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Lahore-Delhi bus service still operates under guard

WAGAH: The dividend from last year's ill-starred Indo-Pakistani peace bid costs $20, includes three modest meals and comes with a nervous and heavily-armed escort.

It is a bus service from New Delhi to the Pakistani border city of Lahore which was inaugurated by Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee on February 20 last year to symbolise an attempt by the two neighbours to talk peace.

One year later, Vajpayee won't talk to the new military-led government of General Pervez Musharraf. But the bus service still plies the 550 km (300-mile) route three times a week, ferrying relatives divided by wars of the past and the tension of the present.

"We went to Lahore for a family wedding," said an Indian father of two as passengers boarded the coach in Lahore before dawn on Saturday. "It's so cheap, only about $20 each way."

MOSQUES AND COUGHS

It was five a.m. (0000 GMT). Lahore was dark and the only noise, apart from the bus engine, was the call to morning prayer from city centre mosques and the coughs of security guards.

Through deserted streets the vehicle and its load of about 30 - mainly Indian Muslims - headed for Wagah, the only functioning border crossing between the two neighbours.

It is a journey rich with symbolism; down this road hundreds of thousands of Hindus and Muslims fled sectarian slaughter in both directions when the sub-continent was partitioned.

The legacy is three all-out Indo-Pakistani wars, two of them over disputed Kashmir, and untold numbers of families separated by the colour of their passports, blue for India, Islamic green for Pakistan, and the mutual distrust of their governments.

The bus trip was supposed to be a breakthrough in reuniting such families, but it travels in a bubble of tight security, reflecting fears that it might be a target of violence.

There have been 10 bomb blasts in various parts of Pakistan this year, which Pakistan blames on Indian intelligence experts, and countless clashes in Kashmir which India blames on Pakistani-sponosored "terrorist" groups.

So the luggage, checked once by metal detectors in downtown Lahore, is checked again by Pakistani agents at Wagah after passengers are given breakfast of limp cold toast and limp cold fried eggs and lukewarm potato curry in a ramshackle restaurant.

EVERYBODY OFF

The bus then drives through Pakistan's green metal gates and India's orange, white and green gates. And is offloaded again.

A man with two sniffer dogs examines the bus and its occupants while their luggage is checked again by x-ray machines and customs men. It is nine in the morning, and the vehicle has travelled a mere 25 km (15 miles) in three hours.

Two armed Indian soldiers join the passengers as it heads south towards New Delhi on a route that traces the Grand Trunk road that linked Kabul, in Afghanistan, to Calcutta.

Passengers are given crisps and orange juice and are entertained with Indian movies on an onboard video in between carefully chosen and guarded refreshment stops for lunch and afternoon tea.

It is preceded by a police patrol car with a red flag which changes at every district frontier; passengers are treated to lunch on a floating restaurant over an irrigation canal and are carefully segregated from Indian families there for a day out.

The same happens at tea. "Please go inside for your own protection," said an Indian soldier ushering his charges towards a plate of sandwiches, fried Indian snacks and tea.

Sirens blare as the bus is joined close to New Delhi by a change of police guards, and the coach terminal in the Indian capital is emptied of all traffic and people as a security step.

Once more the coach and its luggage is offloaded and passengers are put through another metal detector and told to wait until the bus is driven away for the night before trying to catch taxis to their next destination.

As the vehicle disappears into the traffic on New Delhi's arterial ring road, half a dozen army and police vehicles drive away, leaving the passengers in a deserted coach station.

"The bus has gone," says a solitary policeman standing amid piles of luggage and bleary passengers. "You may proceed.."-Reuters