In one of Albert Brooks movies, he crosses over into Pakistan from the India side. He cuts through a fence despite his ‘OMG’ misgivings and parties with some Pakistanis, then returns. Funny.
Recently I saw a short film that was a sort of comedy where a Pakistani boy gets lost and runs over into Indian territory, then is hidden by a Hindu family to avoid capture, then is secreted back. It’s ‘funny.’
So funny aside, how dangerous is this? What if you get caught? Suppose a couple of American good ole boys grab a 24-pack and go camping near the border and decide to cross over into Pack-i-stano. What ar etheir chances of capture? What will the Pakistani’s do to them? International incident or kick the rednecks back over?
Depends where they are. If it’s in Kashmir they would get caught and probably at least be spoken to to investigate what has happened, in Punjab, the north has cities at the border so it would be easy to cross and get lost in the South Punjab, Rajestan and Sindh, it’s a desert which in some places is poorly marked.So fairly easy.
If you are a complete foreigner with no suspicious baggage - ie. it doesn’t look like you are the CIA or some wandering SEAL squad, or Chinese or Russian intelligence, odds are they will take you to the nearest police station, contact the embassy, and you may get things sorted out in short order. If you were a local, and there was a suspicion you were smuggling, planning another Bombay terrorist attack, or similar suspicions, you may spend a while as their guest while they investigate thoroughly.
The two countries have had wars, and almost gone to war a few times, and the two were born from a split along religious lines that involved riots and thousands dead. At one end the border reaches Kashmir where a semi-permanent state of semi-war has been going on since then. I have trouble imagining the border enforcement being lacksadaisical. Locals might know holes and fraternize across it, and there may be areas of sparse population and few patrols; but I doubt that they look kindly on people basically mocking their enforcement and showing the holes?
