Guns and tourists: Aboard the unlikely India-Pakistan 'friendship bus'

The bus ran uninterrupted through the last major clash between the two countries that erupted weeks after the launch

One Friday morning before dawn, a half-empty Volvo coach slipped out of New Delhi’s Ambedkar bus terminal under armed guard, the sirens of a police convoy wailing.

Carrying a mixture of Indian and Pakistani tourists, the bus, emblazoned with the flags of both countries and the phrase ‘Sada-e-Sarhad’ (Call of the Frontier), is one of the few remaining transport links between the nuclear-armed neighbours, who clashed last month over the disputed Kashmir region in a conflict that alarmed world powers.

But as Reuters found on a return trip on what is also known as the ‘dosti (friendship) bus’, that runs