Reflections on Pakistan

Here I am on my last day of freedom before I start working. I am taking things real slow, this heat is pretty exhausting 35C and rising, its just the beginning of the hot period here and I am taking time to adjust. It'll be interesting and challenging to see how my body copes after enduring a winter of extreme cold this is the other extreme.
I have realised that I picked up Guardia in Pakistan, and am taking a course of metronidazide, hopefully that'll sort it.
I wanted to write about the people of Pakistan because they really touched my heart, with their generosity of spirit, tolerance and abandonment of selfishness in the place of complete surrender to living harmoniously alongside their community. I met one man whose story depicts this quality, Tanveer Akber, a man whose age I could not tell, he could have been younger than me, or a lot older. We met him on a train from Rohri to Lahore, I commented on how small he had made himself in a very overcrowded carriage (Pakistanis generally make themselves very small to pack onto public transport, me and Tess were like western heffalumps in comparison and took up the space of at least 2x Pakistanis!), and Tesse said that she thought he was very humble. I spoke to him later on when he showed me that he spoke some English, he had such a beautiful heart. He told me that he was the only male in his family that could work so it was his duty to look after both of his aged sick parents, he worked for the railways as a platform attendent and showed me a letter that he had written to his senior in English asking to be considered for a promotion to ticket conductor as this meant more money, but he was very poor, he was religious too and when a beggar came onto the train he gave him some money, I didn't, when I have so much in comparison-? I gave him my prayer beads as a gesture of my respect for him. Such a small, and hopeful act- almost desperate?
I arrived in India on 13th april. It feels so much more developed than Pak. I spent a night at the Golden Temple, which was gorgeous, and met lots of sikhs, whom I found startlingly attractive. Then spent sveral days on a train to Chennai and here I am, I found friends immediately of course, in a travellers den in central Chennai, with rooms situated around a leafy neemy courtyard and a free flowing breeze through my room.
Tomorrow I move into Kovalam, accommodation provided by the folk I will work with. So more goodbyes, and hellos.
Lessons come to me in many forms already, these will be experiences of many magnitudes I have no doubt.