I just came from Pakistan, riding from Taftan to Wagah solo/women and can share my experience with the police escorts.

IRAN
I rode from Yazd - Kerman - Bam (stayed the night here) to the border town Mir Javeh. There was 1 checkpoint about 60km before the border where they took me aside and looked at my passport. Then they asked me if I wanted an escort or not. I politely declined and got on with it. Then the last check point before the borden (only 6km to go) they didn't give me an option and I had to wait to get an escort. Which took so long that I was almost too late to cross the border. The upside was that this escort also took me through the border process, so that was fairly easy.

PAKISTAN /// Baluchistan
I arrived fairly late in Taftan but the police guard took me to the customs office to get my carnet stamped and let me camp in the garden of the police office. We were scheduled to leave at sunrise the next morning.

And so we did, first escort sticked with me for about 100km, after that they started changing more regularly. Some are happy to see you, others are just trying to get you out of their district and will drive 110km. Sometimes you ride behind a pickup sometimes its just a motorcycle with 2 dudes. When I arrived in Dalbadin, the usual midway point and a place to stay for the night, they made me continue to Quetta because of Eid (a muslim holiday). So I also started pushing to go faster because I wanted to get to Quetta before dark. I failed horrible. Most of the time, there will be a guard waiting and sometimes the switch is smooth where the 1 guard stops and the next one already starts moving. And other times they make you come and drink tea and relax waiting for the next guards.

In this place there is only 1 route they will allow you to take and you have no say in where it will take you. I had to go from Taftan - Quetta - Sukkur. As others have said, try not to arrive in Quetta during the weekend. If you are traveling from the Iran side this is the place to obtain an NOC and official offices are closed during the weekend and you are not allowed to leave the hotel without a guard and a good reason.

There are 3 hotels in Quetta where foreigners are allowed to stay, I think most overlanders go to Bloomstar. In Sukkur there are a few more, but they all wanted R3000 ($30) for a night which I found too much. Managed to haggle down to R1800 in the end. The guards will bring you to a hotel if you don't know where to stay.

PAKISTAN /// Punjab
The guards left me at Sukkur, even though I found out later that the secret police was still following me. Stayed the night in Bahaldapur and Multan. Then rode straight on to Lahore and after a few days to Islamabad. No police escorts here, some smaller roadblocks, but I was free to travel everywhere and take every side road that looked interesting. Islamabad is a bit heavier protected, and you will see a lot of guards, roadblocks and army on the street. But no checks or escorts needed.

PAKISTAN /// Northern Areas
I chose to ride from Islamabad to Naran > Gilgit > Gulmit > Khunjerab Pass > Gulmit > Gilgit > Astak > Skardu > Astor > Naran > Ayubia > Islamabad.
All this time I haven't had a single police escort. There were a lot of checkpoints where you have to register your name/passportnumber/etc but let me go after writing all this down. So also here you are free to explore, I heard the area around Chilas is still not super safe, but that was only hear say.

Hope this helps for all you people out there considering crossing Pakistan. Please do! I spent 45 days there and really enjoyed it, never felt unsafe, extremely welcome and the nature is just spectacular. Since there are so many checkpoints where you have to write your name down I could see there are roughly 2-5 people crossing Pakistan weekly. Just not a lot of people share their experience online apparently.

If you are interested in how it all looks, I made a few YouTube videos. Check them out here