Road Journey To Paris From Islamabad

BY PETER GILL ISLAMABAD: A French doctor accompanied by two Pakistani friends on Thursday started his road journey to Paris on a truck-art festooned 35-year-old Volkswagen car christened “Foxy Shahzadi” to celebrate the Pakistani art.

The three-member team – Dr Vincent Ioos, who served at the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences’ Intensive Care Unit for three years and is returning home; Dr Haroon Khan and Dr Salman Rashid, was seen off by friends, family and fans at a play ground in Sector E-7 around noon.

“It was a heartwarming send off,” said Dr Khan while talking to this reporter.

The trio plans to cover almost 10,000km journey in 25 days in the car that had been specially overhauled and painted in truck art for this journey.

“We want to highlight the huge cultural potential of Pakistan through indigenous truck art and tell the world that Pakistan is not just about terrorism,” Dr Ioos had earlier told Dawn while proudly unveiling his cherry red Foxy Shahzadi decorated with landscapes of mountains, waterfalls, flowers and animals and inscribed with truck poetry.

Dr Khan says the car had been chosen because Foxy was a “popular common man’s car and a collector item.” The car’s livery represents the ethnic heritage of all the four provinces of Pakistan.

The ‘Art on Wheels’ tour would take three doctors to Iran, Turkey, Greece, Italy before ending up in France.

The team made few changes in the previous travel plan wherein they were to leave on October 31 from Faisal Mosque.

Dr Khan said they decided to leave two days early because they could not get permission for Dr Vincent to drive through restive Balochistan and would now be travelling to Karachi from where they would catch a ship for Iranian port of Bander Abbas.

However, he did not give any reason for dropping Faisal Mosque as their starting point.

During the Paris trip, the car would be received in Pakistani embassies in Iran, Turkey, Greece, Italy and France.