking: 0 m
• GPS height: 190 m
• Description: Dried out lake bed, white salt all around. In 500 m distance to the north is a steep slope. Scattered grass is the only vegetation.
• Given Name: The Salt Lake Confluence

Story continues at 31N 76E.