Sultan Mehmood was one of the first in the queue for his bus ticket this week.
It cost him US$20.60 and was guaranteed to take him on a 539km journey from his home city of Lahore.
But even though the 14-hour trek to New Delhi may not be the most arduous available on Pakistan's bus timetables, the symbolism of the international express was lost on few who watched it depart on Friday.
PHOTO: REUTERS
The bus service is the first direct contact between citizens of Pakistan and India in 18 months and brings with it the fragile hope that the two impoverished nuclear powers can finally resolve their differences.
"It is a problem of politics, not of the public," said Mehmood, 37, an electronics technician. "The Indians are good people, there is very little hatred. It's only a small minority on each side who are radical extremists and who have made a problem for all of us. Most people don't want to fight."
The symbolic overture of the new bus journeys -- a luxury express, the Sada-e-Sarhad, or Call of the Border, left New Delhi for Lahore an hour before -- should now be followed by other small thaws in frozen relations: train connections should restart, direct flights are likely to resume and rival embassies should be returned to full staffing.
The actions may be slight but they represent a huge advance from a year ago when India and Pakistan were on the brink of their fourth war. More than one million troops were deployed on either side of the border at full mobilization. Western diplomats now say they believe the subcontinent was then within a whisker of another conflict.
Tickets for the bus service went on sale on Monday and in Lahore several seats were sold in the first minutes. Most were bought by Pakistanis eager to travel back to India to visit relatives left behind during the vast migrations that followed independence in 1947, when the subcontinent was partitioned and Pakistan was created as a homeland for Muslims.
These divided families, perhaps more than most, recognize the cost and the futility of the five decades of rivalry and posturing that followed.
Yet despite the obvious goodwill, the journey is still littered with obstacles. When the bus crossed the border photographs were forbidden and the passengers had to report to the police on arrival.
Indian police searched the coach with sniffer dogs and frisked the passengers before it crossed the "zero line" into the country.
Their visas will limit them to particular cities. Officers from Pakistan's intelligence agencies kept a conspicuous eye on prospective passengers as they queued to reserve seats in the lobby of Faletti's Hotel in Lahore.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not