DJ - Where in the world are you? Welcome to the update with Carl and Don. We're in one of those places in the world where you're just not sure how it fits in with the big picture. We're in a place where it's unlikely that you would ever go. It's a fascinating place, given the history and the number of people, but a very remote part of the world. Our location is right in the center of the country of Pakistan, and the city tonight at the end of the 23rd day, is Multan. There are 800,000 who live in this Islamic city right in the heart of Pakistan.

Our drive from Lahore to Multan today was across a countryside that was covered with cotton fields. We saw a Pioneer Seed warehouse and distribution and research center alongside the highway. Almost identical to a facility on Interstate 80 at Princeton, Illinois. So Pioneer has a presence for sunflower and maize or corn here in Pakistan. It appears that farming practices are quite good. They use flooding irrigation to produce cotton and corn - a similar practice to Arizona. And in fact, when you think about how to describe this location in the world, I think the Southwest of the US, and particularly Arizona is a good comparison. The weather here is similar to the month of July in Arizona when it can be quite warm - in the mid to upper 90's. Haven't seen a cloud in the sky now for several days through Pakistan and India. Very hot this time of the year. You can actually sweat standing in the shade.

The driving now is changing from short distances and congested roads to long distances and pretty good stretches of tarmac and highway, occupied mainly by transport trucks. Our staged length tomorrow of travel is one of the longest that we've experienced thus far on the journey, more than 600 kilometers. Starting at 7 o'clock in the morning it promises to be a long day. We'll be moving from Multan to another regional Pakistani city of Quetta. You can follow that on the map. I mentioned in yesterday's update that we're halfway from Peking to Paris, that's by the calendar. We're not quite halfway in terms of mileage, 9,000 in kilometers, a little more than 5,000 miles remaining on our journey.

Some background about Pakistan. The population here is up in the air. No one is quite certain exactly what it is. There's a lot of domestic turmoil in the domestic politics of Pakistan and they can't even agree on how to conduct the census and what the actual census is. We've had the opportunity to talk to some international business people, as well as some investment analysts who have kind of given us the scoop on Pakistan. It appears that the country is facing an eminent devaluation based on the excessive amount of leverage and loans that it has received from the IMS and the world bank. It also appears that only 1% of the population here currently pays taxes. There are about two and a half million telephone users in Pakistan and they're hoping to ask the telephone users to join the tax role. They're trying to raise the public revenues by adding and enforcing tax policy. Pakistan has had a real roller coaster economic history. 20 years ago the country nationalized all of the industries and since then, things have not gone too well. They've tried to privatize over the last five years about 400 industries and after privatizing some industries, particularly the electric industry, some of the businesses started to make a profit and the government has hinted that it's going to take the industries back. So the investment climate in Pakistan is not very favorable at the moment. The public appears to be suffering under these conditions. The average income here is about a dollar a day, on average about $400 a year and we're told that the lifestyle and the economic well being of the people of the country of Pakistan is really quite poor. The hospitality couldn't be better. People are very cordial and have been very friendly. One has to kind of keep on eye in all directions in Pakistan. People here are described as hustlers and you're not quite sure if they're really sincere when they're as gracious as they sometimes appear to be. A lot of fine craftsmanship here in terms of teakwood, leather and cotton shirts are thought to be good values in Pakistan. Other than that, the local produce - grapes, peaches, oranges - are really quite excellent. Pakistan is one of those places that you just wouldn't ordinarily find your way to visit and now that we're here, it's really quite interesting to get a feel for this country. It's sort of surrounded by some giants, being surrounded by India, from whom it separated 50 years ago. Pakistan is celebrating its 50th year of independence from India and India is celebrating its 50th year of independence from Great Britain. Pakistan is also surrounded on the North by its neighbor, China and on the West, it's neighbor Afghanistan and to the South is Iran. So Pakistan is sandwiched in quite a bit of turbulent domestic activity all around it, and as we've mentioned before, Pakistan is an Islamic country with Islam being the prescribed national religion.

Well there's some good news about Packards as it relates to Pakistan. The Packard was the favorite of the founding father of Pakistan in the 40's. The 1954 Packard entered in the Peking to Paris Motor Challenge is running well. And we want to report to those who are following the mechanical condition of the Packard that it's doing just about as well as we could expect to do with these good highway surfaces. The engine is strong and the car is beginning to do what it was designed and intended to do.

I'm joined here tonight by my co-driver, my co-adventurer and by a fellow who, along with me has made a commitment to complete this journey and everyday it appears to us that we're going to be able to accomplish this. Let me ask Carl to join the update at this time.

CS - This has been a very interesting time in Pakistan. It's a country that was not high on my list for visiting, but one of the countries that I think I'd like to come back and spend more time in. All along the trip we've had crowds of people that have applauded and smiled. We've had a lot of friendly people in each country that we've gone through. But it seems like here in Pakistan the people have been more outgoing and friendlier. English is the legal language that is used here. Business is done in English. As a consequence, more than two-thirds of the advertising signs are in English, so it seems a little more familiar, a little more comfortable.

Yesterday, while we were in Lahore getting the car's suspension tightened up, I started a conversation with a man who was having his car taken care of and he asked many questions about the Packard and our race trip. I answered all of them and we enjoyed our company together. About 40 minutes after he left, he came back with his brother and started all over again asking questions about the car and the race and everything and asking how I enjoyed Pakistan. And I said I'm spending most of my time here at the garage getting the car taken care of and they insisted on taking me for a short tour of the city in their car. I got to see many of the 400 year old public buildings of the city. They showed me shopping centers that could have been in Stockholm or Stuttgart, even Ohio with many western goods. Very familiar western goods - Sunbeam electrical appliances, Hush Puppies. They asked me if I wanted a cold drink and I said that's a good idea, so they took me to their home. Well, I never expected to see the inside of a Pakistani home and I certainly didn't expect to be in one that had 14 bedrooms, 10 servants and a flock of peacocks floating all over the place. It was quite an experience. One of those eye openers that you get when you travel. If you smile, they'll smile back and start up a conversation and it leads on to exploring what people do and how they do it and how they live. These were two brothers that had gone to Sweden several years ago and worked for a year in a chipboard factory. They call them particleboards here, but in Eureka, California, they're called chipboards. They bought the plant, dismembered it and brought it to Pakistan and put it together and are now turning out 125 tons of particleboard/chipboard every day. Just very, very interesting to see the kind of changes that are taking place in a country where the notable things to look at are 400 year old or 600 year old temples. We had an interesting day today coming across the country. Again, smiles, waves, applause, people are extremely happy and are enjoying seeing the cars.

Everyone's getting a little tired so I'm gonna call this one down and let Don finish off as we meander on our way towards Iran and then Turkey.

DJ - As you can judge from Carl's comments, we're continuing to have good experiences. We're not plagued at the moment with bad news and we're really quite appreciative of that. I also want to introduce to our family and friends - Carl and Dons, as well as to the family and friends of many of the participants in the Motor Challenge - one of the teams from the United States is lead by Ted Thomas from Birmingham, Alabama. This team has two sparkling and very well prepared 1950 Ford Coupes in this competition and they're entered in the Vintageants, or the antique classification of cars, 1950 or prior, in terms of age and they're doing very, very well leading in the timing competition of the Rally. We're joined here by Ted Thomas and we'd like to introduce him to our family and friends and ask him to spend a few minutes with you describing his experience and that of his fellow team members. Ted, welcome to our network of family and friends.

Ted - Thank you for having me. It's been a long three weeks for us. We started originally in Beijing, through Mongolia, into Tibet and then into Nepal. And probably the toughest part of the whole journey so far has been when we got close to the Nepal border coming out of Tibet. There was a section of road there about 7 kilometers long which they call nomads land between the two borders. You can't really call it a road because a road didn't exist. It was a series of ruts, rocks, springs, flowing rivers, waterfalls - a very, very difficult area. It took its toll very heavily on most of the cars, whether they actually broke there or just were damaged to the point they had to be repaired in the next couple of days. There are two countries that have been favorites of ours, one is Tibet. It's probably one of the prettiest countries we went through. And as far as friendly, I would go along with what Carl said. The people in Pakistan, from the time we crossed the Indian border into Pakistan have been very, very hospitable. As a matter of fact instead of taking us an hour and a half to get into and out of India, when we got to Pakistan it took about 5 minutes. When we got across the border they were waiting there for us with cold drinks and a nice escort into town. Very hospitable in the hotel and just really couldn't do enough for us. I've got to again, go with what Carl said, this could be a country that you actually look forward to coming back to and being able to spend some time and really see it. Tomorrow we've got a real long day, it's over 600 kilometers and the day after that it's 700 kilometers. We'll be going into Iran fairly quickly now. Actually I wasn't looking forward to going into Iran, but now I think I am. We've met a lot of the Iranians here. There's six of them actually participating in the race. The Iranian government has advised us that they are going to pay for all of our fuel, they're going to put extra support trucks with mechanics to help us with maintenance on the cars. So I think it will be a pleasant experience and not one that I originally thought was going to be very difficult. I guess that's it for right now. The last thing I would like to say is that I think the organizers are somewhat surprised with the fact that we still have 84 cars running. I think they thought we would probably be half of that number. I think it just shows the determination of all of the competitors that they really do want to finish this thing and get to Paris. Thank you.

DJ - Ted, why don't you introduce some of the members of your team because some of them and their family members have used the Internet E-Mail and Guest Book services to communicate and we'd sure, for the record, would like to know more about your team.

Ted - The co-driver with me is a gentleman named Vic Zannis. Vic lives in Birmingham with his wife Sara and two boys and one girl. One is at the University of Alabama now, the other two are home studied and doing very, very well. The other car's driver is John Jung. John is from Dallas, Texas. He is retired. His co-driver is Andy Vann from Trustville, Alabama. Andy is married to Marianne Vann. Marianne was a big supporter of our team. She helped out a lot with the computer services and putting all the lists together of where things where, what we needed and things like that. It's been a pretty good team so far. We've had our moments, but we're all running as a team and are looking forward to getting to Paris as a team. Thank you. Don And we want to report to Marianne that we're all keeping our eye on Andy and that he's doing actually I think very well right now. He had a couple of days where he had a bout of some illness and he's worked his way through that and we had dinner tonight and he was in very good spirits and good health. We assure Marianne that Andy is doing just fine.

To finish up, our location is in central Pakistan. We're in the city of Multan, a city of 800,000 people. The local information suggests and claims that this is a city of 200,000 years of age and it's origin dates back to the era of Persia. Quite a significant claim in that one of the oldest cities in the world is thought to be Jericho and as you travel around the world, you discover certain facts that somehow don't make it into the general records. Whether that claim is accurate we'll leave to those who want to research that and check it out. The city of Multan is said to be founded by an Islamic religious leader similar to Moses in the Christian tradition and they claim that the age of this locale as a place of human existence is 200,000 years. We can tell you one thing, it is hot, hot, hot. The wind blows hot and the sun shines hot and everyone is consuming vast amounts of fluids in order to avoid dehydration.

One of the cars, an English Railton had an axle fail today and to illustrate how resourceful people are, they were able, using a spare axle, to make the repairs on that car. Well most of the cars are settling into the pace and the drivers seem to be enduring the ever changing conditions and everyone is pretty well set on doing what it takes to get to Paris by October 18th. The '54 Packard is running well. Carl and Don are trying to get enough rest, being careful about intake of foods and liquids to stay healthy and fulfill our dream and our goal of getting to Paris. That completes the update for this, the 23rd day. Thanks for coming along and we'll sign off from Pakistan.