Doodh Patti

Sher Garh

2012-02-01T11:27:00.000+05:00

An old sleepy and dusty village Sher Garh lies about 20 minutes drive away from Renala Khurd (Okara). The coins found at Sher Garh prove that the place was inhabited at the time of Kushan dynasty. Though “the name Sher Garh was given by the Governor of Molten, Faith Jang Khan after the name of Afghan King Sher Shah Sure,” wrote Abbas Khan Sarauni in his book Tarikh Sher Shah Suri.

On the old bank of River Beas, it is a typical Pakistani village where farmers live like rustics in the face of urban attractions. Even the electricity and telephone are a recent phenomenon. But the village has never been out of limelight. Besides heritage conscious people from all over the world, the village is venerated by a large number of devotees. Reasons, a massive mud fort and mosque which were built in the period of Afghan Sher Shah Suri. And, it is the last resting place of Saint Muhammad Ibrahim Daud-e-Sani Kirmani Bandgi.If one wants to absorb the sense of history, Sher Garh is a place to visit. Director Syed Noor has set his film Chooriyan in the background of this village. One has to possess a sensibility shaped in granite not to be moved by the village of past age that has not changed much in last 400 years. In the periphery few van (salvadora) trees, may be as old as the village stand witness to the bygone era. The village is experienced changed due to awareness about various things and agricultural advancements but at a snail speed.

Saint Muhammad Ibrahim is regarded as one of the famous saints of central Punjab. His forefathers migrated from Kirman (Iran) and settled in Seetpur (suburbs of Multan) where Muhammad Ibrahim was born. The family later moved to Sher Garh when Mir Chakar Rind was ruling in the area. The Baluch hero Mir Chakar Rind having refused to help Sher Shah Suri joined Humayun when, after a long exiled Mughal emperor recaptured Delhi and ousted Afghan Suris in 1556. The emperor as a reward conferred a vast jagir including Sher Garh (also horses and slaves) upon him. He ruled this chieftaincy till he died in 1565. Farishta has written, “Mir Chakar Rind was a holder of jagir and commanding hordes of warriors in Punjab.”

Muhammad Ibrahim completed his education in Basirpur and Lahore. Contemporary of saints like Musa Pak Shaheed and Sher Shah of Multan, he got his spiritual blessings from Saint Syed Hamid Ganj Buksh in Uch Sharif before he set about preaching Islam in Central Punjab. Komal Singh Maghyana, a famous landlord of his time who used to keep 1000 buffaloes (hence Maghyana) was one of the first who embraced Islam. Mulla Badauni wrote, “Hundreds of non-Muslims used to convert to Islam on the hands of Muhammad Ibrahim every day.”

Sher Shah Suri built a fort in Rohtas against gakhars. But why the Governor Fateh Jang Khan built the mud fort near strongly defended and fortified places like Multan, Dipalpur and Pak Pattan? “It might have been built to guard against thieves and robbers,” says Muhammad Abbas Kirmani, the direct descendent of the saint, once told me. There is no trace of the fortification in the village. The mosque that was built in the middle of 10 century in the village was a fine specimen of Islamic architecture. It had large (100 x 25 feet) main chamber, five doors, five dooms and a wide compound with a well for abolition. The mosque had 30 feet high octagonal minaret in each corner. During the Sikh rule, the mosque was desecrated and damaged and it decayed completely in 1958. Now a new mosque has been built in red bricks at the same place. There used to be a library containing rare books and manuscripts that too was destroyed by the Sikh rule.

It was the shrine of Saint Muhammad Ibrahim that I had come to see at Sher Garh. Among the cluster of old and new houses inside the village is a dominant building of the shrine which is enclosed in a court-yard. It was constructed by Shah Abdul Maa’ali- the nephew of the saint. Upon entering the doorway to the shrine compound, I was taken aback at the sheer tranquility and beauty of the place. This grand edifice with solid masonry and ornate design wrought by artisans and artist centuries ago is one of the fine specimens of Muslims architecture. There are many graves of descendants and devotees and another smaller shrine in the enclosure. People were having food at lounger (community kitchen for free food) in one corner of the courtyard.

Constructed of narrow red bricks, used in upright courses to ensure additional strength, the shrine is located at the vantage point in the village. Being at the raised ground it looks higher than its actual height. The fine quality of marble has been used outside where as inside is decorated with intricate Kashi work.

A devotee was reciting Holy Qura’an in the main chamber. The shrine is in the care and custody of the Auqaf, though the department has not been able to repair even the gold plated pinnacle that needs immediate attention.

The first impact that this monument gives is an emotional one for it is a symbol of cultural identity – a part of heritage. It also has architectural historic, documentary, spiritual and symbolic values.

I managed to arrange impromptu meeting with Muhammad Abbas Kirmani, a progressive farmer, who had graduated from Government College Lahore in 1930. Muhammad Abbas is remarkably alert at the age of 84. Sitting inside the room of his home adjacent to the shrine, Muhammad Abbas Kirmani told me about the family history. He also talked candidly about every thing from agriculture policies to old customs to modern culture. I could not see the hand written Holy Qura’an, though. “It is taken out on the eve of annual mela which is held on March 13,” he said. Besides my differences of opinion on few of the things he said during our frank conversation, I was impressed by the amount of interest he had in variety of issues of the society, his force of conviction in arguments and intellect.

As I drove back on a single way metallic road through the green fields of sugarcane, piled mainly by animal transports and milkmen on the motorbikes, I could not help thinking: I shall have to go back to Sher Garh again. May be to see the annual mela next March.

By Trolley through the Bolan Pass

2012-01-31T14:38:00.000+05:00

Salman Rashid

The early years of the 19th century saw the beginning of one of the greatest struggles of modern times: the tussle between the two imperial powers of Russia and England for ascendency in Central Asia. This epic struggle led many a good man either to death or to glory, and one such was the young Scotsman Arthur Conolly who was beheaded in the central square of Bokhara by Amir Nasrullah in 1842. It was this high spirited young man who gave the euphemism of "The Great Game" to this conflict.

When railways came of age around the middle of the century both nations saw in it the means to easily and quickly cross the great desert expanses of Asia. And so it was that while the Russians struggled to span the blistering Kyzylkum Desert, east of the Caspian, England was inching its way forward across the desert and mountains lying between Sibi and the garrison town of Quetta. Fear of the Cossacks riding in through the vast openness of Balochistan, the sub continent's back door, rode high and the "Kandhar State Railway", as it was called, was top priority.

First proposed in 1857, this railway hoped to reach Kandhar in Afghanistan and make its way across the southern part of that country to Herat and then to Merv in Central Asia. It was eventually to reach Bokhara which was to be swamped with English and Indian goods to counter the influence of Russian traders. Needless to say that the railway was also to help the army of British India maintain some sort of presence in Central Asia.

Work on the Kandhar State Railway, however was deferred for one reason or the other until the Second Afghan War broke out in 1878. Even then it took the government another two years to get their act together and when work actually began the following year it was in a state of frenzied desperation with a force of three thousand five hundred men. On the sixth day of October 1879, the first rails were laid in a northwesterly direction at the station of Ruk on the Larkana-Sukker section of "The Indus Valley State Railway "; and on January 14, 1880 a jubilant crowd celebrated the completion of the line to Sibi. In an extraordinary effort of engineering, two hundred and seventeen kilometres of line had been laid in a mere one hundred and one days!

But if the Kandhar State Railway had hoped to play its part in the Second Afghan War, it had come a little too late. One thing was clear: that long before the army in Afghanistan could benefit from the line the war would be over. And so the state of hysteria gave way to deliberate inactivity: it was time to take stock and wait out the long, harsh summer of the Sibi plains that was already beginning to make itself felt in the month of February.

Within a few months an event took place in Afghanistan that was to suspend the effort of reaching across the Afghan frontier by railway: in June 1880 on the dusty plain outside the village of Maiwand, west of Kandhar, a British garrison was to suffer one of the most humiliating defeats ever to be their lot in Asia. That and a pacifist government in London seemed to be the undoing of the ambitious plan conceived far away in Delhi in 1857.

Not long afterwards, in 1883, came the news that the Russian had taken Merv. Jogged out of their somnolence the British frantically set to work on the old plan again. But the railway which was to reach Quetta via Harnai, Khost and Bostan was to be a highly secret affair under the improbable title of "The Harnai Road Improvement Scheme". And when in March 1887 the first train ran this route to Quetta it was only for, according to my father, a railway man who served in this part of the country, the most heroic feat in the history of railway engineering: the line that stitched the great crack tearing the crust of the earth in the Chapper Rift. Simultaneously another line was traversing the length of the Bolan Pass and the two were to meet at Bostan, a few miles north of Quetta.

But the heroic endeavour in the Rift is another story. In the event, because of its endless mud slides, it was the Rift itself that defeated this section of the Harnai Road Improvement Scheme. Within a few years of recurrent washouts in the Rift, railway engineers were reconsidering upgrading the much steeper route through the Bolan Pass. And steep this route was: in the twenty six kilometres from Mach, at the eastern end of the pass, to Kolpur in its heart the line climbs a stupendous 801 metres or 2627 ft!

To get around the problems of expensive tunnel building the original track which was opened in August 1886 ran from Sibi to Hirok via Rindli along the bottom of the parallel and less steep Kundlani gorge to the south. And since the first two years after it was laid were virtually dry no damage was suffered. Eventually the rains came causing massive washouts and the new railway had to be designed a safe height above the torrents that swept through the canyon. Thus the present line was laid which we inherited at independence and today as your train, hauled by modern diesels, thunders through the Bolan gorge on its way to or from Quetta you are negotiating what they called the Mushkaf Bolan Route.

Kolpur is magic. The winding highway bisects the town and is overlooked by two and three storeyed houses with stores and tea shops at ground level. All around are stark, brown hills and to the south is the railway station. It is magic because it has the aura of places like Yarkand, Tashkurghan and Merv. Rehmatullah Brohi, the tea shop owner, was a very funny man and big time People's Party whose claim to leadership, he said, was his bald pate. Discovering my own affiliation he refused to accept payment for my cup of tea. He didn't care a fig about me being a travel writer; so far as he was concerned I was a numainda and a numainda at hand had to be favoured with an interview. The honour was therefore, duly bestowed upon me and I was instructed to see to it that it was perused by the Prime Minister.

My arrival at Kolpur was the fulfillment of a family pietas. In 1945 my father, as Assistant Engineer at Mach, had, to use railways jargon, "done" trolley in the Bolan Pass. Now, forty eight years later, I was following him. As their predecessors too must have done, Nazir and his assistant, the trolley men from Mach, had brought up the dinky looking cart in a Quetta bound train. It was simply a wooden platform on four wheels with a brake lever and a rickety bench, so beat up and ancient I half believed it to be the very same trolley that my father would have used almost five decades ago. The axles were oiled, the bench was placed in the housing and the lot was heaved onto the tracks; we were ready to follow in my father's footsteps.

"Sit tight," said Nazir as he gave the trolly a gentle push and jumped on. Soon the bare walls of the gorge were rushing past at more than forty kilometres an hour as we hurtled along the sharp descent. Unaccustomed to be sitting without the protection of a windshield I felt vaguely unsafe but Nazir assured me that the brakes were fine. I pointed out that there was no lining and it was metallic shoes against iron wheels which didn't seem to be such a good idea. "Don't worry," said the man, "If the brakes fail the catch siding doesn't." Ignorance certainly is bliss, for it was after the adventure that friend Sarwat Ali, who had something to do with this journey, told me that accidents with the trolley are known to have happened.

We swept into the cavernous womb of Mary Jane, the tunnel. The thoughts of Irishman F. L. O'Callaghan, who first pushed the railway through the Bolan, must not have been far from home and family for him to have immortalised his wife in the name of a tunnel. Windy Corner and Cascade were indications more of the nostalgia felt by the pioneers for their native Scottish highlands or the Lake District. And local colour was taken care of by the tunnels Pir Panjeh, from a nearby shrine, and Sir-i-Bolan. The only colour in the brown landscape were the trucks and busses labouring along the road never far from us and the several encampments of Brohi nomads where the children jumped up and down and screamed as we sped past.

From a couple of hundred metres away I could see the junction as the track veered to the right and a white painted line shot up the slope on the left to disappear behind the knoll. The brakes squealed, a shower of sparks flew as we slowed to a crawl and Nazir's assistant jumped off to act as pointsman. This was the catch siding where runaway trains shot up the sharp incline and burnt out their kinetic energy before any serious accident could take place. The standard operating procedure was for the point to remain switched to the catch siding and was changed by the pointsman only when the train had slowed to a virtual crawl and he had ascertained that nothing was amiss.

I asked if the catch siding had ever come in useful. "It happened the day Benazir was installed Prime Minister for the first time," said Nazir. But he only grinned when I asked if the driver had been drunk with happiness or so dejected as to have some sort of a death wish on the installation of a woman Prime Minister.

Past the tiny station of Dozan where a solitary man sat waving languidly at us, we sped through the gorge to Hirok, a small brick building as bleak as the barren, stoney gorge it was stuck in. Long before the standard broad gauge line was laid the original section between Hirok and Kolpur was metre gauge. That was perhaps the only moment in the sun for unexciting Hirok as travellers switched from the larger trains to the smaller and as we swept through the station I could not but wonder if modern travellers would take such an irritating routine with the same equanimity as their earlier counterparts. The station of Sir-i-Bolan was aggressively abandoned with gaping holes for doors and windows and several pairs of rock pigeons strutting about the parapet. Nazir said he was not even sure why, in the first place, this station was ever built and did not remember how long ago it had been abandoned.

The bustle of Mach was a sharp contrast from the bleak desolation of Dozan and Hirok. The babble of languages on the platform, in the bazaar and from the mosques (for it was Friday) comprised of Pushto, Brohi, Balochi, Persian and Punjabi. Mach was cosmopolitan.

Nazir walked me out of the station and up a narrow path to the Assistant Engineer's office. It was too new to be the place where my father would have worked in 1945, but past the stone wall was the house that looked old enough. The chowkidar let us in but the sahib was away at Dalbandin and I had to satisfy myself peering through the windows into the interior that had once been my parents' home. Unlike Mohammed Sharif at Dalbandin, there was, unhappily, no one in Mach who remembered my father. They said locals did not join the railways in those days and the staff was nearly always Punjabi and Sindhi who had since retirement left the place.

Within the year my father was transferred yet again; this time to Dharampur on the Kalka-Simla section (India) where he had the distinction of being the first Muslim AEN. Of all the narrow gauge railways in the sub continent the Kalka-Simla section is one of the few that still survives. In Pakistan the last of these toy trains ran some five years ago before they finally got the axe, victims either of improved road transportation or official inefficiency. If there is another pilgrimage to be made it will be to Dharampur. For the time being Mohammed Sharif had made the journey worthwhile. The pilgrimage, for the time being at least, was done. I was ready to go home.

Salman Rashid is author of eight travel books including The Apricot Road to Yarkand

Bridges in Pakistan

2012-01-27T09:17:00.000+05:00

Pervaiz Munir Alvi

Every year, the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) puts out a very beautiful calendar on bridges all over the world. However there has never been any bridge from Pakistan on this calendar. There is not without reason. In the last six decades, Pakistan has not built a bridge of any aesthetic or architectural value.

Most of the new major bridges are of the economic variety built for the roads out of pre-cast concrete boxes or beams, or of plate girders that any one hardly notices driving over. Also since rivers are not used for navigation like they are in industrialized countries, the bridge spans are not very large or high. Therefore there is no need of high super structures like one sees in the case of Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco or other structures like that all over the world.

Other than rail and road bridges, Pakistan also has numerous dams and barrages over major rivers. These are river blockage structures and gated spillways to control water flow and are often used for road traffic as well.

Rail traffic, however, requires heavier bridges than does the road traffic. Again unfortunately Pakistan Railway has hardly built any new rail lines since the British period. The railway system in Pakistan is almost one and half century old. The system is antiquated and so are the bridges. However at the time when some of these bridges were built, their design and construction like the Eiffel Tower in Paris was innovative enough that they were considered as engineering marvels of that time.

In the hilly areas of Kashmir, Frontier and Balochistan the bridges were and still are being built to cross valleys and the river gorges. These may be high bridges but their spans are generally short and foundations are placed either on dry land or in shallow waters of seasonal rivers and streams. Very often these are masonry arched structures with some use of steel beams and trusses, even though one occasionally comes across those single span rope bridges thrown over the river waters gushing through the narrow gorges. Pretty as they look, these rope bridges are not permanent structures and could be dangerous to vehicle crossing.

The biggest challenge in bridge building in Pakistan comes at the crossings of the five major rivers in Punjab and the Indus River in Sindh respectively. None of the governments of the past, imperial or otherwise, attempted to construct permanent bridges over these rivers as rivers were almost always used as another line of defense against invaders from the north and west. That is one reason one sees major old forts all along the south and east sides of the rivers and no permanent bridges. Invading armies waited till the end of the summer and crossed the rivers by using boat bridges constructed by tying boats side by side with ropes and then placing wooden planks to provide the smooth riding surface.

British on the other hand, after conquering the areas now constituting Pakistan in mid nineteen century moved the first line of defense all the way to the top of Hindu Kush Mountains. Thus freeing themselves to span the major rivers with permanent structures for both road and rail use. An era of large permanent bridge structures dawned in areas now constituting Pakistan.

Starting from north, the Attock Bridge on river Indus and the Jhelum Bridge over river Jhelum, both near the cities of the same names respectively, are noteworthy. Also are the rail bridges over river Chenab near Wazirabad and over river Ravi near the capital city of Lahore.

These are all truss structures made of smelted iron fabricated one unit at a time from structural steel. Although labor intensive these structures could be erected without the benefit of heavy industrial complexes or construction machinery. These are multi span bridges with masonry foundations constructed within the river beds. Even though the modern techniques of using coffer dams to construct large masonry footings in water were not available, the engineers were able to temporarily divert the rivers to the other side and thus construct the footings in dry grounds. Spanning of the five rivers allowed the colonial rulers to connect Punjab and beyond to their Imperial capital Delhi located in the Ganges valley in northern India.

The real engineering challenge for the bridge builders came with the need to link Punjab with Sindh by crossing river Sutlej and Sindh with Balochistan by crossing river Indus. Sites near the cities of Bahawalpur and Sukher were selected for the river crossings. These two bridges now in Pakistan are often referred in the history books.

William St. John Galwey, (1833-1891) an Irishman from Cork County was called upon to construct the Bridge over Sutlej. Earlier in his capacity as railway engineer he had successfully completed the construction of the Jhelum Bridge. The Sutlej Bridge also known as Adam Wahan Bridge is the only rail bridge over Sutlej River in Pakistan. Its opening ceremonies were scheduled to coincide with the coronation of Queen Victoria and hence in her honor was named as The Empress Bridge.

The Sukkur Bridge over Indus River, also known Lansdowne Bridge was inaugurated on March 25, 1889. It is the longest single span cantilever bridge of its kind.

Since the technique of diverting river waters could not be applied to the mighty Indus and constructing piers in water by using cofferdams was not developed yet, the engineers had no choice but to support the structure by cantilevering from the shores. Two identical impressive structures, one on each side of the river, with multiple vertical and cross trusses were anchored into massive footings on the shores and then tied to the “dead man” back anchors.

Finally sections of the bridge deck, extended one third of the way at each shore and reaching out to the other side, were placed. The middle piece, which consisted of simple trusses also used in other bridges in Punjab, was finally placed to connect the two cantilevered sides. This last central piece of the bridge not only connected the two sides of the river, it also connected Baluchistan with the down country. The mastery of the Briton over South Asia was complete.

Pervaiz Munir Alvi is a Ravian and trained as a Civil and Geo-technical Engineer.

Virtual Travel Communities

2012-01-24T08:36:00.000+05:00

The virtual world is beginning to blend seamlessly with the real world. The social side of technology is making the World Wide Web much more localized by bringing like-minded people together and in the process creating closely knit online communities.

A combination of features like worldwide accessibility and instantaneous communication has made it possible for backpackers, globetrotters, and other adventurers from all over the world to join together at different online platforms to exchange information, experiences, and plans in their favorite pursuit — travel.

Subscribers range from the professional travel writers to hardcore travelers and adventurers and regular folks who are simply interested in reading online. Travel communities are accessible by millions of interested people all over the world.

Out of some major and lesser travel forums on the Web, I have had the good fortune to belong to a few and have been visiting some others for my travel information needs.

Exceptions apart, all virtual travel communities have some common features. Communities mostly provide a warm, trusting, and supportive atmosphere. When members share information, they do it with great care and responsibility. They rely on each other more than they do on outdated travel guidebooks or on second-hand and static information from conventional travel literature.

Visit any online community and one finds anything related to travel, along with flames and off topic comments, which are sometimes informative, sometimes funny, and occasionally annoying. The mutual exchange of information is not restricted only to destinations, affordable places to stay and dine in, security issues, maps, weather conditions there. and where to find the best bargains and how to find public restrooms or which Websites better describe any particular place (or which dress a female anthropologist going to study Kalash clan up in northern district Chitral should wear during her extended stay there). It goes much further to helping in finding work, selling and promoting each other in local markets.

“Travel forums have become hunting grounds for meeting fellow travelers and making new friends. You really do not require any other reason to join a community or two,” says Atoorva Sinha, who intends building up the travelers’ community at Mindzwine.

Carla King is a founding member of one virtual travel community called Wild Writing Women for female travelers. She emailed, “When we published 'Wild Writing Women — Stories of World Travel' (an anthology of women’s travel stories) — we got a lot of publicity. People wanted to know how we traveled solo and weren’t afraid, and just how we went about it. We started giving workshops. We also started giving writing workshops and hosted a free monthly literary salon. People just gravitated, and we accepted them. We made a business of it and formed the online community. So it’s a profitable business for us to expand the community, and also, happily, it’s close to our hearts.”

Members are slow to respond sometime. Chris Heidrich, the director of BootsnAll says, “One has to be patient in waiting for a response from members and insiders. It should be understood that it is a voluntary favor and some people do not come on board or check email as often.” Court, who is always found on board in the same community adds, “Some time they may be away traveling to yet another location.”

The recipients of information have to keep in mind that whatever comes is based upon individuals’ personal experiences or empirical observations. One member may have had different experiences than others. When I posted a query about virtual travel communities (for this article) at the BootsnAll community, the first reply referred me to Nick, the mediator at another community at Bali Blog who in turn advised me to email direct to all on his mailing list. The replies I am still receiving are varied, showing so many perspectives. “There is nothing like variety,” says Nick.

The virtual world is composed of information rather than physical identities. Information spreads and diffuses. Those who belong to these impalpable spaces are also diffuse, free to take it or leave it.

Prescription Savings Club at Walgreens

2012-01-23T04:00:00.001+05:00

This is a Sponsored post written by me on behalf of Walgreens for SocialSpark. All opinions are 100% mine.

Those who want to save on more than 8,000 brand-name and all generic medications including discounts on flu shots, pet prescriptions, nebulizers and diabetic supplies and also want to get risk free membership to Prescription Savings Club at Walgreens.

Walgreens – one of the largest drug stores chain in United States with more than 7,500 drugstores - is offering a special discount on annual membership for its Prescription Savings Club and a family membership offers coverage to everyone in immediate family, including a spouse, dependents 22 and younger and pets just for $10. For individuals the fee for the membership is $5. And savings are simply great. Risk free Walgreens Prescription Savings Club membership is not only easy way to save but also a great convenience. Which is why over two million are availing discount pricing on their medications as members? (If you are interested, you must get the membership before the discount expires in Jan 31, 2012. You will still be able to join after January though on normal rates).

Everyone needs medication at one point or the other in life. I suggest you take a look at Walgreens and see what they offer and how affordably. The site is information and resource rich and users friendly. Also support Walgreens and stay updated by liking Walgreens on Facebook and following Walgreens on Twitter. I am connected with them on both. You too must.

Fort Munro

2012-01-21T09:14:00.000+05:00

Fort Munro was originally known as Anari Mool, Balochi language words meaning hilltop with Pomegranate trees. In 1880, the British Commission of Layyah Division Mr. Munro developed this place and shifted here the summer headquarters of Layyah Division. The road from Dera Ghazi Khan to this place was constructed in 1880 and the name of place was changed to Fort Munro.

The vacation spot is now abounded by the rest houses of different government departments and private residences. Plaque of Munro house on the remains of old commissioner house and name plate of Robert Sandeman (the originator of Forward Policy) can also be seen near the relics of one of the old houses. It is impossible to describe the fort and other old buildings as all the traces of ancient remains have vanished.

The tribal area conceded to Punjab in 1950 under an agreement between the Pakistan government and eight of the prominent Tumanders. The names of the Tumanders who signed the agreement are written on the monumental slab standing near the old commissioner house.

There is an old Christian graveyard in Fort Munro. The signs of only few graves are left by the rages of time. One prominent grave with a cross on the top is of Maude Evelyn - the wife of Captain Frerrar who died in 1906 at the age of 26 years. Another that can be recognized is of an infant who died at the age of six days.

Trimun waterfall is one of the most beautiful sights in Fort Munro. Droplets of clean and cold water fall into a bowl cut out from stone. Local lore assign that a sufi named Ali Muhammad Laghari made this bowl. People and animal used to take water from these sources before the water supply scheme started with the installation of tube wells in village Kaha Sultan. The people of the villages around Fort Munro living in tough but graceful subsistence still do the same. Covered with huge trees and about 100 steps down is Demis lack. Boat that used to be here for tourist is lying broken in one corner of the lack. There is a need of a small shop where people can buy tea, drinks and other eatables. And, the benches should be installed around the lack.

Tourism Corporation has constructed a hotel on the location. Having no other choice, the tourists might stay here but they invariably settle for “Sajji” lunch and or dinner that are famous in the area.

The only resort in Southern Punjab deserves much more attention than what it is getting. It could be developed into a popular, busy and income generation resort in the area. Presently, sadly, what all one gets in Fort Munro is a bit of cool breeze. Extensive tree plantation is required in the entire area. Some attractions like Chair Lift (project for the installation of chair lifts from village Annari to Demis lack is already there in papers) will also do wonders with the good old Fort Munro.

Kan Mehtarzai Railway Station

2012-01-10T09:29:00.000+05:00

Jalal Hameed Bhatti

Very few of us would have listen to this place called Kan Mehtarzai – and so did I till I was reading of history of Pakistan in a book I found when cleaning my junk box the other day. Junk boxes sometimes take you by surprise as something added to these years ago suddenly become important when it is time to throw things out for good. I also found autographs of the famous comedian duo Laurel and Hardy from the same junk box, which became part of my post on my other blog Hobby Shobbys a couple of days earlier.

So back to this place called Kan Mehtarzai. The place in present time is just another unknown small towns and villages scattered in some of the most remotely located places in Pakistan. But in the beginning of the 20th century, Kan Mehtarzai figured out very high for the British when Chromate deposits were discovered in an area located between the Muslimbagh and Kan Mehtarzai in the district of Kila Saifullah as far back as in 1901.

The discovery made the British to lay a railway line between Quetta and Muslimbagh (then called Hindubagh). The work on the railway line commenced in 1916 from a place called Khanai, located some 30 kilometres north of Quetta, and completed in 1921 for train traffic up to Muslimbagh. In 1927, the Muslimbagh to Qila Saifullah section was opened and finally the section up to Zhob was opened in 1929. The total length of the railway section was around 294 kilometres and had eleven railways stations including the Kan Mehtarzai.

And before I divert from topic, let me get back to Kan Mehtarzai once again. The place between Kuchlag and Muslimbagh became the highest railway station of Asia of its time, located at a height of 2,224 metres (7,295 feet). The railway station was part of the the Zhob Valley Railway (ZVR). This once the longest narrow gauge railway system of the Indian Subcontinent, served the British and the Balochistan Chrome Ore Company, which incidentally laid this railway line, well for years as it help extract millions of tons of raw chromate and subsequently ship to England through Karachi port. These mines still continue to produce some 300-500 tons of raw chromite daily, which is being exported to many countries, China being its biggest importer.

Today, the dilapidated mud plastered Kan Mehtarzai railway station is a desolate and a rather quiet place, as no longer those small narrow gauge engine hauls passenger and good bogies on this once very active railways of the Indo-Pak subcontinent. No more is there the hustle and bustle of miners, British soldiers and traders and the locals. Nor there is the aroma of typical Balochi cuisines like sajji that once may have been sold here. The last goods train that honked its horn and halted at this one of the highest railway stations of Asia was way back in 1986, the passenger section of the train was done away with a year earlier in 1985. Thereafter, finally the days of narrow gauge came to an end due to wearing out of the narrow gauge engines and bogies. There is nothing much left of the narrow gauge railway tracks as most of it had succumbed to pilferage and theft.

I wish the train to Kan Mehtarzai was still operative, as the place receives heavy snow fall and could have been developed in to a tourist resort and it would have been an adventurous travel with the train stranded in snow as it did many times during winters when the train was operational. India is still maintaining its Darjling railway track to attract tourists to this equally elevated platform. It is sad to see things of the past fading away rather than maintained as heritage and tourism attractions.

I wish there were cellular phones with camera back in 1986 as someone could definitely shot the last journey of the Zhob Valley Railways at Kan Mehtarzai railway station.

Tomb of Bhuman Shah

2012-01-07T10:18:00.000+05:00

Salman Rashid

A quarter century ago, driving from Dipalpur to Haveli Lakha in Okara district of Punjab, I passed a gateway with a couple of human figures in terracotta. If memory serves, there were some more peering down from niches in the wall. Pausing, I learnt that this was the ‘tomb of Bhuman Shah’ in the village of the same name. Bhuman Shah, so my young informant said, was a great saint from even before his grandfather’s time – which in the vernacular means a very long time ago.

I looked in and noticed a building with an impressive façade flanked by octagonal turrets with a central gateway on my right. Straight ahead, at the end of the street could be seen another building with an octagonal turret. To the left, a battered dome that I took to date from the early 18th century reared up behind a wall. The young man invited me to look in on what he said was a fort, but it being just about sunset I declined hoping to return another time.

It took me twenty-five years to get back. The figures in the wall were gone, and only one remained in the gateway. Inside, the street seemed to be more crowded with houses and the building on the right with the pretty façade was fronted by ugly cubicles all but concealing it. Going up the street and turning left at the foot of the second turreted building, I was surprised to find the domed building all spruced up with a fresh coat of yellow wash. The tomb of Bhuman Shah had been restored, and furnished with booklets in English and Urdu encapsulating the man’s life.

Born in 1687 to Rajo Bai and Hassa Ram of village Behlolpur near Dipalpur, Bhumia is said to have been a miraculous child whose birth was not attended by the customary labour pains. Three hundred years is a sufficiently long time to veil his life with a mist of the usual formulaic miracles that are the staple of all saints. But if one were to sift through the murk, even as a teenager Bhumia was smart enough to have developed an impressive discourse on eschewing materialism and mortifying the soul through hardship to attain oneness with god.

When the boy saint was about thirteen and visiting an ashram at Pakpattan, he is said to have been recognised as the reincarnation of a great saint of the past. The keeper of the ashram, himself an accomplished monk, initiated the boy into monk-hood. There Bhumia learned the secrets of the Udasi order of monks who believe that true spirituality transcends religious division. When he was ready to set out to put his world to rights, his mentor suggested he take the name of Bhuman Shah.

Legend has it that he arrived near the village of Kutb Kot and camped by a well in the forest where Hindu, Muslim and Sikh alike came to seek his benediction. Among the seekers was the mother of Lakha Wattoo who was then serving time in the jail in Lahore. The woman petitioned the saint to bring her son back and Lakha was home in a few days. The yarn being that Bhuman Shah has appeared in his cell led Lakha through solid walls and within moments brought him back to his mother’s hearth. To show his gratitude, Lakha ordered his entire tribe to vacate the village and donate it lock, stock and barrel to Bhuman Shah. The chief’s word was law and Kutb Kot became Bhuman Shah as it is known to this day.

And so the saint who abhorred worldly wealth of a sudden became lord and master of a vast estate. With this newly acquired affluence, Bhuman Shah now had a headquarters where he began a kitchen that daily fed all comers regardless of caste or creed. By 1747, the year of his death, Baba Bhuman Shah had a large following. The body was cremated, the ashes buried at the very spot where saint spent his time in meditation and a domed building raised above it. Though he died unmarried and with no heir to inherit his holdings, Bhuman Shah passed on his mantle to one of his disciples and that remained the more: as he lay dying each man nominated a successor to lead the cult of Bhuman Shah.

The cult grew and the free kitchen that daily fed hundreds of hungry mouths seems to have won admiration all round. The ‘official history’ of the cult records an unnamed British divisional commissioner adding three thousand acres to the Bhuman Shah holding in appreciation of the good work being done. In 1910 with increasing numbers of followers resorting to Bhuman Shah for the four annual festivals, the magnificent edifices with the corner turrets were paid for from earnings from the agricultural holding. The one on the right as one enters the complex called the sarai or Bhajan Mahal and the other the fort. During the festivals, attended by all religious denominations in united India, the fort housed the upper crust of devotees while the sarai was for the middle tier. Commoners, it is told, had to make do as they found best.

The free kitchen continued to function until 1947 when the Hindu population was exchanged with Muslims. Finding the two buildings handy, refugees moved in and portioned them out according to their individual needs. The samadhi complex was spared only because it afforded no reasonable accommodation. As time went by and families grew, makeshift walls were raised to create courtyards until the once-grand edifices became virtual mohallahs. The cult’s agricultural land was similarly annexed by the new-comers.

Years passed, visa requirements stiffened and by the 1980s free travel between Pakistan and India became virtually unknown. The trickle of Bhuman Shah devotees that had continued after partition eventually dried out. A generation of Muslims grew up in Bhuman Shah without hearing bhajans and qawalis sung around the domed samadhi of the saint whose name their village carried. It was forgotten that Bhuman Shah had four annual festivals where tens of thousands of visitors congregated.

December 1992 saw one of the most shameful acts of all times: the razing of Babri Mosque in Ayodhia. Muslims all over Pakistan responded with the even more dishonourable deed of destroying everything that had anything to do with either the Hindus or the Sikhs regardless of the buildings’ religious or secular nature.

The occupation of Bhajan Mahal and the fort by dozens of families was a blessing in disguise for that held the vandals at bay. But the samadhi of Bhuman Shah was heavily damaged. Thereafter the derelict building became the refuge of drug addicts. Thus matters stood at the turn of the century. Meanwhile, easier visa requirements once again permitted some devotees to visit and locals were surprised to see Europeans among the visitors.

In 2005 Evacuee Trust Property Board (ETPB) responded to appeals from the followers of the Bhuman Shah cult in India and elsewhere. The complex containing Bhuman Shah’s samadhi and yet another one as well as a large building known as Darbar Hall was restored. But when ETPB turned its attention to Bhajan Sarai and the fort, those who had taken over the buildings and destroyed their character resisted.

Under the Antiquities Act 1974 the two buildings, as well as the samadhi complex, are protected monuments. Though Pakistan is famous for mindlessly destroying perfectly serviceable built heritage, we do have the example of a priceless building being pulled back from the brink in Chiniot. That happened because of official interest. Now, owing to pressure from cult followers abroad, ETPB has taken the right line of relocating the squatters to take over and restore the two residential houses.

It is imperative that the sarai and the fort be reclaimed and used only for the purpose they were originally built for. Religious tourism is a big thing and the Udasi cult followers from India alone mostly belong to the moneyed class. Restoring the festivals at Bhuman Shah will not only bring Muslim, Hindu and Sikh together, it will also bolster the local economy.

In the bargain, ETPB will have preserved two fine examples of the built heritage of Punjab.

Fellow of Royal Geographical Society, Salman Rashid is author of several books including jhelum: City of the Vitasta and The Apricot Road to Yarkand, Riders on the Wind, Between two Burrs on the Map, Prisoner on a Bus and Sea Monsters and the Sun God. His work - explorations, traveling and writings - appears in almost all leading publications.

Salman Rashid on Wheels of Empire

2012-01-05T14:48:00.002+05:00

Salman Rashid is clearly Pakistan’s most notable and erudite travel writer. His work is informed not only by deep insight but an even deeper love of his subject. A signature Salman piece welds impressive knowledge of geography, history, ethnography and ingenious and tradition with a writing style that quivers with life.

Salman Rashid is also an accomplished lensman with a sensitive eye for landscape photography that further enriches his travelogues.

In a career spanning some 30 years, he has contributed to numerous publications and authored several books including Riders on the Wind, Between Two Burrs on a map, Prisoner a Bus, Jhelum: City of the Vitasta, Sea Monsters and the Sun God and most recently the Apricot Road to Yarkand.

Those who are familiar with Salman Rashid’s work (remember the Little Railway Bazaar he did and which is no less amazing than the Great Railway Bazaar by Paul Theroux) may already know about his love for railways. He has extensively travelled on rail tracks (some of them don’t even exist now) throughout Pakistan. He has inherited his love for railways from his father Abdur Rashid who was an engineer serving in railway before partition. And now Salman Rashid has recorded Pakistan Railway History in Wheels of Empire – the book of days for the year 2012. Thanks to Saquib Hanif from Pakistan Petroleum Limited (PPL) who has been a moving force in bringing out series of diaries Salman Rashid is doing since 2009; each one of them is equally unique. PPL's work is one very noble examples of social responsibilty of any corporation.

In Wheels of Empire - a book of days for 2012- Salman Rashid has some of the most hidden gems from glory days of Pakistan Railways (you have to believe that Pakistan Railways once was one the safest, economical and preferred mode of travel). Diary contains tales about Indus Valley State Railway, Kandhar State Railway, Chappar Rift Line, Chaman Extension Railway, Nushki Extension Railway, Attock Khurd Railwa Station, Golra Railway Museum, Sindh Sagir Railway, Rawalpindi Mianwali Line, Zohb Valley Railway, Meter Gauge Steam and Jassar Bridge; all supported by amazing imagery.

On a personal note, I am not going to write anything on Wheels of Empire sir. To me it is a book, not a book of days. It is a delight for any collector.

Related: Roads Less Travelled

Salman Rashid on Roads Less Travelled

2011-12-17T10:28:00.002+05:00

Salman Rashid, adventurer and prolific travel writer and photographer, who has extensively written about Pakistan telling the tales less told, sights less seen, roads less travelled in addition to adding newer dimension in much trumpeted historic, heritage and geographic stories. Based on his deep research and physical exploration, Salman Rashid has covered everything (ok, almost everything) from Astola in the Arabian Sea to Yarkand on the other side of Pakistan China Border and a whole lot in between. Remember, his latest book The Apricot to Yarkand.

Given my own love for untold stories and respect Salman Rashid has earned, I love to hear first hand whenever I can. This time I met him along with my friend Qazi Hussain, he told us about series of books of days he is doing. The diaries do more than overtake the travelogue. He did Tales Less Told in 2009 and it was very well received. The first book of days was followed by Sights Less Seen in 2010 and Roads Less Travelled in 2011. These diaries are collectors’ delight and one would love them in a bookshelf. I have not written anything on Roads Less Travelled 2011 and am keeping it as a reference book.

In 2011, he is coming up with another thematic diary titled Wheels of the Raj. Coming years diary, that is about to come of the press any time and I am already waiting to lay my hands on, is about railway heritage. Slaman Rashid is an authority on Pakistan Railway heritage. Though presently we can’t relate to most of what he says but his work does fortify the past glory of the Railways in Pakistan.

Images here are from Roads Less Travelled. [From Light Within]

Pilgrimage to Dalbandin

2011-12-08T11:37:00.000+05:00

Salman Rashid

Although I had travelled the "Lonely Line" between Quetta and Zahedan (Iran) seven years ago when I was doing what I called "The Little Railway Bazaar" after Paul Theroux, this journey had a special meaning for me. I was on my way to Dalbandin to see the house where my father had lived when he was posted there as Assistant Engineer (AEN) on the North Western Railways from April 1943 to December the following year. For me it was like a pilgrimage. But that was not all, I had also wanted to see if this train continued to be the festival on wheels that it once was.

In my six berth "First Class Sleeper" Agha sahib sat serenely and allowed the big, crinkly haired man and his friend to fawn over him. He wore the round black turban and the matching robe of the Ayatollahs of Iran. His chinky eyes, very Mongol face and sparse beard screamed that he was either a Hazara or a Chengezi, like his attendants, and claimed descent from Chengez Khan. He was a quiet man who did not speak much and when he did it was difficult to catch his soft whisper. Mostly he just sat there looking regal with his pout, occasionally flicking some unseen particle of dust from his robe with ring laden fingers.

The crinkly haired man said Agha sahib was returning to Qum in Iran where he was a teacher, after visiting with relatives in his native village not very far north of Quetta. The master spoke only Persian and I, despite my illiteracy in the language, was asked to see that he was not inconvenienced in any way during the journey because he suffered from a sick heart, high blood pressure and diabetes. I hadn't the faintest idea how I was to accomplish what was expected of me but the nod and the smile from the man of God assured me all was well. Then suddenly, as we sat their exchanging nods and smiles, all hell broke lose.

The lad burst into the compartment surrounded by the characteristic smell of lower class trains. His hair was wild and dirty and his face unshaven with parched lips flaked with dried spittle. His clothes were dusty and on filthy feet he wore the slippers that every worker from the Middle East wears. His eyes swept over the four of us and in a state of agitated frenzy he asked if we were all travelling in the same compartment. Since it was just Agha and me he relaxed, but only a fraction, turned about and swept out of the room.

A moment later a red shirted porter dumped a large case sewn in khaki cloth and measuring about one metre by half a metre by half a metre. Then another, and another. And they kept coming until they were all over the four free berths. Crinkly Hair got up and asked how many more were coming. "No more, no more." said the boy breathlessly and leaned out of the window to shout to the coolies to bring in the rest. And they did; until there were nineteen khaki cases each weighing over fifty kilograms and there was no room for Agha sahib and me to do anything but sit on our berths with our knees tucked under our noses.

"How do you expect Agha sahib to get to the toilet?" demanded Crinkly Hair.

"No problem," said the man, and to demonstrate he climbed over the cases, opened the door and jumped into the toilet. "It's easy." he said looking desperately at Agha sahib.

"Get this bloody stuff out of here!" Crinkly Hair exploded, "We are not paying good money to see our religious mentor hassled by the likes of you."

What Ali Raza, whose name I was to learn much later, said next blew my brains out. "Please bear with me." But Crinkly Hair was not impressed and insisted that he book his stuff in the luggage van. Raza begged to be allowed to keep his cargo under his watchful eye; Hair remained implacable. The argument dragged on, Hair got extremely worked up and Raza was virtually grovelling when in came two other boys who were clearly his brothers.

The trio begged, wheedled and made promises they were never going to keep but Hair was adamant: the stuff had to go. In the course of this carrying on one of them disappeared to return a moment later with a young woman carrying a child and dressed like the women of the Ayatollahs' Iran - black chador and all. She turned out to be the eldest brother's wife who joined the chorus of entreaties giving Hair a new angle to his argument. "Baji, there isn't room in here for a decent woman. Also this is a very long journey and I am not allowing my sister to be inconvenienced."

The farce kept on for almost three quarters of an hour when at lenght Hair gave up and called for the conductor. After several more minutes of the three brothers and the wife individually and collectively imploring Hair and the conductor to relent, the nineteen crates were removed to the brake-van. And so the Taftan Express bound for Zahedan finally steamed out of Quetta over two hours behind schedule.

Clearly Raza was the architect of whatever was happening. The eldest and the youngest looked utterly miserable and it was certain that they were not having anything to do with future madcap schemes; but the wife, remarkably unperturbed, was buried in a cheap Urdu magazine. Raza lived and worked illegally in Meshed and since it meant much more money than living and working illegally in Karachi he had come home to fetch his two brothers and the wife. Now they were travelling on pilgrimage visas valid for only two weeks which were going to be "easily converted into residence visas". None of them could tell me how a family on pilgrimage was going to explain nineteen crates of assorted onyx handicrafts to custom officials on either side of the frontier, especially when there were no export papers. But then good sense and logic were not this family's forte.

Raza began by telling me that Karachi was soon going to be independent like Hong Kong, but he was utterly incapable of telling me was how they proposed to attain "independence" and, more importantly, sustain Karachi as a viable economic entity. He seemed to believe that when they really wanted to be like Hong Kong they would simply have to wish and they'd be. I asked how the Sindhis were going to put up with this independent Karachi. He thought a moment and very airily informed me that they would join Karachi because they had had enough of living with the Punjabis. "You Punjabis will starve to death when Karachi isn't there to feed you," he said smugly. Five minutes later he was telling me that the Punjabis did not realise other people's problems because they had too much to eat: "Aap ko to rotian lagi hoee hain." At this point I told him to shut up.

Outside, the wind sculpted crescent shaped sand hills looked like chocolate icing in the gloaming. We had crossed the last ridge of low hills into the desert that stretches clear across to the Iranian frontier, over six hundred kilometres away. Beyond Nushki the desert took over completely; in the dark landscape of a moonless night there was no reassuring flicker of a man made fire.

Until August 1916 the "Nushki Extension Railway", as it was called, terminated at Nushki beyond which travel was by camel. Then in 1915-16 disease destroyed thirty thousand animals and they said that a traveller could pick his way to the Iranian frontier by the carcasses littering the desert. When work began on the extension the English called it the "Lonely Line" for in the one hundred and sixty eight kilometres between Dalbandin and Nok-Kundi there is just one station: Yakmach -- One Date Palm. It is a great unpopulated wilderness with little vegetation to break the monotony of the wide open plain covered with dark rocks and occasionally punctuated by sand hills.

Ahmedwal, seven years after my first visit still is an important watering stop on the line. As before there were hordes of children and adults selling tea and eatables and several men with live chickens tucked under their arms to be sold to travellers presumably for slaughtering and cooking on board. Earlier I had seen no stoves on the train; now none of these men attracted any customers. Evidently the chickens never changed hands; and the Baloch entrepreneurs never gave up.

In World War I when fear of a German invasion of India rode high the line was laid to enable British troops to join the Russians in patrolling the area between the Caspian Sea and the Persian Gulf. Subsequently in 1932, with this threat subsiding and with little passenger traffic on it, the line between Nok-Kundi and Zahedan was pulled up. Then came World War II and the line was revitalised in April 1942. Exactly a year later my father, fresh out of Thompson College of Civil Engineers (Roorkee, India), arrived at Dalbandin.

We arrived in the middle of the night, with a good part of the desert deposited on my person and crunching between my teeth. Half asleep I staggered after Ramzan, the man I had been handed over to in Quetta. The rest house, a majestic high roofed, mud plastered building painted the perscription pale yellow of all rest houses, had no electricity and, unable to read, I lay awake until just before dawn when I was roused by the chowkidar come to show me the Assistant Engineer's residence.

It lay behind a high brick wall in the midst of a sprawling not very well kept garden with a few patches of vegetables and looked as dusty as the desert that surrounds Dalbandin. The facade was taken up by the glass windows of what probably meant to be a sun room. In the backyard was the mandatory masonry pedestal with its structure of pipes for the fan (with the fan missing), a swing and a fish pond. Except for the addition of a powder room the interior was exactly as my parents remembered it. But there was very little furniture. The spacious drawing and dining rooms were empty, only the bedroom was equipped with a bed and a dresser. What struck me as unusual was the complete absence of any form of reading material. Fifty years ago an avid reader like my father had piles and piles of books in the house ("A Penguin was only ten annas at Quetta!"). Now there was not even an Urdu pulp digest, and since the AEN was away I could not find out how he kept his sanity in a place like Dalbandin. Doubtlessly, like most of us, he too whiled away the tedium in aimless gup shup.

The high point of this pilgrimage came when upon my asking for the oldest railway man they brought Mohammed Sharif who had joined the railways in 1942 and retired twelve years ago. "Baba, do you remember the AEN posted here in April 1943?" I asked.

"I remember him well," said the old man, "It was Rashid sahib."

This was remarkable. Forty nine years after he had left Dalbandin never to return, my father was remembered by a man who had worked with him. "Baba, I am his son," I said, and all that escaped his lips was "Oyy!" as he grabbed me in an embrace; then he kissed me on either side of the face in proper Baloch fashion and held me away to regard me through misty eyes. And then the stories came pouring out. What touched me deeply was the untainted sincerity of Sharif's words and actions; it was all spontaneous and straight from the man's heart.

There were also insistences to stay. "I am a poor Baloch, but Baloch nonetheless, and you are not allowed to leave without proper hospitality." He expected me to stay with him for a few days at least. But this was one of the two days in the week that I could get the flight back to Quetta and after much pleading I was let off with a lavish tea of several different kinds of biscuits and the promise that I would one day return to Dalbandin to be hosted by Sharif. He then showed me the AEN's office where my father had worked many years ago.

I asked if he remembered my mother. Of course he did. My father had received his transfer orders when he was going on leave to be married. When he returned with my mother they stayed just long enough to put their stuff together, in the meantime the twice a week service returned from Zahedan. "Rashid sahib was transferred to Mach and I went with them to see that they were comfortably settled there." His memory was uncanny; my father had indeed gone to Mach. And that was where I was headed.

Fellow of Royal Geographical Society, Salman Rashid is author of eight books including The Apricot Road to Yarkand.

Link Love

2011-11-30T22:17:00.003+05:00

Social media for business at Logic is Variable

Bridges at Doodh Patti

Pottry at Dolls Village

Artisans at Thatta Kedona

I ask the Impossible at Light Within
Housing at SPARC

You are Invited at Fine art of Blogging

Socities at Lahore School

Rugby at World Cup Log

Marvi jo Khooh

2011-11-19T11:26:00.000+05:00

Previously, one only chewed over and thought of such far away places, or read about Thar's unusual life, of people, who sang and danced with exciting rhythm and melody, radiant colours in dress, Manik Chowkri, a beautiful and intricate design on ajraks and chadars and colours of rolling miles of desert sand. The remote area on the Southern edge of Pakistan, which is devoid of the basic infrastructure necessary for life or development, is a tourists' attraction.

Antiquity is the first message. The scenery is attractive in its own way. Goths (villages) and hills quaintly intersect the desert soil, open all around. The roads, wherever they are, swings and curves up and down. The vehicles bump up and down the roads and sandy track, giving fleeting glimpses of a rougher, more elemental existence. Villages pass by, with trees surrounding them and beautiful birds swashbuckling on the branches, like crows on a rainy day. The vegetation is reduced to the undergrowth and thorny shrubs. Cows move silently, hordes and hordes of them, jingling cowbells around their necks, and doves flutter in front of the moving vehicles, which may be struggling in the fourth gears. Fine waves of sand with bright silvery particles sparkle in the sunlight.

Sea was here in the past but it has now moved further south. That is why one still finds salt lakes along the roads. People of the area get the salt for their consumption from these lakes. Small mounds of salt are seen on the banks of the lakes. At places, crushers are seen working refining the salt and processing it into a powder form in the old fashion way.

British functionary Parker did so well in south-east Sindh that the district of Thar was renamed Thar Parker. But the things have not changed much since then in Thar region. The refusal can be felt everywhere. Whatever development has occurred in the other parts of the country, has bypassed Thar? The round mud dwellings with thatched conical roofs look good in photographs but may not be as comfortable to live in. Thar is supposed to be one of the most densely populated deserts in the world. If nothing else, one should remember how certain parts of the Thar had become the scene of battle during the previous wars with India. Once again it has become a political battleground these days.

Major attraction and one of the claims of the Sindh folklore to fame is the village Bhalwa where my curious sense was at its peak. Marvi -- Sindhi heroin famous for her chastity and patriotism -– lived in village. Just on the periphery of the village is a shed where it appeared that a tea stall had been set up during Marvi's melo (festival of Marvi). A few steps away is the "Marvi jo Khooh" (the well of Marvi) from where she used to provide water to her goats and sheep and where Umar Soomra had caught a glimpse of Marvi and had become so head-over-heels that he held the girl against her wishes. Lost in the magnificent stronghold, Marvi's longing for her native terrain gave birth to one of the most moving folklore of Sindh. Her tale has been immortalized by great Sindhi poet Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai. It is an integral part of our oral and folk heritage. Most Sindhi girls know all about Marvi. Ironically, Marvi is credited only with a dilapidated and poorly written sign in Sindhi and English languages.

Marvi has been treated in a manner as any other national legendary character. There is nothing inspiring about the village these days. The physical venue -- old well -- had been plastered over and totally replaced by an unmarked cemented structure, an absolutely uninspiring job. At the moment, the well is dry and no Marvi can come there and have her pitcher filled. All that is seen left of Marvi is her undying desire and ache for what is no longer there.

A mela organized here in her name has become one of the biggest social and business events in the Thar area. Local cultural committee organises the annual mela of one of the celebrated figures of Thar, with traditional zeal and enthusiasm. But the committee has no resources. Thousands of Tharis participate in the two-day mela. Scores of camels and horses are brought to the mela from various villages to take part in races. Malakhro (wrestling) also is held on the occasion. The stalls under shamyanas or in huts made of straw are set to do the business. One resident of Bhalwa said, "We Tharis realize that a nation which loses its connection with history soon loses its identity. Hence, we gather here to pay glowing tributes to Marvi, the legendary woman." Sadiq Faqir, Karim Faqir, Ustad Hussain Faqir, Yousuf Faqir, and Jeendo Khaskheli among other vocalists of Thar mesmerize the fans of the mela with their folk songs.

Further on the way from district headquarters Mithi to Nagar Parkar, Virawah is another important historic town. It used to be a seaport in the past. Remains and relics are scattered in and around this sleepy little town. But one notices the town afterwards. It begins just like any other typical dust and flies town on the roadside anywhere in remote Sindh, and it ends just as abruptly too. Before one could decide if this is the best place to explore, one is almost out of the village. The abrupt change in the landscape tells that village is left behind. Climb the nearby Karunjhar Hill and you can see landscape intersected by conical huts. At night I saw a series of lights from the hillock. Haloes of iridescent lights glowed in conical huts all around. This would be the place to come and take a look on Diwali nights when Hindu living in the area lit earthen lamps to mark the festival of lights I thought.

A segment of a wall existing there in the form of mountain of debris and some engraved stones give an ancient look in town that I photographed though the veracity of the wall's association with the past is yet to be discovered. But the site does give evidence of its distant past.

How do you people survive?" asked one of my more urban companions. "The greatest contribution of us Tharis is that against all odds we have kept the place inhabited for Pakistan," the answers came from one of the locals.

If those who are at the helm of affairs in the government have taken for granted that Thar does not occupy a significant place in the geography (and history) of the country, then they should read the Sur Marvi of the Risalo of Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai. For the record sack!

Mandi Bahauddin - the first town that I visited in life

2011-11-13T13:05:00.000+05:00

Originally Mandi Bahauddin was a village called as Chak number 51. It started expanding after the completion of Rasul Hydroelectric Power Station on Upper Jhelum Canal in 1901. Today, Mandi Bahauddin is an over crowded market town famous for its agricultural markets (Grain Market, Vegetable Market and Livestock Market) and local industry of making colourful bed legs.

The name Mandi Bahauddin originates from two sources: Mandi (market) was prefixed because it was a flourishing grain market and Bahauddin was borrowed from nearby old village Pindi Bahauddin, which has now become part of the town. After the partition, thousands of refugees from India rehabilitated on the evacuee property of Sikh and Hindu landlords. Lately, after the construction of Rasul Barrage, people from the belt along southern edge of Salt Range up to Pind Dadan Khan and other areas across the River Jhelum came settling in the town. Due to migrations and increase in business activities, the town has expanded in all directions. The result is that more than half of the population is living outside municipal limits without any civic amenities. More unplanned localities and kachi abadies are coming up everyday. The tendency to move from rural areas to urban centres is on the increase.

People from adjoining villages come to exchange their agricultural products like grain, chickens and Ghee with matchboxes and other commodity items and see the ‘bright lights’ in this dusty town. Donkey carts to heavy vehicles are plying indiscriminately on any road they feel like. The town roads have bumps, wobbles and unauthorized speed breakers (sleeping policemen). The right of way has been shrunk due to encroachments and fast growing traffic. Most cross-junctions like Hospital Chowk, Gurha Chowk, Sut Sire Chowk, College Chowk and two railway crossings are always busy and there are no traffic signals.

The sugar mills constructed ‘farm to mill’ road that can be used as a bypass for the traffic not concerned with the city. But it is not being utilized because there are no arrangements to divert the heavy traffic on to the 20 feet wide metallic road. Mixture of slow and fast moving traffic, lack of footpaths, parking facilities, presence of bus and wagon terminals and many tonga stands has aggravated the situation in this agricultural market town. It is located away from Grand Trunk road but well linked with Pind Dadan Khan, Jhelum, Kharian, Lalamusa, Gujrat, Gujranwala and Sargodha with railways and good road network.

The small town having gridiron pattern (all roads and streets meeting at right angle) has developed haphazardly into an overcrowded city. Rehries and temporary shops have intruded all the main bazaars. The rehriwallas have a strong union. They thwart any effort by municipal authorities or district administration to remove the encroachments. The result is that what to talk of vehicles even the pedestrians cannot pass through the bazaars. Dual carriage way was introduced from Sadar Darwaza - gateway built in 1930 - to municipal committee office but the encroachers have also occupied this bifurcation.

The right of way on roads going out of the town has also been reduced due to unchecked encroachments and linear development along the roads. Number of shopping centres has come up in the residential areas. Beside sugar mills, local shaped industrial concerns are spread in and brick kilns around the town. Bed legs and colourful furniture are famous products of the town. Commercial and industrial activities in the residential areas have put a great pressure on the demand of already deficient houses.

Grain Market is located in the centre of the town. Goods’ Forwarding Agencies and lack of amenities have made miserable the lives of merchants and customers of the Market. Large number of goods’ trucks is always standing in the 4.3 acres of market area, which adversely affect the business. The surrounding area of town’s landmark and highest building, majestic Jamia Mosque built by the corner of Grain Market is also noisy and bustling with commercial activities of ‘Lohar’ bazaar.

Even worst is the condition of Vegetable Market. There was time when much of what is today Sabzi Mandi was tranquil and pollution free market consisting of few shops. People could go to the market and buy some of the freshest fruit, vegetables and some of the choicest of spices, nuts, meat and chicken. But now it is very difficult to move in and out of this largest perishable’s market in the area because there is no regular sweeping or lifting of garbage and all the free space has been occupied by vendors who buy any one item in the morning and sit on ground to sell inside and around Sabzi Mandi.

Well chalking is another problem of the town. Political, religious, commercial slogans and different advertisements can be seen all over the town. Political slogans respecting one candidate who contested last elections, every time from a different platform can still be found written on the walls of the town.

Besides going to nearby Rasul Barrage for eating fish Kabab, there are no recreational or cultural facilities and no healthy activities Mandi Bahauddin that was made district headquarters in 1993. This has far eaching effects on the youth of the town. They are seen playing cards on roadsides or snooker in corners of every street. Large numbers of video shops have come up and are doing good business. Video shops rent TV, VCR and as much as five films at a time even in the period when multi channel satellite has become a household item. There are two old cinema houses with 803 seating capacity. Degree colleges (one for boys and one for girls) are doing good jobs but given the resources of the municipal educational institutions, they are not enough for the youth of the area.

A Lalamusa-Sargodha-Khanewal railway is a profitable rout. At present only one Peshawar-Karachi train - Chenab Express - runs on this route. It could be useful to introduce at least one more Peshawar-Karachi express train for passengers, agricultural products produced in the area and a few of the minerals from Salt Range. This track is linked with Khewara Salt mines as well. Moreover, this track is strategically important in case of any threat to Peshawar-Lahore-Karachi main railway track. In that case, Lalamusa-Sargodha-Khanewal rail route could take all the rail traffic.

The “Mandi Bahauddin Development Plan 1986-2012″ has not even come on the tables of people responsible for is execution. But a possible nice start for the town may be to declare at least two bazaars (Sadar Bazaar and Committee Bazaar) totally pedestrian, vehicular traffic and animal transport contained out. Any body listening please!

My Village

2011-11-04T19:06:00.000+05:00

There are lessons in the first landscapes of every one's life. Mine was a vista of green paddy fields, smoking with Salt Range mist, against a setting of ribbon of River Jhelum which from distance looked like a shore of another land altogether. The rough, rugged hill range appeared uninviting against a sky withering with the morning, interrupted by the dawn's red and blue brush strokes. My first learning in life was also in the village.

In villages, people still live without assessable roads or other civic amenities of this modern age. No telephone or the Internet, even the electricity is the recent phenomenon; some are still without it. You see one village and you have seen all. This was the setting where I spent first twenty year of my life savoring the freedom of adulthood. It is where I decided what (and how) I wanted to do with life. It is where my mother, brothers and friends live. It is where I return whenever my active life allows me to. It is where I want to settle and spend my future.

My village is awe inspiring -- pollution free and quiet. Different shades and colors of waving crops and trees - solitary, in groves or avenues - beautify the landscape. The scene changes after the harvest. The air is always fresh and fragrant with the smell of earth. The only sound is singing of birds, ringing of cowbells and sighing of wind or some youth loudly singing Heer Waris Shah, Sassi Punun or Mirza Saheban at night. One sees butterflies fluttering, ladybirds creeping and squirrels jumping around. To me the place feels like a paradise.

My roots are in the village where no body seems to be in a hurry. Every time I go there, from the different cities where I happen to be living, I take small things like candies and toys for the kids of neighbors and my family in the village and they are so happy that the words cannot explain their delight. From the village I bring everything, and more than every thing I bring lot of love.

"I help my neighbors and my neighbors help me", is the philosophy of life in our village. Faith, sharing, contentment, grit, hard work and humor are few others. There are no marriage halls or other renting places. Daras (community centers where cultural diffusion takes place) are very useful 'institutions' for functions or for elders to sit and teach irreplaceable heritage of ideas to the younger generation. The learning that passed on to me in Dara turned out to be very precious: it was the legacy of the fable. Tandoor (Oven for backing bread) is still a meeting and talking place for women.

Guests of one family are shared by ever one at the time of marriage (or death). Hospitality is like one of the cultural benchmark, as villagers strongly believe that a guest comes with the blessings of Allah Almighty. Pull a hay cart into the shad, to rest, to dream. You shall be served with hookka (Hubbell-bubble), water and food. Cooing crows are still considered as a symbol for the arrival of guests in my village.

From our village, a group of seven students used to go to nearby town for attending school (and then college). Ghulam Muhammad was my buddy in the group. After completing the education, my dreams become out of control and took me on the darker roads of the life whereas Ghulam Muhammad, equipped with degree from Faisalabd Agricultural University, started progressive farming in the same village. He was a hardworking, gentleman, economically very sound and ambitious. Ghulam Mohammed's father soon started getting proposals for the marriage of his son from many wealthy landlord families of the area. But, my friend married his cousin: uneducated daughter of one of his poorest uncles and is living happily ever since. Village society is still simple, cohesive and based on similarities.

This time when I was coming back from the village, lot of people - family members, peers and neighbors - came to see me off as always. My mother had packed my vehicle with vegetables (fresh from the farm), palsies, atta (floor), and husked rice and even live chickens. Every body was advising me to consume every thing back in the city, as "they are fresh, pure, nutritious and desi". On my way back, a question kept coming in my mind: how much time this simple society will take to become complex and when will 'development' change the outlook of the villagers to life?

A cluster of memories - some overlapping, some isolated - of 'the village boy' I once always stay with me. I am a result of my childhood experiences. After having knocked on all the doors of opportunity that come in my way in life, I want to settle and spend my future in the village?

Online currency convertion application

2011-11-02T16:06:00.001+05:00

Efficient applications for converting different currencies are very important in the age we are living today. Sellers and buyers are now reaching out to foreign markets and deal in different currencies as a routine. The Internet and web applications available online have made the task simple. Those who need to know fast changing currency exchange rates all the time. Knowledge of fluctuating currency rates cannot be over emphasized. And this knowledge is the strength and dynamism of the internet; ease of access, openness, and users’ confidence.

All those who need online currency converter app and are looking for it must start at FreeCurrencyRates.com that offers free online currency exchange rates conversion calculator. It works simple. Anyone can use the converter right in his or her own browser (no downloading, software installation or html knowledge and skills are involved).

This converter is international in nature. It supports seven languages: English, Spanish, French, German, Russian, Italian and Chinese. You can switch between them any time, preserving all your choice of currencies and calculations.

I even saw EUR/USD (Euro/United States dollar) year 2011 exchange rate history here and it gave a whole picture. You can also customize the application which allows you to convert several currencies at a time. Selection of currencies is also simple; just add the given country code from the list and the converter will do the rest automatically. Free convertor is multi language. Presently it supports seven major languages including English, Spanish, French, German, Russian, Italian and Chinese. Neatly laid out site is very efficient in currency conversion. It is easy to use and totally free of course.

I recommend that those who are dealing with different currencies in any way, both within and between different countries must start at FreeCurrencyRates.com. I am book marking the site for my regular use. Have a look and see what is on the offer and how this converter can make currency conversion faster and life of the all involved easier.

Home cleaning products

2011-11-02T09:12:00.001+05:00

Without the army of cleaners, an economy would grind to a halt. The global army of home cleaners, mostly behind the scene, is very important fabric of society. News is that the International Labour Organisation (ILO) is trying to change the working condition of domestic workers including domestic cleaners at its annual conference this month. “The Convention Concerning Decent Work for Domestic Workers has been three years in the making. Its goal is to limit working hours, guarantee weekly days off, ensure a minimum wage and protect domestic workers from violent employers. And this is a very good news.

What is more, social media is also coming into change the working conditions of home workers and cleaners. The emergence of many Facebook groups and blogs, such as Migrant Rights is a case in point. It is in this milieu that I suggest we have a look around and see what is happening in our own domains, in our homes or offices, and may be play our parts to accelerate this change.

Do you know the name of the worker who cleans your home or office? How much is he or she being paid? More importantly, are they equipped with efficient and functional cleaning tools that can make their difficult job easy? Who buys brooms, dust beaters, Vacuum Cleaners, buckets and other cleaning equipment for you? If you do it yourself, buy the best at Janito - top name in cleaning products for professionals that offers wholesale as well as product by product. This will not only give you better cleaning at your living spaces but will also make cleaning workers’ life easy. A little though and a few bucks can go a long way to make this world a better place with better cleaning and satisfied cleaning workers.

Derawar Fort

2011-11-01T06:51:00.000+05:00

The historic Derawar Fort, enormous and impressive structure in the heart of Cholistan desert, is rapidly crumbling and if the immediate preventative measures are not taken, the edifice will be destroyed and the historians, researchers and sightseers deprived of the view of the legacy of the bygone era. Like so many other historic sites in the country, Derawar Fort is yet another sign of old times we are poised to loose forever due to the apathy of those who are responsible for its upkeep and preservation.

Before it disappears, once again, I was on my way to Cholistan: the place that is crucible of one of the world's oldest civilization, where some of the past secrets are hidden, where history is still active.

Derawar is the oldest fort and the only perennial water-hole in the area. But a visit to the Fort is painful for those locals or foreigners who value the heritage and other signs of past eras. They are disappointed with its fate and neglect of its wonders. Neither is it being maintained as a tourists’ attraction, for which it has good potential, nor as a historical and archaeological monument. Result: the days do not seem far when the Fort would be converted into a sand dune. Main entrance and ceiling have developed cracks. Most of its buildings and portions, which had been an abode of the Abbasi Nawabs, are already in ruins. The three-storey fort is now without any storey. There are also ditches in it which can be dangerous for anyone not walking with care. At least the boundary walls and the main gate of the fort can still be preserved so that something is left as an evidence of the past. The monument has architectural, historic, documentary, and symbolic values. Remain of the monument have to be preserved and saved from total ruination, a danger they are facing at present.

The Fort was built by Deoraj, a prince of Jaisalmir. It was in possession of royal family of Jaisalmir when it was captured by Abbasis in 1735. As per Bahawalpur Gazetteer (1904), in 1747 the Fort slipped from the hands of Abbasis in the reign of Nawab Bahawal Khan due to his pre-occupations at Shikarpur. Nawab Mubarak Khan took the stronghold back in 1804.

The lofty and rolling battlements made of thin red bricks, ten on each side of the fort are visible from miles around. The circumference wall is about 40 meters high. There are two old vintage guns mounted on pedestals in the dusty courtyard of the Fort. On the western side are small under ground cells now infested with bats and wood being eaten by termite. As per the fable the secret to change metal into gold was told to Prince Deoraj by his guru Yogi and there still is a treasure hidden somewhere in the Fort. (This idea keeps coming to me again and again: what if I can find the hidden treasure?) Nawab Bahawal Khan constructed a mosque with cupolas and domes of exquisite marble in 1849. It is a replica of Moti Mosque, Delhi. As per the legend there are some graves near the fort, which are said to be of the companions of the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) and the other Muslim reformers who rendered great services to spread the light of divine Islam in the area. A few hundred yards from the Fort in a hall with engraved doors in witch Abbasi Amirs and their families are buried: Nawab Muhammad Bahawal Khan (2nd), Nawab Sadiq Muhammad Khan (2nd), Nawab Muhammad Bahawal Khan (3rd), Nawab Fateh Muhammad Khan, Nawab Muhammad Bahawal Khan (4th), Nawab Sadiq Muhammad Khan (4th), Nawab Muhammad Bahawal khan (5th), and Nawab Sadiq Muhammad Khan (5th), Sahibzada Abdullah son of Nawab Sadiq Muhammad Khan (5th), Rahim Yar Khan son of Nawab Sadiq Muhammad Khan (4th) are prominent among those buried there. There are graves of the ladies of the Abbasi family in the north-western corner.

On the way to Derawar, pass Shahi Wala and Burji 42 Hazar and start thinking of Cholistan as an idea for which no language has an apt word, something waiting to be discovered in some out-of-the-way place, difficult to access, if one is enterprising enough to go out and look; an indefinite thing, taking different shapes in the minds of different individuals according to their interests and wishes.

“Derawar itself is considered as pre historic and pre Harappan settlement. It survived not only during pre Harappan period but also afterwards,” says contemporary historian and researcher Nurul Zaman Ahmad Auj, “The fact that it was the first settlement of Indo-Scythian race also points to the antiquity of the place. The settlement existed when Alexander crossed the Hakra River near Derawar. It was one of the important boarder posts of the caravan route and lastly was the capital of Bahawalpur State. Abbasi rulers turned the Hindu city into a perfect Muslim metropolis.”

Leaving the road and the four wheels driven jeep at Derawar, it was while exploring beyond that I found a few of the desert realities. Aside from wildlife, scenery, big solitude, and nomad culture, Cholistan also offer plenty of wind. The rippled shadows of the landscape dissolve at midday, and then deepen again in the afternoon. You find the sense of isolation. The faint white ridge line that marks the far edge drops beneath the horizon and one finds himself adrift in a sterile sea of yellow dunes. Inspired by the gorgeous absence of everything but curves and light, get in the utter emptiness of the landscape and vividly see slight details: telltale irregularities in the texture of the sand; the metallic ping of the odd pebbles beneath feet; a lone big black ant marching up a dune, its abdomen tilted skyward, lizard (Kirla) raising head to look at you from the distance and then rushing to the sanctuary of a bill in hurry, camels marching in perfect order or grazing on shrub called Katran. There is a complete lack of odour in the air.

There is an inland dry delta southwest of Fort Derawar. Some researchers are of the opinion that this is the place where the Hakra River ended centuries ago. The presence of the delta suggests that all, or most, of the River’s water was sopped up in this area where it would have been used for intensive agriculture and other pastoral needs. There seems to have been enough water to support intensive agriculture but not enough to push through to the Arabian Sea. However, a second group of experts holds the opinion that the Hakra River did reach the Arabian Sea. Both the groups have substantial data to prove their points.

At night, walking through the desert under the light of the moon was quite similar to hiking the dunes in daylight. The only difference was that the air was cool, the sand was gray and the Milky Way was more clearly defined in the sky. Later at night, footfalls did not sound like they were coming from my own feet any more; I kept turning around to see if I was being followed. Even sudden patches of soft sand would give me an occasional start in the dim silence.

Eventually, my paranoid habit of veering caught up with me, when - just short of midnight - I found familiar Jeep tyre marks in the sand. Since I had been walking what I thought was east for nearly eight hours, I had been circling around the same set of dunes near the Fort.

Related: Travel to write
Tags: Travel, Tourism, Derawar Fort, Cholistan

Heli-Skiing, an Exhilarating Sport for an Adventure

2011-10-22T08:34:00.000+05:00

Some people that enjoy going on vacation want to find a place to relax, perhaps underneath a palm tree on an out-of-the-way beach. There are other people, however, who want to get the most out of their vacation and want to be as active as possible. Of course, being able to enjoy a combination of the two is really the ultimate as far as vacations is concerned. That is why many people choose skiing as their vacation of choice, as it gives them the opportunity to do something active and at times, even extreme but at the same time, gives them access to the accommodations that are available which can really help them to relax.

One option that you have available to you is Heli-skiing, an extreme sport that is really becoming popular. Helicopter skiing gives you the opportunity to get to areas where not many people have ever been before. It gets you into snow that has been untouched and at the same time, you can Heliski in areas that are far away from the crowded ski slopes that tend to be seen in some of the more popular areas. Of course, you also get to enjoy everything that goes along with such an experience, including being with a small group and various options, including access to some excellent ski lodges. If you’re somebody that really loves to ski but wants to make sure that they get some relaxation in their vacation, this is an option that should not be overlooked.

Around Arrandu

2011-10-22T07:23:00.000+05:00

Some places are so peaceful and unspoiled that it is almost unbelievable. One such locality is the picturesque, tranquil and pollution free (and undeveloped) boarder village Arrandu in district Chitral. The very sound of the name is musical. This village is located 'on' the Pakistan Afghanistan boarder. Dir-Chitral Road bifurcates near village Mir Khanni and a jeep able track along Kunar River leads to Arrandu through Domail Nisar and onwards into Afghanistan.

Gateway to the South Asia, the Chitral valley has been center of activity since ancient times. Macedonians advanced through this region in fourth century. In 1338, Timur subdued the area on his way to the plains of Punjab. Mughal King Akbar garrisoned here in 1587 and the British in 1897 in Chakdara on Dir side of Lowari Pass. Among soldiers who served here in Chakdara then was young Winston Churchill who later became Prime Minister of Britain. So far about the past importance of the valley but the little hamlet got the international fame during Soviet occupation in Afghanistan. It remained in the news and was commonly called as 'BBC Baby'.

Arrandu is set up on the bank of Kunar River flowing into Afghanistan. Terraced fields of wheat, barley, maize and fragrant orchards of walnuts, apricots, grapes, apples and mulberries are strung up the valley like flags, at the feet of bare or thinly forested mountain walls.

The 3118-meter Lowari Pass is normally open to vehicles from June to October. One can sometime cross the pass on foot in May or November, despite the snow. One can also reach this small hamlet from Peshawar to Chitral by air and then by road to Arrandu or from Afghanistan. Though taking flight to Chitral is not everyone's cup of tea because the Fokker Friendship can cross the Lowari Pass only if weather permits. It rarely does particularly once the valley is landlocked in winters. First time, I landed in Chitral after three attempts by Fokker. Flying above the clouds, I had a window seat on the West Side of the small and noisy aircraft and could see the sighs of Hindu Kush where clouds allowed. Chitral to Arrandu via Drosh along Kunar River is easily one of the prettiest drives in the valley.

Chitral Scouts have kept this post in a very good shape. And, when ever I happened to pass the post conducting 'travelers' from down country or alone, I was always given a warm welcome and send off by Essa Khan, a local who has the biggest store cum tea house in the village. He also has arrangements for Trout fishing in Kunar River near his store. After zig zagging on a difficult road, one can spend a good day at the riverbank fishing and relaxing, with supply of tea from the Pinion Shah's teashop. And, to me Pinion Shah used to present, every time I visited him, a gift of pure salageet (Shilajit) - an oozing black paste from rocks famous among men in this part of the world as an anti aging and sexual health. After Afghan refugees and occasional travelers, now this road is used by herd of goats lead by a lonely Gujars to and from greener pastures. That is the place, which I use as a retreat from the hustle and bustle of urban life and that is where "I go to reminisce about fairies."

While the entire Chitral Valley is breathtaking in its splendor and beauty, one of my most enduring memories of Arrandu is watching the sunrise over the hills. And, when you devote enough time to look at the mountains, it becomes a bit chameleon - clouding over, changing colors, cliffs turning into convex and concave according to the slant light.

Arrandu has red roofed grand mosque and some makeshift provision stores that are stocked in summers when Lowari Pass is open to road traffic. There is also a water mill for grinding grain. Lot of tracks interlaces the area that is frequented by Mazdas or pedestrians.

At night, lights glow in this isolated village. One finds men spending their quality time sitting on the retaining walls along the razor edged roads and tracks while women (mostly with enlarged thyroid glands due to lack of iodine) working in the fields, homes or collecting woods from hills in conical wicker baskets. Even in their fifties men carry guns along with a belt of ammunition. The fact is that I found them friendly and at peace with themselves.

There are side valleys that yawn on both sides of Kunar River for hiking in its upper reaches. Friendly people of Tajik origin who had came from Badakhshan in Afghanistan only a few generations ago, to manufacture matchlock rifles for the Mehtar of Chitral populate the area. Arrandu Road is an ideal place to study the effects of land erosion: how it ruins the land and clogs waterways. And, there are some beautiful geological formations along the road. Besides scenery, there are many well-used camping grounds on both sides of the road and river, which run side by side.

Isolated from the rest of the country because of the remote location, Chitralis live a primitive rural existence without any civic amenities. Even the TV transmissions, telephone and electricity only in some parts of distract are a recent phenomenon. "Why would anyone want to live in a country like that?" Pinion Shah smiled and said, "I guess we like it here because we like to be left alone. Oh, it is nice to have people visiting. And we like people all right. But we like them on our own terms." And, he was right. I could hear him, murmuring sitting on his old stool: a freedom that meets other people only on its own terms - and yet forces you to care about every one of your neighbors scattered across the hillocks. Most of the Chitralis whom I asked confessed, "We like and want our own way of life." That is what is keeping them there.

Tags: Travel, Chitral

The power of Andriod

2011-10-21T22:05:00.002+05:00

This is a Sponsored post written by me on behalf of Straight Talk for SocialSpark. All opinions are 100% mine.

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Thanks to Straight Talk that offers flexible monthly plans that cater to the needs of any user including international callers. I simply loved the idea of The power of Android Best thing is that in addition to giving you the Feel Richer with Android, you don’t need any contracts and there are no surprise bills and no credit checks while you stay connected the best and cheapest way. Straight Talk only uses trusted phone manufacturers like LG, Motorola, Kyocera, Nokia and Samsung with all the apps and games (voice navigation, camera, video recorder, music player, instant messaging, and Bluetooth )you need.

Learning about a smart phone with a smart plan, I liked the “All You Need Plan.” That suites me the best as it offers phone with 1,000 minutes, 1,000texts and 30 MB of web data. That is all I need to stay connected.

Hanjarwal - Lost from view

2011-10-19T21:36:00.000+05:00

Salman Rashid

From very ancient times, this land was traversed by roads, roads and roads. There were arterial highways like the Rajapatha that connected Bengal with the Afghan highlands. We hear of it from the chronicles of the 4th century BCE and know that this was the very road that we eventually came to know as the Grand Trunk Road. There were others that stretched between important cities.

One such was the highway connecting Lahore and Multan that we today call National Highway 5 (N-5). Though this highroad had existed ever since time began, in the Middle Ages its importance grew when the peaceful years of the Mughal Empire spurred all-round growth. While Lahore in the north became a much favoured city as an alternate Mughal capital, Multan once again thrived as a rich centre of trade and commerce. It was one of the richer subas (provinces) of the empire during the reign of the third Mughal king, Akbar the Great.

To facilitate the passage of trade and travel, the old road connecting Multan and Lahore received a good deal of attention. Among other road furniture, new caravanserais were built where existing ones were falling to pieces. Now, distance between serais was dictated by the day’s travel which in those times was between twenty-five to thirty kilometres. Thus leaving the walled city of Lahore the first serai on Multan Road was at Hanjarwal. A victim of unplanned growth, this serai has long since disappeared.

Lost from view, overgrown with the ugly warts of unplanned rural architecture, Serai Chhimba sits amid blocks of agricultural land some thirty kilometres south of Hanjarwal. Lying a kilometre west of N-5, Serai Chhimba marks the alignment of the old road from the Middle Ages.

We know of Begum ki Serai adjacent to Attock Fort; Serai Kharbuza, midway between Taxila and Rawalpindi; Rewat, east of Rawalpindi and Rajo Pind just outside Rohtas Fort that are all believed to be fortresses. In truth, these are serais, fortified so that they could be locked up for the night to hold robbers at bay. Indeed, this was no deviation, but standard serai architecture all across Central Asia, Iran and the Indian subcontinent.

So too was Serai Chhimba built like a fort with massive walls and two gateways, one each in the direction of the rising and setting sun. In the interior, along the perimeter walls, was a series of sunken rooms with domed ceilings and thick walls to keep out the heat and cold. These were the residential rooms for passing travellers while their pack and riding animals were tethered in the broad enceinte.

The gatehouses on both sides are massive and have bulky arched openings which, going by their style, are clearly Akbari. While the western gatehouse is now occupied and turned into a residence, the one in the east serves as the only way in and out. Until a few years ago the timber leaves of the gatehouse were still in situ, but with the rise in street level, they became unserviceable and one day disappeared. Local gossip has it that the expensive teak was appropriated and sold by the keeper of the spurious shrine inside the serai. So much for those who pretend to be descendents of a worldly man turned holy post mortem by the accretion of yarns.

While the gatehouses mark east and west, the other two cardinal points are scored by massive vaulted structures. These and the gatehouses are each topped by two square towers rising to ribbed domes starkly reminiscent of Samarqand and Herat. None of them retains any of the coloured tiles that may have once adorned them. To emphasise its defensive strength, each corner of the serai has an octagonal turret.

The compound where travellers once tethered their animals is now choc-a-bloc with haphazardly placed houses bisected by streets. Houses along the perimeter wall incorporate the sunken rooms of the serai into their design: as bedrooms these are cool in summer and warm in winter. Everywhere there are signs of disturbance to the original structure of the serai in order to add rooms.

Only a few days before my visit in mid-February, the owner of the house adjacent to the east gate had pulled down one of the two domed towers in order to add a room on his roof. The debris of ancient Mughal bricks and lime mortar had still not been removed. It was his home and he felt he could do whatever he pleased with it – the historic monument be damned. Indeed, the two similar structures on the south wall had gaping holes: used as rooftop kitchens, the openings in the roofs served as chimneys. In the north wall only one of these towers remains. Inmates do not know what became of its companion but they have broken a large opening in it and use it as storage for cow dung patties. Its exterior serves as the post where the patties are dried.

Sometime after the advent of train and motor transport Serai Chhimba fell out of use as a way station. During the Raj when people were more than aware of the presence of the government, this historical inn would not have been appropriated for private residence. With independence two things happened. First, in the hands of incompetent politicians, the new state of Pakistan began to cede authority from the very first day. Secondly, in the absence of any settlement policy, the huge influx of refugees pouring in from across the newly-drawn border took over whatever they found handy.

Serai Chhimba, built about 1580 and therefore a protected historical monument, fell victim to this takeover riot. For some years after partition, it may have retained its serai atmosphere, but galloping population growth quickly smothered it with ugly and unplanned housing. For these refugees from Karnal and Rohtak, this is apparently still not home. They have no feeling for the land, its culture and its history. It is something to be appropriated and destroyed. Sadly, this is no aberration; this is the norm in this blighted land.

Looking at the whole lot of Pakistani people, this utter disregard for our own heritage is our only unifying national trait. Surely this must be the only country in the entire world where a citizen can destroy any historical building without fear of persecution. We see it happening in cities like Lahore, Bhera, Shikarpur, you name it. It is happening in Serai Chhimba as it happened at Hanjarwal where no more than part of the serai gateway now stands. Only some miles away to the east of Serai Chhimba, Dera Chaubara, another 16th century monument and exquisitely beautiful too, has been laid waste by treasure hunters (Herald April 2003). This same breed of ignorant philistine is destroying the hilltop monastery of Tilla Jogian in Jhelum district. This list is endless.

In another country where the writ of the state exists, such wanton destruction of the national heritage would cause uproar. Heads would roll, especially of those entrusted with the upkeep of national monuments. But in Pakistan we let things be. In another few decades, monuments that should have drawn ordinary tourists and students of history and medieval architecture to this land will be no more than heaps of rubble. And not because of age and natural causes, but because of our national indifference for our own heritage.

Fellow of Royal Geographical Society, Salman Rashid is author of eight books including jhelum: City of the Vitasta and The Apricot Road to Yarkand.

Samui Island Villas

2011-10-19T21:16:00.000+05:00

At villa Samui, they understand that their guests expect the very best and their efforts are directed to achieving this. Samui Island Villas specialize in providing exceptional holiday accommodation in the top locations on Koh Samui, Thailand's most beautiful island. Have a look and better still make a stop there.

The Bull and the Boulder

2011-10-11T09:08:00.000+05:00

Salman Rashid started this story at Musa’s rock with the hole and the roof

Through the night the gusting wind kept at it. At sometime after five the sun broke through the shackling layers of gray haze and appeared as a pale yellow disc levitating just above the horizon. It was time to take the short walk to the crest of the ridge of Bail Pathar.

I am no mountaineer and though I’ve been in some high places, I have never actually climbed a real peak. But one thing I know: even insignificant peaks, simply by their very nature of being peaks and therefore higher than the surrounding ground, offer something more than just great views. It was here where long before the dawn of history primitive man placed his gods. Peaks were sacred. Whether it be the puny Miranjani near Nathiagali; or the 4800 metre Deo nau Thuk (Peak of the Jinn) on Deosai; or Musa ka Musallah in Kaghan; or Ilam in Swat; or Kutte ji Qabar (The Dog’s Grave) in the Khirthar Mountains; or Takht e Suleman, they, one and all, were revered places. Those were places for man to approach in worshipful and reverent state of mind, perhaps with an offering or two for whatever gods man believed in.

These gods were created not as man regarded the peak from the base. They were created only after our ancestors were driven up by that curiosity that made them human as distinct from the other primates. Upon the mountain, at the apex of human endurance, the excitement of the panorama those primitive eyes beheld was paled by the heightened consciousness of man’s own place in the great scheme of things. This realisation then as now is not of grandeur and supremacy, but of inconsequence and paltriness – man’s real station in the grand scheme of things. This is the light that removes the last swagger from lowly humans. On some hilltops (Tilla Jogian near Jhelum, for example) this awareness is higher than on others. And so it was that high places the world over became the seats of gods.

If this is the marvel insignificant peaks such as I have named can work, surely the highest places on earth would do the same many times over. Alpine and mountaineering clubs should therefore bear the motto, ‘Discover thyself.’ And if you ask me, that is the reason women and men have climbed whatever mountain is available – not ‘because it is there.’

Immediately below us to the east right where our camp was spread out was Sahib Talab – the Sahib’s Pond, glinting in the dull light of the hazy morning. Far beyond that was a blue-gray ridge and then the plains. On clear nights the lights of Dera Ghazi Khan and Taunsa, and on clear days the silver ribbon of the Sidhu River could be seen, we were told. To the west a wide valley, scoured by four dry streams, spread at the foot of our mountain. Beyond, rose a khaki ridge and on its other side Balochistan was spread out all but unseen in the dust haze. To the north were more hills and to the south a round knoll, the highest part of the Bail Pathar ridge, blocked further view.

Risaldar Yaqoob Shah of the huge pot-belly, the trencherman of this journey, had earlier told us the story of the bull and the boulder: once upon a time a Baloch came up this mountain with his bull. Tying the animal to a boulder, he went about some business and when he returned he found the animal dead. Since that day the boulder was considered possessed and if anyone tied their animals to it the animals died. End of story.

As stories go this one was the most banal and unimaginative, even rather stupid. Neither is a boulder called pathar in Balochi, nor a bull a bal. Furthermore the first part of the name is clearly pronounced ‘Bail’ and not ‘Bal,’ consequently the story could not be true. The origin of the name is lost in the mist of time and in the tradition of all self-styled thinkers who invent heroes (sometimes events) to match place names (Kamalia and Qabula are two pertinent examples in Punjab), some moron thought up this yarn. I hotly debated the point until Yaqoob Shah lamely said since ‘bail’ in Urdu was an ivy or creeper, it might be that there was a stone on this hill that was carved with such a form. The poor man got no respite and this notion was shot to pieces very quickly. How could it be, it was asked, that a whole mountain was named after some rock or the other and no one even knew where the rock was?

But back on the top of the ridge Rehmat Khan had arranged tea for us. We sat in the blustering wind and drank the sweet brew as he told us of the angrez woman. It was about thirty years ago that a white woman was found wandering about near a village at the eastern foot of the mountain. The man who first found her, being a true Baloch, asked her to wait in an otaq (guest room) and went off to fetch someone who could understand her language. When he returned the woman was gone. Disappeared. Therefore, it was swiftly deduced, she was a spy. Moreover, the woman had shown the man a map with the Bail Pathar school marked on it. The school with its roster of one teacher and ten pupils on a map! That was sufficient for anyone who doubted her being a spy to now be fully convinced.

The following day, the woman turned up in Rehmat Khan’s village on the west side of Bail Pathar. She must have been one hell of a walker to have gone up and down the desiccated hill without succumbing to dehydration. Word, travelling by the Baloch tradition of hal-ahwal, had already arrived and folks were about waiting for her. She was quickly bundled off to the authorities at Dera Ghazi Khan. Raheal suspected she might have been the good Dr Ruth Pfau, guardian angel for lepers in Pakistan, hunting for unreachable lepers, but Rehmat Khan put on a saturnine countenance, lips down-turned, and nodding gravely said, ‘ No question. She was a spy.’

One wonder, though, what some crazy white woman should be spying for in the parched wastes of west Punjab hill country. But more than that one wonders what the building that everybody thought was a school was actually being used for to have been so prominently marked on the spy’s map. Now that was something either straight out of an unlettered man’s mind or very, very mysterious indeed and worthy of the files of our intellgence agencies.

The story of Sahib Talab, on the other hand, was cannier. Howard, a Deputy Commissioner of the early 1940s, once visited this mountain. He found it dry and barren, perhaps because of a drought, and local shepherds greatly distressed. The good man ordered the pond to be excavated that has ever since been called the Sahib’s Pond. In the worst years of the drought that now seems to be coming to an end, the pond had run dry only a couple of times. But the nearly continual rains since December have filled it up besides generally greening the region.

We returned to camp in time for breakfast. Over the meal we discovered that Rehmat Khan was not permitting departure without lunch. That would mean travelling during the hottest part of the day and, worse, another roast lamb. But no amount of pleading worked. We resigned, asked him to have the blue and orange canopy put up again and sat back under its shade.

The Inspection Book was produced and Raheal showed me a past entry. Dated the last day of June 2001, it recorded Raheal’s first visit to Bail Pathar in the capacity of Political Agent. He is a strange person, this Raheal. I know for a fact that as Political Agent he was the first one since 1947 to visit some places in his jurisdiction in the tribal outback of Dera Ghazi Khan. Having travelled with him before I have seen Inspection Books inscribed by officers of the Raj in 1947 and then by Raheal. In the intervening half a century no Pakistani official had deemed it fit to visit those areas!

The point of interest in the notation from June 2001 was that having enjoyed his trip to Bail Pathar, Raheal had ended his note saying he would like to return to the mountain with me. His wish, he said, had come true. The visit back then was work for Raheal had cases to dispose of. This time around it was just something we had to do together. Meanwhile, word had got around that Raheal was visiting the mountain and soon a delegation of liberally turbaned Baloch elders arrived with their entourages. These latter were perambulatory arsenals and could have started a small war on Bail Pathar. Solemnly the elders sat cross-legged and presented their petitions to the sahib.

Having come with supplies Raheal, a trained medical doctor, had turned his earlier visit into a medical camp. Scores of women turned up to be treated for night-blindness He had distributed the necessary vitamins and we now learned that nearly all his patients were cured. As a result women unable to attend that first camp were asking for treatment and Raheal promised to return with medical supplies. Men travel to cities and get their requirement of a varied diet. But women, the lower order of humanity in a tribal setting, eating only the leavings of their men, unacquainted with fruit and vegetables in a harsh land that produces nothing but some cereal, are seriously malnourished. Raheal had only discovered the tip of the iceberg. The sloth-afflicted officials of the Department of Health unwilling to undertake such hard journey find it easier filling in registers in the comfort of their offices while the poor and the unknown of Jinnah’s Pakistan living on the edge of the Middle Ages continue to suffer in silence.

Midmorning was lunch time on Bail Pathar and I hoped I was seeing the last roast lamb for several years. Rehmat Khan said it was impolite to turn down a Baloch’s hospitality and that men so spurned are known to have forsworn their wives if the guest did not relent and accept the proffered hospitality. The word is zan talaq and it is used as a sort of a binding not only upon the one who utters it to do or not do something, but also upon the corrival to acquiesce. That was something like the boys’ rhyme of the Lahore of the 1950s that made all those ‘son of a pig’ if they didn’t take up whatever challenge was thrown. For my part, in order to forestall the hazard of more roast lamb I loudly declared, for all to hear, that I would stand divorced from my wife if Rehmat Khan and his people fed us one more time.

This took everyone by surprise. Such a thing was unheard of among the Baloch. One never said zan talaq in order to ward off hospitality. But I had said it and I was standing by it. Nevertheless as we walked down the mountain every time Rehmat Khan mentioned the possibility of more roast lamb at his brother’s home, I reminded him of my avowal. That led to the story of the large-hearted Baloch and his stingy wife who were visited by the man and his naseeb.

We arrive in the village of Ugair where Rehmat Khan’s brother nicknamed Akhrote (Walnut, but I never got around to asking why such an impressive person was thus named) was awaiting us. Thankfully there was only tea with biscuits, but the man kept on insisting that he be permitted to take down a lamb. Someone told him I had sworn zan talaq against more hospitality and that finally put the matter to rest. It was already well into the afternoon and if we tarried any longer we would miss the visit to the shrine of Pir Gahno.

This was another story related by Rehmat Khan as we were coming down the hill. Some years ago while visiting the tomb of ancestor Gahno; he got into an argument with his cousin who minds the shrine. The burden of the argument lay on the poor quality of food that had been served up to our Rehmat Khan. The argument dragged on with the cousin defending himself as vehemently as Rehmat Khan attacked him until our man pronounced zan talaq: never again was he to avail himself of the hospitality of the side of the family that kept the ancestor’s shrine. Time flew and soon Rehmat Khan was invited to a wedding in that family. He said he could not attend because that would necessarily mean partaking of his cousin’s hospitality and he would automatically stand divorced.

This was serious business. Family pressure mounted: as an uncle (and a maternal one at that) of the bride and one of the family’s decision makers Rehmat Khan had to attend the wedding. The ceremony needed his blessing. With the matter of zan talaq niggling at the back of his mind, he attended the party and, naturally, dined with his cousin – an act that automatically affected his divorce. Therefore, to keep matters in legal order a mullah had been imported from Taunsa to officiate over the second solemnising of Rehmat Khan and his wife’s nikah. The needful was done that same evening and by the mullah’s decree the new marriage between the old couple had to be consummated within ten days. With a glint in his blood-shot eyes Rehmat Khan said he had come through colours flying high.

There was one setback, however. Rehmat Khan’s wife was no dodo. As soon as the divorce became effective, she demanded her alimony. The man was flummoxed. Five thousand rupees was a good deal of money. But his wife would have it no other way. She had been divorced and she wanted her pound of flesh. Rehmat Khan paid up before he could be re-married.

Pir Gahno’s shrine, like Granddad Musa’s, was again an unpretentious cement block cubicle with a single satin-draped burial inside. The obligatory peelu tree with its multitude of coloured cloth bags containing the first shaving of sons born by ancestor Gahno’s agency was right outside shading the cubicle. It suddenly shone on me: two Buzdar ancestors, Musa and Gahno, revered as miracle-working saints. If this wasn’t ancestor worship it was nothing in the world. Why, I wondered, hadn’t any anthropologist ever considered working on ancestor worship among the Baloch?

Baloch lore gives them Arab origin – as if that isn’t the case for all Muslims in the subcontinent. Serious research shows however that a very long time ago, much before the advent of Islam, they came from the shores of the Caspian Sea to spread out into the desert regions of eastern Persia and what is now western Pakistan. They descend therefore from an ancient Parthian bloodline. Long centuries ago and far away under the shadow of the Elburz Mountains Baloch religiosity perhaps centered on ancestor worship. The practice appears to have persisted even after conversion to Islam. Where others were encumbered with the invention of Syeds whose tombs could be worshiped for sons and wealth, the Baloch simply continued to venerate their own ancestors.

The last item on the itinerary was Khan Mohammed Buzdar. Three years ago while travelling through here with Raheal we had overnighted at the BMP post of Hingloon. They had shown me the slightly bent bars of the jailhouse and told me how one minute Khan Mohammed was locked up inside and the next was outside beside the free men. I had wanted to meet with the man and Raheal dispatched some of his staff to get him. But Khan Mohammed was away in Taunsa and I had to come away without the interview.

This time around, Raheal had sent word to Hingloon in advance that Khan Mohammed was to be made available. With ordinary build, gentle face and grey beard he looked like no Samson. He also spoke very softly. It was in 1962 or thereabouts, there had been a gunfight, said Khan Mohammed. He had shot and killed one of the rivals’ number which landed him in the lock up. Outside, his brother Taj Mohammed waited with some men of the other party. Shortly after the last prayer of the evening, he heard a gunshot and the shout that Taj Mohammed had been shot.

‘I was beside myself with emotion,’ said Khan Mohammed. ‘My brother had been shot and perhaps killed. I called upon Pir Gahno and before I knew it, the bars were bent wide enough for me to get out.’

The BMP men present in the courtyard restrained Khan Mohammed. Quickly he was hand-cuffed and shackled and returned to his cell. Meanwhile, it was also known that Taj Mohammed had only received a flesh wound and was out of danger. The bar-bending superman was once again human.

On our first visit one of the witnesses who had seen it all had told me he heard this almighty roar of ‘Ya, Pir Gahno!’ The next thing the man knew Khan Mohammed was standing beside him. Everyone was convinced it was Pir Gahno’s blessing that the man was able to bend half-inch thick iron bars. Khan Mohammed himself believed that as well. When I asked him if he could reenact the long ago feat, he said with great simplicity that he could not have done it then without the saint’s help and he couldn’t do it now.

All those who know of Khan Mohammed’s exploit, believe it was Pir Gahno who did it for him. He had called out the saint’s name and the saint came to his aid. I tried to tell them it was the saint, the superman that lived within Khan Mohammed and indeed within all of us as well. But that made no sense to them. It was useless to tell them how karate experts, having discovered through training the superman within, can use his powers at will. And how a shout focuses these powers to a single point to help them achieve the seemingly impossible feat of smashing a pile of kiln-fired bricks.

Khan Mohammed’s Pir Gahno had bent thick iron bars for him – but just one time. The Pir Gahno of karate experts does the impossible for them every time they wish. It is only for humans to discover the superman that lives within. My lecture made no sense. Neither to Khan Mohammed nor to the BMP men. Tolerantly they heard me out.

We left under a lowering sky. Sheets of lightning flashed on the southern horizon and I dreaded being caught up by a swollen stream. It was all right for Rehmat Khan who promised us more roast lamb if we could stay. Promising to return in case of a flood we finally bade him farewell. Thankfully it rained only lightly that evening.

Kelash experience

2011-10-08T10:23:00.000+05:00

Centuries old Kelash culture is at a greater risk today than any time in the past. Despite their remote location - landlocked in winters - last of the Kelash race is maintaining tenacious hold in district Chitral but is vulnerable to ravages of time and different pressures with external locus.

The onslaughts are clearly eating at their open and nonchalant culture. Many have been forced to join the drift to the cities. But when asked what they want, their collective answer was simple: we want our old way of life. Which is why, pastoral Kelash have been able to keep some of their cultural traditions and identity so far.Some historians and anthropologists think that the Kelash are descendants of Indo-Aryans who overran the region in the second millennium BC. The Kelash say they are from a place called Tsiam, though nobody is sure where that is. Commonly they are considered as descendants of Alexander from Macedon who came this way. Their warrior like forebears managed for centuries to keep everyone - including Tamerlane - at bay. In 1893, the British and Afghan governments agreed on a common border that cut right through Kafiristan dividing the community into two parts. Abdur Rahman who was then Amir of Afghanistan renamed Afghan Kafiristan as Nuristan - land of Light.

The Kelash are called Kafirs (infidels) and their land is known as Kafiristan. Between the 13th and 16th centuries the Chitralis gradually subdued the Kelash. By the 19th century, Kelash had been pushed into the higher valleys of the southern Hindu Kush. Rudyard Kipling set his book “The Man who would Be King” in Kafiristan, portraying the people as fierce and credulous though he never went there. And later, what Geoffrey Moorhouse has described in his book "To the Frontier" is no more there. Even the Chitral town of days when Russian were in Afghanistan (shops used to be full of the US goods like sleeping bags, shoes and field jackets) is no more there.

Not properly documented in our history books, I had the opportunity to explore the Kelash valleys in the widespread and on the edge district Chitral in Pakistan and know the people during my two years long in small village Mirkhanni – a gateway to Kalash trilogy. There are no villages called Rumbor, Bumbret or Birir. These are the valleys inhabited by Kelashis. One can take a 4 x 4 jeep (or hire one) from Attaliq Bazaar Chitral, or more adventurous type can get off on foot and walk along river Kunar up to Ayun.

From Ayun, the road forks left to Bumbret and right to Rumbor. After the fork, the barely jeep able roads to Rumbor and Bumbret - steady climb - will give you a new appreciation for walking particularly if you have been missing walking. There you will see lush green tree lined terraces, dancing and noisy torrents and lofty snow capped peaks set at a distance in the backdrop of forests of Himalayan. Rumbor is friendliest of all valleys where as Bumbret is most picturesque. The mouth of Birir Valley is at village Gahiret, about seven kilometres south of Ayun. Birir - the traditional of all valleys - peters out beyond village Guru. Near the village, you will find out a breathtakingly beautiful spring beneath a mound of stones. It is possible to trek between the valleys. There are also some good locations for 'rock repelling' and places for camping especially in Birir.

Lively by nature, the Kelash are a bit Mediterranean looking, though they gamut from fair and nearly blonde to quite whitish. Men have largely traded traditional goat skin tunics for Shalwar Qamiz and Chirtali caps, often with plumes, feathers, or fresh flowers in the brim. It is the dress of the women that is unique and quite amazing. Even in the fields, women wear immense black or brown dresses reaching to the ground, bound at the waist with a sash. Over locks of hair they wear splendid headpieces decorated with cowries, shells, beads, buttons, coins and plumes. The formal forms of these outfits are spectacular, with embroidery, mounds of bead necklaces and bells. They often decorate their faces with mulberry juice tattoos or pomegranate seeds or blacken them with burnt goat's horn (also for sunburn protection). I once saw a three years old child completely coated with the soot of burnt horns. A local told, "This will keep the baby fair coloured through out life."

The Kelash religion is complex and polytheistic with a single creator, called Dezau or Khodai, and many other lesser gods and spirits, each with its own responsibilities. Two important ones are the warrior gods Mahandeo, guardian of crops, animals, other public matters, and the female goddess Jestak who cares for home, family and private matters. All need occasional compensations, usually in the form of goat sacrifices and ceremonies at their shrines scattered through the valleys. The religious traditions are taught by one generation to the next.

Traditionally the dead are not buried. The wooden coffins used to be placed on the ground. Wooden totes or effigies were carved for wealthy or honoured people. At few old style graveyards I saw, the coffins fallen open, wood pieces and bones scattered about. Totems are scarce now; some carted off by anthropologists and treasure hunters. "Swat and Karachi museums have a few in good conditions," informed a German researcher Laila Mason, whom I met in village Bashala. These days the dead are simply placed on cart in the graveyard.

Tradition has it that women are less pure than men are and there are precise rules about what each may do, where they may go and how to purify people and places. Women during menstruation or childbirth are confined to a lodge called Bashaleni (which is also a shrine to the goddess Dezalik, who looks after births). Men cannot go in; even other women must be 'purified' after a visit. In old days, even food could be served to the women confined in Bashaleni only by virgin boys, untouched by women. Gradually these traditions are losing their power. But still it is the women that are seen working around in fields or homes and men spend all their quality time sitting on the pathways. The burden of perpetuating the last strains of Kelash culture is also born by women alone.

The Kelash take their festivals seriously. In addition to religious ceremonies there is always dancing and local made wine. Typically the older men stand in the centre, taking turns chanting old legends. Accompanied by drums the women dance round them arms around one another's waists and shoulders in spinning twos and threes or trance like encircling lines.

There may be day dancing (adua-naat) and night dancing (raadt-naat) or both. Some may even be closed to outsiders. Each valley has its own style and timing. The dates may not be fixed until the last minute, often depending on harvest or other work, so you could end up waiting days or even weeks for the kick off. Locals from down country may find it difficult to attend any such function but foreigners are often welcome. A Swedish tourist Toni has an interesting theory for this. He says, "Kelash people do not like those who go looking for alcohol, hashish, women or pure salageet.

This feast dedicated to spring and to future harvests is called Joshi. It includes day dancing and family reunions for four to six days in mid May. The summer festival Uchau, celebrating the wheat and barley harvests, is a big tourist draw. It may include night dancing every few days in successive villages, form mid June to mid August. Pul is held only in Birir, for three or four days in late September or early October. Night dancing is held in various villages and day dancing on the last day. It marks the walnut and grape harvests and the end of wine making, though its origins concern the return of shepherds from the high pastures. This solstice festival called Chaumos is probably the biggest for the Kelash, with visiting, feasting and night dancing for around 10 days starting in mid December.

"It is in unique culture that Kelash differ from the rest of the country," confirms Pordum, an elderly resident of village Guru. It is also perhaps the sole claim to fame for the region besides gorgeous natural beauty, poverty and backwardness. Laila Mason says, "unless opportunities are created and due respect is given, this unique culture will disappear fast."

Historic Horse Tram Returns to Gangapur

2011-10-07T22:35:00.000+05:00

Owais Mughal

This post has turned 180 degrees in its tone in the past 30 minutes of our editing. Read below how.

I found the title photo of this post in a web search and was totally mesmerized by it. I strarted writing this post with an admittedly ignorant view of the subject and almost made fun of why a horse driven trolley could be a project to inaugurate in today’s modern world - as shown in the title photo.

But boy was I wrong! As I started a quick web search on this project, I realized the historical value of this seemingly old and rusty trolley. And now I am very grateful that someone has actually taken the initiative to rehabilitate this part of our history.

Chak Number 591-GB is a small village in Faisalabad Division. It is also called Gangapur - named after the famous philanthropist and Indian Civil Engineer Sir Ganga Ram. Some text on the web suggests that Sir Ganga Ram owned the village of Gangapur (confirmation needed). It is said that he was a landlord here and turned it into a model village of the late 19th century. He introduced modern agricultural means and machinery of the time to Gangapur. One such machine was a heavy duty Electrical Motor which was installed in 1898 on Gogira branch canal to pump water for agriculture. This motor was brought to Gangapur from Lahore by railways and this is where the story of our today’s post starts.

The nearest Railway Station from Gangapur is another village called Buchiana (101 km from Lahore on Sheikhupura - Shorkot branch line). From Buchiana to Gangapur the distance is approximately 3 kilometers and in 1890s there were no means avialable to transport a heavy electrical motor from Buchiana Railway Station to Gangapur. Therefore Sir Ganga Ram ordered a special railway track to be built for the purpose between the two villages and a horse-driven trolley was used to transport this electric motor to Gangapur. After the motor was installed, the horse driven trolley remained in operation to transport people between the two villages.

Therefore the horse driven trolley that we see in the title photo is now 112 years old (built in 1898). It remained in continuous operation for 100 years until 1998 when financial problems and disrepair of track and trolley put an end to the service. That was until yesterday. As our title photo from March 9, 2010 suggests that after 12 years of dis-repair and non-service the horse tram of Gangapur has now been rehabilitated and put back into service. Yes!

I’ve also read on the web that both PTV and BBC had made documentaries on this horse tram which attracted many tourists to the area.

OK. Now that I’ve given the serious history of the project, how about we go back to my original idea of discussing some lighter details of the title photos here.

Note how many pink color haar (garlands) have been put in the neck of the chief guest. As if they were not enough, a guy is holding several more spares in his arms on the same trolley. The single-vehicle entrouge has been provided with its own ample security too. One can see a policeman standing towards the back of the trolley along with several media people.

I want to end the post with this sher (poetic verse) - which I’ve used in another post earlier too - but let me repeat it anyways:

rau mein hai rakhsh-e-umr, kahaaN dekhiye thamay

na haath hai baag par, na paa hai rakaab meiN

Photo Credits: Tasawar Abbas at APP

Cholistan in Lahore

2011-10-03T10:54:00.000+05:00

"It is an island of tranquility only an hour away from home. It surprises me that so few people in Lahore or Kasur know of it. Such a place in India would have been swamped with visitors on weekends," says Salman Rashid.

Do you have any idea where? Read the story by Salman Rashid here.

Which country?

2011-09-27T08:58:00.000+05:00

Salman Rashid

Once upon a time when ‘urbanisation’ had not yet caught on, this was another country. Outside the urban centres, this was a land of wide-open vistas of swaying fields of wheat, rice or sugar cane as weather permitted. This was a land of spreading banyan trees that, I was learn much later, figured on one-inch army topographical maps as ‘survey trees.’ And this was a country of fine stands of shisham and acacia trees, roadside ponds ablaze with red and blue lotus flowers and fresh water streams alive with tortoises and fish.

In those days of the late 1950s and through the following decade, when the family drove up the Grand Trunk Road to Rawalpindi or took the N-5 down to Multan, the ride was through a marvellous landscape. The Degh River just a few kilometres north of Lahore was a clear water stream whose banks were lined with anglers – especially if it was a Sunday. Gujranwala was a tiny little town where we swept past only a handful of stores and several lovely old town houses.

Similarly for Gujrat, while Jhelum was remarkable for the church that came into view as the car entered the old Jhelum River bridge. In those days the church stood in a wide-open meadow where buffaloes grazed. One thing that did not escape even us children was the very frequent spreading banyan tree shading a pond that could either be brick-lined or just plain. The sole surviving tree is the one near Sohawa (on the left side of the road as one motors towards Rawalpindi) whose accompanying pond is now sadly dry. All the others have been sacrificed to the ever-widening roads.

On the other side, along the N-5, my memory of passing Okara is not, I repeat, not seeing any habitation. An older cousin who was then an engineer told me that British road builders had ensured that all intercity roads pass one mile from habitation and were connected to it by a link road. Today passing through Pattoki, Okara or any other place that does not have a by-pass is nightmare.

In 1979 I moved to Karachi and for the next ten years travelled extensively in the interior of Sindh and Balochistan. Super Highway actually began at Sohrab Goth and ended in the wilderness outside Hyderabad. In its entire length of 160-odd kilometres, the only sign of human intervention was the Nooriabad Industrial Estate with its chimneys. Similarly, the old N-5 connecting these two cities via Thatta passed through the loveliest countryside imaginable. The Gharo River meandering through acacia and mesquite bushes was a sight and Thatta was a right lovely little town with its badgirs (wind-catchers) looking in open-mouthed wonder to the southwest

In the interior country roads such as what is now known as the Indus Highway (connecting Hyderabad and Shikarpur via Sehwan and Larkana) was truly magical. On the one side were occasional glimpses of the Sindhu River beyond patches of cultivation and on the other of the tortured, barren hills of the eastern-most offshoot of the Khirthar Mountains.

But the most magical of all places was Balochistan. It was the only land within this country where one could actually be with one’s self for mile after mile after mile. Even as recently as the mid-1980s, the drive from Karachi to say Lasbela or Kalat along the RCD Highway was remarkable for its loneliness. In the early 1980s I drove several times between Karachi and Lasbela and once all the way to Quetta and on all occasions I halted frequently simply to savour the peace and solitude of the land. For long minutes, perhaps even as much as half an hour, no traffic passed as I sat by the road to watch dozens of dust devils waltzing in the distance against misty blue hills.

In Makran there were no roads at all. The journey along the seaboard from Karachi to Gwadar took two days and one arrived with a goodly portion of the desert deposited on one’s self. It took a long, long bath to wash the dust away. The dirt road between Gwadar, Turbat and on to Panjgur passed through the most remarkable landscape of dry, broken hills and riverbeds that saw water only rarely when rain fell.

A handful of kilometres from Gwadar on the west bay the hills of Pishukan, completely unpopulated and waterless were the most fascinating place ever. Seen against a low sun they looked (and still do) like the skyscraper-filled skyline of some modern city. Now with Gwadar being turned into the next Dubai (or whatever else they plan), urbanisation has hit this region in a big way. Sooner than we know, west bay will be choc-a-bloc with concrete monstrosities that will block out the beauty of the Pishukan hills.

In recent years I have seen Karachi expand all the way to the Hub River both along RCD Highway and on the tree-shaded and peaceful Hub Dam Road. Along the former we have an industrial estate and its auxiliary residential areas as well as the shanties that were bound to happen. On the latter the sprawling Hamdard University has taken away the magic. Within years of the establishment of the university, Karachi began to encroach in that direction. Today as one drives up to the dam, one is never alone. And if I am not wrong, a lot of trees, mainly acacia and tamarisk, have been destroyed in the bargain.

Even the lonely RCD Highway has not escaped urban pressure as places as quaint and remote as Khuzdar and Wadh have encroached upon the road. This invasion is mostly in the form of glitzy restaurants and unseemly truck stops. Though I have not been on this road for nearly twenty years, friends tell me that no longer can one stop and savour the solitude of Balochistan for more than a few minutes at a time without being disturbed by passing buses.

In the case of Punjab and NWFP, the least said the better. Today one can drive from, say, Peshawar to Lahore or Multan or even all the way to Karachi and never be out in the country. Today the entire 1000 plus kilometre length of the N-5 is an endless bazaar. The views of swaying sugar cane or golden wheat along the road are a thing of the past. Now all one sees is an endless procession of grimy workshops and filthy restaurants. If it is not that, then it is a succession of equally unsightly factories.

Gone are the days of the wide-open vistas. Unchecked urbanisation has destroyed the magic of intercity travel. So few people today realise that as we once went tooling along the highways, we got to know this country; its rivers and trees, its birds and animals and all that grew on it that made up our food. Unchecked urban spread has not only deprived us of a landscape that my generation knew. It has defiled this land in more ways than one.

For one, vast tracts of farmland on the periphery of urban centres have been made over for housing estates. Indigenous trees were without fail the first casualty in this deal. All the wonderful, spreading banyan, pipal, mulberry, acacia and shisham were laid low to demarcate plots and lay out the grid of roads. In their stead, ignorant developers planted the water-guzzling eucalyptus and the only tree we now see is this accursed alien species. Secondly, unplanned urban expansion has destroyed dozens of fresh water streams. The Degh, the Aik and the Palkhu are just a few examples.

We now stand on the threshold of a new age where we will not know this country. In a few years most urban people will only know ugly concrete jungles, not spreading fields of wheat and paddy. Small wonder then that we are going crazier and crazier and ever more violence-prone.

Who is burried thee?

2011-09-20T08:49:00.000+05:00

Salman Rashid

In the bleak, tortured landscape of the north-eastern Potohar Plateau Dhamiak had remained uncelebrated since the beginning of time. Lying amid a wearisome tangle of narrow and meandering gullies, tinged red by sub-soil salt and thinly covered with scrub, it never had reason for fame or glory. Its only claim to fame was for being a staging post just off one branch of the old Rajapatha, or King’s Road, that has been in use from ancient times. While the main royal road leading west through Punjab went by the Salt Range, this branch followed the same alignment as the modern Grand Trunk Road by way of Jhelum, Sohawa and Gujar Khan – though none of these towns would have then existed.

This latter was the road less travelled; the majority of traffic passing through the heart of the Salt Range. The celebrated Chinese pilgrim Hiuen Tsiang writes of his prolonged sojourn at Taxila (631 AD) and a visit to the monasteries of the Salt Range. Thereafter, he tells us of his journey to Kashmir. Though he does not describe his route, it is evident that he would have used this road. Nine hundred years later Babur, the founder of the Mughal Empire in India, tells us of having travelled by the ‘sub-montane road’ through the country of the warlike Gakkhars of the Potohar Plateau en route to Lahore in November 1523.

In between a remarkable event took place by this lesser branch of the King’s Road. This event would have remained no more than a footnote in our history had we not become masters of a missile that needed to be named after a hero. And since from the moment of our conversion to Islam, we were divorced from our earlier history, all heroes had to be, necessarily, Muslims. So it is that Muiz ud Din, better known as Shahab ud Din Ghory, a Turkish chieftain from the narrow and impoverished valley of Ghor, southeast of Herat in Afghanistan, is celebrated by sub-continental Muslims for his invasion and mastery of the northern part of India.

In 1203 rumour reached the Khokhar Rajputs of the Salt Range that Shahab ud Din had been killed by the Mongols on the wind-scoured grasslands of far away Central Asia. Having been nominal feudatories of the Ghorid sultan, these doughty warriors began to assert their independence by closing the roads that passed through their territory. Thereafter they set about raiding Ghorid dependencies in Punjab. But it was only rumour: Shahab ud Din was alive and by 1205 brought retribution upon these people in full force. The battle fought near Gujrat was all but carried by the Khokhars until Turkish reinforcements under Qutub ud Din Aibak arrived from Delhi to turn the tide. The Rajputs were routed after a great slaughter and the country returned to Turkish control.

Smarting under the shame of defeat, the Rajputs set their hearts on revenge. Barely a year later, when the Ghorid sultan was returning from Delhi to the Afghan highlands, he was done in. The sources say that it was either a single individual or a small band of Khokhars (no more than three) that stole into the king’s camp, dispatched his bodyguards and repeatedly stabbed the king as he slept in his tent. And even before an alarm could be raised, these intrepid guerrillas had vanished into the dark of night while the sultan lay dying in a pool of blood.

The sources are also divided on another issue: the location of this historical event. At least two early sources tell of the king’s tent having been pitched by a ford on the Sindhu River and that the Khokhars entered his camp by swimming in. But the Tabakat-e-Nasiri of Minhaj ud Din Siraj, generally considered fairly reliable as an historical source, very categorically states that the murder took place at ‘the halting place of Dhamiak ….. at the hand of a disciple of the Mulahida.’ The Mulahida or heretics here being the Ismailis, a persuasion that many of the Khokhars followed at that time. Several contemporary and later writers agree with Siraj that Dhamiak was indeed the site of the murder.

And so it was that when it came time for us to name our missile we called it Ghory: therein lay a symbolism. The Indians call their missile Prithvi (after Prithviraj Chauhan) we are one up because Shahab ud Din Ghory had eventually won victory after an initial defeat at the hands of the Chauhan king. Having done that we also needed to re-invent history. This was easily do-able because we knew from folklore that Shahab ud Din Ghory had died at Dhamiak. Being well-known for our national aversion to reading, the creators of this new history did not bother to consult the books and simply went ahead to raise the white marble tomb of the Ghorid sultan at Dhamiak. The Turkish king was thus duly indigenised, but Dhamiak became the burial place of deception for real history has another tale to tell.

The Tabakat-e-Nasiri tells us of the dispatch of the king’s bier from Dhamiak towards Ghazni. Now, it needs be told that at the time of this murder (1206 AD), Afghanistan was held by the Turks as different principalities all owing allegiance to the sultan. While Ghor was held by the sultan’s cousins, Ghazni was under the control of Taj ud Din Yalduz, one of Shahab ud Din Ghori’s most trusted slaves and generals. As the funerary procession accompanied by amirs from both Ghor and Ghazni crossed the Sindhu River and arrived in the vicinity of modern day Kohat, a dispute for the possession of the coffin as well as the considerable treasure being borne with it broke out between the two parties.

From all accounts it appears that a minor battle was fought. The Ghoris were defeated and routed. The funeral then proceeded to Ghazni by way of Sankuran that we today know as Shalozan. This is a right beautiful, well-watered valley of orchards and farmland lying a few kilometres to the northwest of Parachinar. It was at Sankuran that Yalduz kept headquarters and as the bier reached in this vicinity, we hear of him riding out to meet the body of his lord and master. The histories tell us of how having seen the grim procession from a distance, Yalduz dismounted and came up to the bier with ‘utmost veneration.’ It is also recorded that he wept so inconsolably that his grief moved others to tears as well.

Arriving at Ghazni, the sultan’s body was buried in the madrasah he had founded during his lifetime and named after his daughter – his only child who survived beyond infancy. To recount the subsequent battles between the houses of Ghor and Ghazni over the late sultan’s treasures is beyond the scope of this story. Nevertheless all available histories tell of the corpse of Sultan Shahab ud Din Ghory safely reaching and being buried at Ghazni.

Yet we have a marble monstrosity plonked amid the furrowed badlands of the Potohar Plateau. The building can be reached by a blacktop motorable road that takes off to the east of the Grand Trunk Road at Sohawa exactly opposite the fork that goes in the other direction to Chakwal. Less than twenty kilometres from the main highway, the white tomb can be spotted from some way off. The façade bears a plaque that briefly tells of the sultan’s exploits against the Rajputs. It would be foolish to imagine that the plaque would also recall the chivalry of the victorious Rajputs in the first encounter. For the Rajputs a battle was no different from a sport: when they routed an enemy, they did not stoop so low as to pursue and annihilate a withdrawing army. They broke away and jubilantly went their own way. They permitted the vanquished foe to live to fight another day.

Be that as it may, the question is: if the king’s corpse was borne to Ghazni as history testifies, who is buried in this tomb? No one. At least not a person. It must not be forgotten that summer had begun and the body would have started to rot very quickly in the Punjabi heat. As was the practice, the sultan’s courtiers would in all probability have eviscerated the corpse. All that would have been buried at Dhamiak was the liver and the excrement-filled royal intestines. As time passed and memory faded, it was only remembered as the burial of Shahab ud Din Ghory ignominiously murdered at the hands of an Ismaili Khokhar sworn to revenge.

When it came time to reincarnate the Ghorid king as a missile, the tomb was raised as a sort of proprietorial claim over that exalted personage. History was not consulted and if official historians were required, of them there were aplenty falling over each other to attest to the veracity of the murder at Dhamiak. As has been the way of this breed of experts, the rest of the truth was not revealed. And so the marble Tomb of the Viscera was raised.

If, however, the mausoleum only commemorates the location of the sultan’s last moments on earth, then the raising of this edifice is doubly criminal. In a country where ordinary folks, superstitious as they are, worship every available tomb, this will only create yet another giver of sons and wealth. This will give them another demi-god to worship and pray to.

Postscript: When Jehangir, the fourth Mughal emperor of India, died in Kashmir in the summer of 1627, his body was brought to Lahore by way of Bhimber and Gujrat. As it neared this latter city, it was already beginning to putrefy. Evisceration was the only way to impede further damage. The material was buried just outside town. Today there stands a tomb over that site and the plaque commemorates the mausoleum as that of ‘Shah Jehangiri.’

Over time the humble intestines of a rather worldly monarch were deified. Today Shah Jehangiri boasts of a large weekly gathering; the annual urs being an even greater affair. Men and women come from distant corners of the country; it is said, to seek the intervention of the intestines in the acquisition of health, wealth and children. Some of them surely are granted their desires. The Auqaf Department that was raised to curb such mindless superstition actually abets in its spread for every new shrine in the country means more income for the department. Even if the shrines contain only excrement-filled intestines.

Rims and Tires

2011-09-14T12:10:00.000+05:00

All those who love cars like to own the best and want to keep them in a perfect condition. They always look for powerful accessories like Chrome Rims they can add and make their automobiles more powerful, comfortable and safe. One of the best places most auto lovers are already familiar with is Rim Discounter – aptly named Rims and Tires stores. Have a look and find how they offer low down-payments and a great selection of styles. Rimdiscounters.com is just such a place where you can choose from over 2000 Chrome Custom Rims and nearly 500 Painted and Machined Finish Custom Rim Styles. Better still go for Rim & Tire Package and save greatly on your tires.

My passion for knowing more about cars and what can be added to them took me to Rim Discounter that offers best selection of rims and tires including 22 in Rims.

I suggest your explore information rich, neatly laid out and resourceful Rim Discounter and see what all they are offering and how. The imagery at the site is good and gives you the feeler of any item you may be looking at. There are enough details with each product to help you make informed buying decision. Try them, enjoy their best customers' service and make your car more powerful with what they offer.

Silk Road

2011-09-13T10:39:00.000+05:00

The souls that pave the way for the Silk Road still seem to flicker amongst the sharp moving shadows of the unstable rocks and the almost countless but crumbly semi-transparent glaciers that constantly threaten its existence. There has always been a 3,000 years of history and tradition, breathtaking landscapes of desert, mountain, and steppe, and glorious ancient cities and above all the warmest people in the world. Discover a new place, and discover yourself.

Those who want to best discover the old rout (and in the process want to discover themselves) must first have a look at Silk Road Treasure Tours – with them the world is more interesting. Silk Road Treasure Tours will help you get to any destination. Travel to places like Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Central Asia. You can also explore Caucasus Travel - Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia. I personally want to learn about Uzbeks, Kazakhs, Kyrgyzs, Turkmans and Tajiks and learn more about their culture. Which is why a trip on the silk road is already on my wish list.

Let them arrange the tour for you and you may have one of the most enriching experience of your life. Maybe you'd like to combine tours? Their experience working with the many major and regional airlines makes it easy for us to arrange tours to multiple destinations. Approach them and they will take care of every detail. You simply enjoy your. When you are on their neatly laid out site, go through event calendar (Discover Uzbekistan, Central Asia Treasures: Art, Culture and Music, Silk Road Treasures of Central Asia, Uzbekistan Treasures) and see how you can plan your tour with the event that interests you more. Also go through tour testimonials and see what those who have travelled with them are saying about them. This will help you make an informed decision.

My Thatta Kedona Projects

2011-09-08T09:06:00.002+05:00

Thatta Kedona Dolls

Thatta Kedona Radio

Everything one need to stay connected

2011-08-29T05:01:00.004+05:00

This is a Sponsored post written by me on behalf of Straight Talk for SocialSpark. All opinions are 100% mine.

In the age when Information and Communication Technologies are being considered as next engine for development, cell phone is a necessity and a life style. It is difficult to survive today without having been able to connect to family, friends and people in work circles. But that cost. What to do then? Find a phone plan that is economical and still the best.

everything you need is a cell phone with a flexible and affordable phone plan. Good news is that you can have one of the best phone plans at Straight Talk – a service that will cut your phone bill to half and let you feel richer. That means you will be able to talk more.

Have a look at Straight Talk and learn about their plans. Like mom knows best, Straight Talk plan also are best for any set of requirements of individuals user. All You Need Plan (1000 minutes, 1000 texts and 30MB of web data) is already on my wish list. All those who want best connectivity and also want to save some money must start at Straight Talk and learn what is the offer? Also view the video and see what other happy users are saying about them. It is like Hook, line and sinkercase. That will help you make an informed decision. Try now and chose the best to call a friend or do business online the most economical way. Straight Talk offers everything you need.

What is blogging to you?

2011-08-24T20:09:00.001+05:00

Internet is a lonely place without Blogging; a fine art, science, also economics. Blogs are different to different people. Fine Art of Blogging asks you to share your views on what is a blog to you?

You are invited to contribute your thoughts in general. In particular, write how you blog? Why? How blogging matters in your life and work? Success stories, motivations and inspirations. Answer these questions and more (add what you feel is important dimension) in a post and send in word document.

Kalma Chowk flyover opened for Lahori’ites

2011-08-18T23:51:00.000+05:00

Amir Waqas Chaudhry

Punjab Chief Minister Muhammad Shahbaz Sharif has said the Kalma Chowk flyover project has been completed in a record period of 135 days by working round the clock and this project is a shining example with regard to speed, quality and transparency.

“The flyover will be a model for the projects throughout the country and this culture will be promoted in the country, including Punjab. I have announced the gift of a splendid project to the citizens of the provincial metropolis on the occasion of Independence Day and, thanks God, flyover has been opened for traffic on the Day. The Kalma Chowk Flyover is a master piece of construction and by completing it in a record period, we have proved that if work is carried out with sincerity and dedication, there will be no hurdle. We will make the future of the country bright with same spirit and hard work,” he maintained, while addressing the ceremony held in connection with the inauguration of the Kalma Chowk flyover on Ferozepur Road on Sunday. Senior Advisor Sirdar Zulfiqar Ali Khan Khosa, Provincial Ministers, MPAs, Quarter Master General, Director General NLC, officers of NESPAK and concerned departments as well as a large number of people attended the function.The CM said we had set a new tradition in the world of construction as besides saving in the estimated cost, and timely completion of the project, night culture had been introduced in the world of construction. “This project is unique as for the first time in the history of the country, it has been completed in a record period by working day and night. Six months ago, the cost of this project had been estimated at Rs 2.30 billion, but despite increase in the prices of construction material during this period, an amount of Rs 300 million has been saved by completing the project at a cost of Rs 2 billion, for which officers and officials of the Communication and Works Department and the concerned contractor deserve appreciation,” he said, adding that best traveling facilities would be available to the people with the completion of the project while trade and economic activities would also be promoted. He mentioned that four lakh vehicles pass through the Chowk daily and sometimes people had to face difficulties and mental torture due to traffic jam and their precious time was also wasted. He said ambulances taking patients to the hospitals were also stuck up in the rush of traffic but after completion of this project people would get rid of these problems. “Misappropriation of funds, nepotism and corruption are rampant in the name of development projects in the past and Faisalabad-Sumundri Road, Hafizabad Pindi Bhattian Road, Lahore Kasur Gunda Singh Road, Thokar Niazbeg Defence Road, Thokher Niazbeg flyover and Lahore Ring Road are proof of this fact. These projects bespeak of poor planning, dishonesty and plunder of the former rulers. We have changed these graveyards of plunder into monuments of development. The Barkat Market underpass will be completed at a cost of Rs 100 million by September this year and the speed and quality of construction of the Kalma Chowk flyover will also be maintained in this project,” he asserted.While paying rich tributes to the officers and workers who took part in the construction of Kalma Chowk Flyover and completing it in a record period, he said today was a historic day when a big project of public welfare had been completed in only 135 days. He announced cash prize of Rs 1.5 million for labourers, who took part in the construction work and directed to constitute a committee which would distribute this amount among the labourers in a transparent manner.The CM said the performance of the officers working on this project was also excellent and he would give them his new shirts and ties as gift. In a lighter vein, he said, “giving shirts and ties does not mean that I have started wearing shalwar qameez.”

Rebuilding lives

2011-08-18T10:20:00.000+05:00

Salman Rashid

When the Indus River rose in August 2010, Wahid Buksh and his family fled their village Malhar Sheikh near Gambat (Sindh) for their lives. From the high ground of the raised bed of the road leading to the new Khairpur-Larkana bridge across the river, Wahid watched the fertile farmland around his village go under the swirling, brown eddies. But the water would not stop rising and by and by his poor mud brick home too was lost.

When, two months later, he returned from the displaced persons’ camp to what was his village, he found few homes standing and all of his four acres of sugar cane and two of cotton wiped off the face of the earth as if they had never existed. In his twenties, Wahid was no land owner, merely a sharecropper. Even so, his loss was great. As the summer drew to an end, he had little hope of raising enough funds to purchase wheat seed and fertiliser for the December sowing. But a man needs to win bread for the family and so Wahid Buksh resorted to daily wage labour in nearby Gambat.

In February he heard that Participatory Village Development Program (PVDP), an NGO based in Mirpur Khas, supported by Church World Service (CWS) of Islamabad was offering three-month skill training programmes at the newly-established Construction Trade Training Centre (CTTC) in Gambat. The training on offer was for the trades of plumber, electrician, welder, carpenter or mason. There was no educational requirement other than the ability to read and write Urdu which suited the man. Wahid applied and was selected to train as a mason.

Earlier, CWS had run similar training courses in Mansehra and nearby districts after the earthquake havoc of October 2005. Consequently, a large work force of young construction workers has since been at hand rebuilding the damaged villages. The centre in Gambat was on the lines of those that had been so successful in the north.

Classes were from eight in the morning until three in the afternoon leaving no time for a daily wage earning labourer like Wahid to work after hours. The upside was that there was the two hundred rupees-per day stipend for all trainees. Even though he was required to pay fifty rupees for the lunch provided by the centre, Wahid was still able to take home some money for the family to get along by. At the end of the three months, the government’s Trade Testing Board examined the trainees and issued certificates. Each successful candidate was to receive from CWS-PVDP a complete toolkit appropriate for his trade on the day the testing board issued the certificate.

Early in June, Wahid Buksh, the unskilled labourer of only a few weeks earlier, went to work with a building contractor as a brick layer. I found him in a Gambat back street in the shade of a building preparing iron bars for the construction of columns at a nearby site. He pointed to the under-construction building with visible pride and said it was all his own handiwork. And it has to be admitted that the work was neat.

In late July, seven weeks after he had graduated from the training centre, though he had passed the test, Wahid Buksh had not received his certification from the Trade Testing Board. Delays being normal in governmental working, he is not bothered. However, because of that he was still deficient of his mason’s kit and was obligated to work with a contractor.

‘I get six hundred rupees per day because I use my contractor’s tools. When I get my own equipment, I’ll be making eight hundred per day,’ says Wahid.

That is a darn sight better than being either a farm labourer or even a sharecropper. If things were good, he had to cope only with market fluctuations and his landlord’s cavalier attitude. Otherwise there was always the danger of floods or drought or crop failure. For the number of man hours he put in as a sharecropper, his net earnings were less than meagre. He also remembers times when he went into debt because of poor harvests – debts that took years to pay back. Now Wahid takes home a steady income and has a weekly day off to boot.

Almost bashfully he notes that having been born in poverty and with only five grades of schooling, the end-all of his life once seemed to be farm labour or hauling bricks at constructions sites. He could not imagine himself a skilled brick layer so early on in life.

Neither could the other seventy-four young men, all of them locals whose lives were destroyed by last year’s floods. With fifteen in each class, the Gambat centre turned out seventy-five trained technicians in the first batch. All of them immediately went either into self-employment or were hired by construction firms.

Dominic Stephen of PVDP says that given the educational level of these young men, there was no way they could have been gainfully employed. They would never have been anything but unskilled labourers, shop keepers or sharecroppers But now with just three months of training, they are useful members of the society sought after for their technical expertise.

When I was there, the second batch of seventy-five was half way through their session. Raza Hussain of village Khemtia was a shopkeeper until last year. Then the flood took his village shop and set him back by about three hundred thousand rupees. There was no question of being able to restart the business and so with a family to support, he resorted to unskilled labour until he enrolled in the training programme in June.

With a high school certificate to show for himself, he joined the electricians’ class and was doing rather well. ‘The way I see it,’ says he, ‘the stipend is equal to what I earned as an unskilled labourer. Then I had no future to look forward to. But now, after I graduate from the centre, I’ll be a trained and properly equipped electrician ready to go to work.’

Initial funds provided by CWS for the CTTC were for only two sessions of seventy-five students each. However, even half way through the second session, the value and utility of the programme became more than evident and it was extended for a third session due to begin in September. But then funds will dry up and the centre will fold. Already dozens of young men come calling every day to ask why only flood-affected men are being trained and if there will be sessions for others as well.

Dominic who supervised the establishment of the CTTC at Gambat is worried. At the end of the third session there will be two hundred and twenty-five technically trained men in the field. Going by the beneficiaries’’ own reports, the training and the complimentary toolkit has set them up as entrepreneurs as they could not have done on their own. Now the sky is the limit for these skilled technicians.

But the flood did not only disrupt the lives of these two hundred and twenty-five. There are countless more. There are also all those young men who have the will to learn but lack the required education to join the government’s poly-technic institutions. It is them that Dominic is looking out for: why should this facility not be extended to them?

Even as you read this, PVDP is hard at work to raise funds to sustain this unique and very useful programme. The funds will arrive, that much is certain, but from where, it is hard to say. Meanwhile, the number of youngsters waiting in the wings to join grows by the day.

Handcrafted travel

2011-08-18T10:11:00.001+05:00

Travel attractions – historic, heritage, natural, adventurous, ecological — are richly distributed all over the world inviting travelers, site seers, explorers, trekkers, and mountaineers to come and see. Apart from business, people travel for so many different reasons: to explore, to feel, to learn, to get away from humdrum of the fast lane life, and to lose themselves or find themselves. George Santayana, a Philosopher, has been quoted as describing, “We need sometimes to escape into open solitudes, into aimlessness, into the moral holiday of running some pure hazard, in order to sharpen the edge of life, to taste hardship, and to be compelled to work desperately for a moment at no matter what.”

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Charles Masson in Rajasthan

2011-08-16T12:55:00.000+05:00

Salman Rashid

In the autumn of 1826, Charles Masson, one of the more enigmatic travellers of his time, having passed through the Rajasthan desert arrived in the erstwhile State of Bahawalpur. Enigmatic he certainly was because under his pseudonym he traipsed around India pretending to be an American when, in reality, he was a deserted of the army of the East India Company. But he was a very gifted person: in fourteen years of travelling, from 1826 to 1840, in Sindh, Punjab, Balochistan and Afganistan, Masson emerged as a man of great erudition. To this day he is acknowledged as one of the earliest, and ablest, numismatists and historians of this area.

Time was when people read different meanings in his work. Many assumed he was a spy; perhaps for the Company itself, but ordinary readers have all along only enjoyed and benefited from his four-volume Narrative of Various Journeys. A quarter century ago when I first read Narrative, I undertook several short journeys in Masson’s footsteps to discover for myself the country he had known. One journey remained; and that was to Allahabad, in Masson’s time part of the State of Bahawalpur, now in Rahim Yar Khan district.

Masson had arrived in Ahmedpur, today better known as Dera Nawab Sahib, where he was ‘entirely prostrated’ by an ‘intermittent fever.’ To compound that, the Nawab of Bahawalpur not being available for an audience, he could not get along with a minor court functionary. And so, despite his fever, leaving his meagre baggage behind, he set out for Allahabad ‘taking nothing but my sword.’ His narrative gives not even the shadow of an idea of what the purpose of this visit was. Such secrecy perhaps gave rise to the notion that Masson was spying for someone though it beats me what he possibly could have sought in Allahabad.

He tells us the distance between the two places was ‘twenty cosses’ (about seventy-five kilometres) which is a trifle exaggerated because Allahabad lies just fifty kilometres southeast of Dera Nawab Sahib. But his fever prevented Masson from travelling rapidly and he took over a week for the journey, in between pausing for three days at a roadhouse in the village of Varni. Like most inns of those times, this one was also run by a woman.

He was apparently well looked after by the inn-keeper because he was soon fit to resume the short march to Allahabad. Masson wrote, ‘The approach to this town was more pleasing than I had anticipated, for the jangal ceasing, I came upon a rivulet of running water, beyond which stretched a large expanse of meadow, and in the distance I beheld the cupola of the principal mosque of the place, embosomed in groves of date-trees.’

Over the years I had learned that it is impossible to expect the scenery to be even remotely as described by Victorian travellers, but somehow Allahabad remained fixed in my mind as a village that might still be picturesque. Just outside the village, again overcome by fever-induced fatigue, Masson rested under a spreading pipal tree near which he noted a pavilion. Later he saw several other such buildings and commented on their simple yet elegant style of construction. Allahabad evidently lay in the middle of a shikargah for Masson writes that the Nawab of Bahawalpur used these as hunting pavilions.

As evening fell, Masson left the shady pipal and approached the town. At the entrance he was greeted by a ‘well-dressed person’ who immediately invited him to his home. There this kindly person called the local physicians to minister to his guest’s health. But Masson was not convinced that the ‘conserve of roses and sugar-candy’ could cure his fever and so he got the local barber to bleed him in both arms.

Thereafter Masson recovered quickly. Surely the generous spread that his host Salam Khan Daudpotra daily laid out for him had much to do with his recovery. If his treatment at Dera Nawab was niggardly, this good man left Masson quite breathless with his kindness and largesse. And when it came time for Masson to return to Dera Nawab, he rode on horseback with Salam Khan acting as escort.

Unlike Masson, I approached Allahabad from the south and not on foot but in a car. The ‘jangal’ of his time was gone and the countryside lay fallow after the cotton harvest. From the distance the town, sitting on a high mound, even today looked rather picturesque with its central part dominated by tall brick buildings but the mosque Masson had seen was nowhere visible. Imran, my guide, was waiting for me at the union council office and without wasting any time took me walkabout.

We stopped at a haveli undergoing some repair work. The family had come to Allahabad from Patiala in 1947 and the patriarch, about seventy, mouthed the big untruth that we all like to so believe: ‘This is a tiny house. In India Muslims had the biggest palaces ever.’ Few rich Muslims left their homes in India; it was only the poor and some of the middle class and only after we arrived here and took over evacuee properties did we invent stories of the riches we had left behind. These yarns became gospel for succeeding generations until the unpleasant truth of past poverty was lost in it.

The beautifully carved timber door into the main family room was so thickly plastered with off-white paint that I cringed: it would take serious sand-blasting to restore this one. But I know, even before this building can be rescued for preservations, this door will be wrenched out and sold for a few rupees. In its place they’ll content themselves with a lousy chipboard thing.

Though the ground floor façade had been painted a similar shade, the delightful brickwork of the first floor was still intact. The arrangement of cut-brick florets in zigzagging lines to create a pleasing array of squares together with pyramids, inverted as well as right side up, caught the eye. Above this panel were five arches, two of them open, two with windows and one blind. Square wrought iron fanlights, eight in all, surmounted the arches and above ran another repetition of cut-brick trimming. We were led to the upstairs rooms to check out the gaily painted ceilings that echo across this country from Sindh to northern Punjab.

This house could not have been built earlier than the 1930s and whoever it was that spent a pretty penny on it from his hard-earned money, sadly could not live very long in it. I wondered if the real owners had ever returned for a visit. Would they have wept? Or did a strange equanimity come over them? Do they still keep their ownership documents and hope they can one day return in better times to reclaim what is theirs? To reciprocate, will these people return to Patiala to the untruth of the palaces they very likely do not wish their children to know?

We checked out a number of other havelis, but all of them in advanced stages of dilapidation were locked and abandoned. Imran, my young guide, said it was too expensive to restore these buildings inside the narrow alleys because the only way to get building material in was either to man haul or by donkey. A two-rupee brick, he said, could cost as much as eight in the central part of town. Consequently people were simply moving on, letting these priceless buildings, raised by others, to fall to pieces.

Imran walked me around the entire central part of Allahabad. The narrow streets of the bazaar were roofed with tattered jute matting to keep out the intense summer heat, just as Masson had seen it. Otherwise, the shop fronts now had steel shuttering instead of the old-fashioned timber doors. Everywhere we saw abandoned buildings in various stages of decay and heaps of debris. The new children of Allahabad who mostly seem to have come from Patiala have not looked after their town well.

Since the Daupotras are now also surnamed either Abbasi or Kalhora and because I wanted to meet with a descendent of the good Salam Khan who tended to Masson, I asked if any of the two clans lived in Allahabad. There was one Kalhora who was ‘more than a hundred years old’, said Imran. This man lived some ways outside the town, but he could reportedly not remember anything. My guide did not know of any other old Daudpotra family native to the town nor had he ever heard anyone flaunting the name of Salam Khan.

This thing about a plethora of centenarians in Pakistan is hogwash and when I said so, Imran told me there was one who was a hundred and twenty-five years old. A local journalist was called who had interviewed the man only six months before my visit and his Urdu newspaper piece, which he brought along for my edification, said so. I said it could mathematically be proved that this was nothing but rubbish and so with the journalist in tow we drove a few kilometres from town to meet with this marvel.

The man was clearly about eighty or so. He said his age was forty-five and I thought we had another gaga on our hands. But then he corrected himself: ‘One hundred and forty-five.’ On my prompting, the journalist said the last time he had seen him, the old man had said he was a hundred and twenty something and now, within the space of six months, he had aged twenty years. The man did not remember if he had been interviewed, but he insisted he remembered the onset of the First World War when he was in his ‘thirties and married with grown children.’

A little bit more quizzing and I realised that it was the Second World War the man was talking about. I tried to tell him that if he was in his thirties in the First and nearly a century and a half now, we must be living in the year 2029. Simple arithmetic not being their forte, no one seemed to understand what I was carrying on about. Also everyone being so proud of having such a Methuselah amongst them, they did not wish to believe otherwise. I tried another angle and his son, about my age, shut me up saying he was already seventy therefore his father could not be any younger than he said he was.

The usual tripe about pure and good food was trotted out. I angrily turned on the man about what good food a poor man could afford. A hundred years ago, a handful of millets was all anyone as poor as they said they were could get for a meal a day. Good food, I cruelly rubbed it in, meant fresh fruit, vegetables, beans, dairy and some meat. But reason shall not prevail. We left the octogenarian and his son convinced that the man was a century and a half old. Indeed, even the journalist was not impressed by the sums I did to show that the man did not know what he was talking about.

Allahabad keeps some of its old flavour, but Masson would scarcely recognise it today. What little remains will be lost in a few years. If it were within my province, I would declare Allahabad a national heritage site, acquire some of the better homes and set them up as show pieces. But then dreams are not horses.

Azadi, Azadi, Azadi

2011-08-14T15:41:00.005+05:00

Holiday Park Apartments

2011-08-13T10:21:00.000+05:00

Holidays have become a lifestyle. What is more, people’s desire to see whatever is possible has grown as a result of growing prosperity. Everyone likes to travel and have holidays for leisure or pleasure at different places.

I have been traveling whenever I could. When it comes to holidays every time I need the best and new places to go. As more and more people are traveling, and getting what you want may become difficult sometime. The best is plan ahead and book ahead.

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What else, I should be planning my stay in one of the Hotels in Santa Ponsa rather than writing this.

The Buddhist Heritage of Pakistan: Art of Gandhara

2011-08-12T14:24:00.000+05:00

After what seemed like an endless run of geopolitical roadblocks, “The Buddhist Heritage of Pakistan: Art of Gandhara” has finally come, six months late, from Pakistan to Asia Society. Is the show worth all the diplomatic headaches it caused? With its images of bruiser bodhisattvas, poly-cultural goddesses and occasional flights into stratosphere splendor, it is.

A figure of the Buddhist deity Hariti, an infant-gobbling demon, is on display in "The Buddhist Heritage of Pakistan: Art of Gandhara" at Asia Society Museum, New York. That all but a handful of the 75 sculptures are from museums in Lahore and Karachi is in itself remarkable. Any effort to borrow ancient art from South Asia is fraught, even in the best of times. For an entire show of loans to make the trip, and in a period when Pakistan and the United States are barely on speaking terms, is miraculous. (Without the persistent effort of Pakistan’s ambassador to the United Nations, Abdullah Hussain Haroon, the exhibition would almost certainly never have happened.) So the show has a cliffhanger back story as an attraction, and some monumental work, like the fantastic relief called “Vision of a Buddha’s Paradise.” (Dated to the fourth century A.D., it’s a kind of flash-mob version of heaven.)

But most of what’s here is neither dramatic nor grand: a chunk of a column; a head knocked from a statue; a panel sliced from some long-since-crumbled wall. Like most museums shows aiming for a big-picture view of a vanished world, it’s a scattering of small effects: precious scraps and remnants. For every stand-back-and-stare item, there are a dozen others that require close-up scrutiny and informed historical imagining to make their point.

The multi-layered and time-obscured history of ancient Gandhara is particularly difficult to grasp. The area, which encompassed what is now northwestern Pakistan and a sliver of Afghanistan, was a crossroads for international traffic. If you had business that took you to or from the Indian subcontinent, you passed through Gandhara. If you were in the business of empire building, you made every effort to control it.

Persia, under Darius I, colonized the area in the sixth century B.C. Two centuries later Alexander the Great, a Macedonian Greek and a conquest addict, charged in and charged out, leaving behind a Hellenistic occupancy, which held firm even as Gandhara was absorbed into the Mauryan empire of India, South Asia’s first great Buddhist power.

Over time Greco-Bactrians, Scythians and Parthians dominated the terrain. Then, around the first century A.D., the Kushans, originally nomads from the steppe-lands north of China, settled in, extending their reach down into the Indian subcontinent.

They were genuine cosmopolitans, linked to the Mediterranean, Persia and China, and tolerant of religions. It was under their aegis that Gandharan Buddhist art, compounded of foreign and local ingredients, flourished.

The exhibition, organized by Adriana Proser, a curator at Asia Society, begins by showing elements interacting. The first thing you see is a substantial female figure carved from the dark schist that was the common stone of the region. She has a funny look, familiar but not. She’s dressed in a sort of cocktail-dress version of a Roman stola; her hairdo is pure 1970s Charlie’s Angels, long but with back-flipped bangs.

Because she wears a helmet, she’s been called Athena in the past, though she probably represents some regional genius loci modeled, at a remove of thousands of miles, on Greco-Roman prototypes. Another female figure with comparable features has more certain identity. Much as she resembles a Roman goddess of good fortune, the three clinging children she juggles mark her as the Buddhist deity Hariti, an infant-gobbling demon, who, after a little enlightenment, changed her ways.

The culture mix thickens further. On a fragmentary stone panel we find in relief a Persian-style column with an Indian nature goddess posed in front of it. A squat stone figure in baggy Kushan pants turns out to be Skanda, the Hindu god of war. And a stele devoted mainly to sober scenes from Buddha’s life doubles as a playground for dozens of cupids.

The point is, Gandharan art was all over the map. Yet confusion sparked innovation. The first known figurative images of the Buddha are thought to have emerged from this region. So did, despite all the crazy components, an instantly recognizable sculptural style, on persuasive display in the second of the show’s three sections.

Here we find the classic Gandharan Buddha. Dating from the second to fifth century A.D., he is a standing figure in an ankle-length tunic and a toga like cloak that falls in rhythmical folds, with hints at the shape of the body beneath. The facial features are symmetrical and crisply cut, and idealized, though on ethnic and aesthetic terms different from those of a Greek Apollo.

On the whole the image is naturalistic in a way that the purely Indian equivalents being carved from sandstone farther south were not. And the naturalism is especially pronounced in Gandharan images of bodhisattvas, those evolved beings who postpone nirvana to aid struggling creatures on earth.

One example from the Lahore Museum suggests a leader-of-the-pack biker: slightly paunchy, with a handle-bar mustache, a cascade of curls and a challenging stare. Technically, he’s Maitreya, the Buddha of the future, though judging by his ornamental hardware — bicep bracelets, neck chains — he still has something to learn about the spiritual path of less-is-more.

The show’s highlight, “Vision of a Buddha’s Paradise,” is in this section too, and culturally everything comes together here. The big Buddha seated at its center wears an off-the-shoulder robe, South Indian tropical attire, while a couple dozen of mini-bodhisattvas around him mix and match international fashions, with no two outfits, or gestures, or poses, quite the same. Two figures gaze raptly up at the Buddha; another, chin propped on hand, looks daydreamingly away; far below, two tiny observers feed lotuses to fish in a stream.

Was this really designed as a vision of Paradise? We don’t know, though we might if we had some clue as to the piece’s original setting, probably as one of several related panels in an architectural context. But, as is true of most Gandharan art collected before very recent times, such information went unrecorded, and an accurate sense of what this art meant to its makers and early viewers is lost.

Ms. Proser addresses the issue of context in the exhibition’s last section, which is in its own gallery, by going with what we know: that much Buddhist art from Gandhara took the form of carved narrative panels depicting episodes from the life of the Buddha; that these panels once appeared on the walls of sanctuaries or cylindrical stupa mounds; and that many of the artists were entertaining storytellers.

Their skills are evident in the sequence of a dozen or so panels arranged around a stupalike structure in the gallery. In one, the Buddha’s mother, Maya, anticipates his birth in a dream, and the artist has made her look like a Roman matron en déshabillé and asleep on her couch. But in a second panel, carved by a different artist and showing the infant Buddha being examined by a sage, we've switched countries and cultures: now we’re in a land of turbans, boots and layered outwear.

A third episode takes place after the Buddha’s enlightenment, as the lords of the four directions, essentially Vedic or Hindu beings, decorously offer him bowls of food. And a panel set next to that is packed with the figures of demons who had tried hard to prevent that enlightenment. The scene looks like a Wookiee convention. It’s very funny, but also rich with information about armor and weaponry in use centuries ago.

For historians the value of an exhibition is in just such details, while for nonspecialists the main attraction is likely to be visual impact. Ordinarily, I’d rather look at Kushan-era Buddhist art carved farther south from rosy Indian sandstone than at sculpture made in cold, dark stone in Gandhara. (Asia Society had a show of both in 1986.) But that’s just personal taste, and, besides, the show has changed my mind about this: it pulses with human warmth. That’s one of the things we go to great art for, though in this case, and against very long odds, some of that great art has come to us.

“The Buddhist Heritage of Pakistan: Art of Gandhara” remains through Oct. 30 at Asia Society, 725 Park Avenue, at 70th Street; (212) 288-6400, asiasociety.org. {with thanks from Munir Alvi}

Lahore Yoga Group in Kashmir

2011-08-04T16:35:00.001+05:00

Images: Husain Qazi

A Different Sort of City

2011-08-03T20:35:00.000+05:00

Asad Badruddin

Most people will be surprised to know that urban planners can influence people’s socializing habits and their choice of friends and acquaintances within a city. They can plan cities in ways that can increase ethnic tensions and they can organize cities in a way that can help people live harmoniously.

People are social animals and human beings are inclined to meet and befriend people if the right conditions are present. And vice versa: if the correct obstacles are present (whether by design or by accident) we become less inclined to meet people. The latter can lead to dangerous cases of the ‘other’ and can strengthen existing biases of people. One example of this was in the 1970s and 1980s when low income housing and urban projects in American cities reinforced segregation because black communities would not be found in predominantly white neighbourhoods. In this essay I will highlight three things that are essential for cities to connect people: transport systems, parks and squares.

The railway infrastructure connecting Pakistani cities is rapidly declining and the one within cities is almost non-existent. Pakistan needs an overhaul in its intra city and inter-city transport network. Within our cities we need to have an organized and spread out system where someone can easily travel around the city without taking any cars. If Pakistan does not have the funds to start such a project, it should ask China for help in investing in a joint venture. The Chinese are themselves building a bullet train system that is to surpass even America’s rail infrastructure; their input will be extremely useful. It would be nice if any urban development that does take place has a Pakistani signature on it. Perhaps our trains can imitate Pakistan’s famous bus art in this respect.

While transport systems are vital to help people connect, so are their destinations. Parks are essential for socialization in a city. They improve family life, and the health of parents and their children. A good park must be secluded from the city’s noisy and smokey streets. It must be welcoming. It must also be placed at a location which allows people from different neighbourhoods to access it equally. Children, regardless of whether they are from rich or poor families, should have the luxury of playing and enjoying themselves in parks with friends.

Another very important piece that most of our cities are missing are squares or meeting places in the heart of the city, where people can just linger and where pigeons can be fed to their hearts content. London has its Trafalgar Square, Turkey has its Taksim Square and we all now know of Egypt’s Tahrir Square made famous because of the revolution it spawned. Such meeting spaces are important because they help people meet and socialize. Various interest groups, social organizations and civil society can gather there. This can further promote our democratic culture and strengthen civil society groups. In Karachi the only venue that serves this kind of endeavour is the Karachi Arts Council which has over the years has generously given its space to numerous social and progressive causes and campaigns.

Today young people will often be heard complaining of boredom in the city. There is nothing to do except eat and for most young people the only way to meet new friends is through school or tuitions. A city square would provide a creative outlet for the youth to engage in. Artists could come and display their work, musicians could perform their raags to people passing by, and circus performers could enthral the on looking audience. These city squares must of course be easily accessible by bus or train, but it would be best if we can have as few cars as possible. Nothing ruins the soul of a city more than cars and traffic jams, and the noise that accompanies them. City squares can also pay tribute to our heritage of mushairas (poetry recitals). Once while interviewing gentleman about former East Pakistan for an internship, he told me that there was a large tree in Dhaka where every evening poets would gather to recite their poetry. I do not know whether this place still exists in Dhaka but a similar sort of arrangement could be organized for our major cities that are devoid of both trees and culture.

Phuket Forum

2011-07-27T09:07:00.000+05:00

Traveling whirls you around, turns you upside down and stands everything you took for granted on its head. We travel, initially, to lose ourselves; and we travel, next, to find ourselves. We travel to open our hearts and eyes and learn more about the world than our newspapers will accommodate. We travel to bring what little we can, in our ignorance and knowledge, to those parts of the globe whose riches are differently dispersed. And we travel, in essence, to become young fools again — to slow time down and get taken in, and fall in love once more.

The beauty of this whole process was best described, perhaps, before people even took to frequent flying, by George Santayana in his lapidary essay, “The Philosophy of Travel.” We “need sometimes,” the Harvard philosopher wrote, “to escape into open solitudes, into aimlessness, into the moral holiday of running some pure hazard, in order to sharpen the edge of life, to taste hardship, and to be compelled to work desperately for a moment at no matter what.”

Given my own interest in travel, I was looking for information on Phuket and Thailand when I came upon Phuket Forum – a vibrant community of tourists and expats – and was amazed to see how users interact there and are forthcoming with any information you need. I suggest you have a look at the forum, better still join them and learn what Phuket and Thailand has to offer.

Boat business

2011-07-25T10:02:00.000+05:00

Salman Rashid

‘My family never gave up building boats since they built the ark of Hazrat Nuh!’ Ghulam Arabi did not so much as bat an eyelid making this startling disclosure. Then he went on to tell me that before the time of the prophet who saved mankind from the Deluge, ship-building was unknown. As irrefutable finality of that statement, Ghulam Arabi cited the Quran.

For added authenticity he said even his great-grandfather was a boatwright. I did not point out that between his great-grandfather and Hazrat Nuh there must have been several thousand years. Quick to see the doubt in my eyes, he said that since his family knows only this craft, it has long been suspected that they go back to those biblical times. That was arithmetic at its simplest, and I could hardly quarrel with it. At forty Ghulam Arabi, having learned the trade at his late father’s knee, himself had twenty-five years of boat-building experience.

He said that he was a Mughal and his sub-caste was Gharu. This latter, he said, derived from the Punjabi or Urdu word for shaping wood. I asked him if his family was called Gharu even in the time of Hazrat Nuh and he looked at me as if I could scarcely have asked a more imbecile question. That, then, was settled: he was a Mughal of the sub-caste Gharu whose family history of ship-building went back to the great Deluge. And so we moved on to less exciting but rather more plausible aspects of his profession.

There were thirty-six different kinds of boats in Pakistan. These included the several types of flat-bottomed punts on rivers and lakes that could either be rowed, poled or fitted with outboard motors. Then there were the large sabot-shaped houseboats (different sizes) of the Sindhu River and Manchhar Lake and there were the different types and sizes of keeled sea-going vessels of the coast. Ghulam Arabi, his brother, two sons, a nephew and a maternal uncle who all work together, could build any of those boats. And they were not the only boatwrights of the country. There were a few dozen other families engaged in the craft.

But they never employed drawings or measurements. There was nothing on paper. Ghulam Arabi and his team had everything in their heads. All that was needed was a photograph and the desired length of the boat and they could produce it. Chaudri Munir, a well-known industrialist from Lahore, brought a catalogue of boat designs complete with measurements and drawings to Ghulam Arabi. He wanted a boat copied and had tried several carpenters in Lahore. But nothing worked. After wasting much time and even more money, Munir turned to Ghulam Arabi.

When our man was offered the catalogue to study, he refused. He simply looked at the picture of the boat, asked how big Chaudri sahib wanted his vessel to be and got his team working. In six weeks flat, Ghulam Arabi had the boat ready to the great delight of his rich client.

We were sitting in the sand of the once great Sindhu River at the ford of Bungla Ichha near Jamaldin Wali in Rahim Yar Khan district. Ghulam Arabi, a native of Chachran fifty kilometres upstream, was taking time off from repairing three or four boats that were soon to be hitched in a boat bridge. Every year between November and March when the river runs low, the boat bridge is strung out and all motor traffic passes over it to Rojhan on the west bank.

The rest of the year, the river being far too wide and with a greater flow for this arrangement, crossings are affected by smaller engine-powered punts. Since these can at most carry a couple of motorcycles and are mainly for passengers, vehicular traffic is routed over Guddu Barrage about thirty kilometres downstream.

Business was good, said Ghulam Arabi. The going rate to build a new vessel was six hundred rupees per foot and a typical twenty foot-long punt took about a month to finish. Charges for repair work, on the other hand, were variable depending on the scale of work. All materials, the timber (always deodar cedar), as well as the nails and other items, were supplied by the client. Ghulam Arabi and his team came with the tools of their trade and their expertise.

The typical work day for them began after the morning prayers and ended with sundown. But though the work day was some five hours longer in summer, daily output tended to be the same throughout the year. The reason according to Ghulam Arabi was the debilitating heat of summer that reduced efficiency.

At the fishing village of Ibrahim Hyderi in Karachi, Ghulam Arabi had learned the science of building keeled marine engine-powered boats. Thereafter he had worked there a full eight years to master the craft. Subsequently he moved to Gwadar where he remained another couple of years working with another ustad. He worked at the two places in order to learn the subtle differences between the Baloch and the Sindhi design.

Time was when there were only single-masted sailboats plying the several fords on the Sindhu between Dera Ghazi Khan and Kashmore. Ghulam Arabi and his team built the last of those sailing boats in the later 1990s. Now there are only these small boats with the diesel engine that for some abstruse reason we call a ‘peter engine’ in Pakistan.

‘The sailing boat took five hours to cross the river. These little powered boats take three quarters of an hour. Now everyone is in a hurry and they just want to get wherever they are going.’

Ghulam Arabi said he had no complaints. Business had been brisk and there were still orders in hand for the coming months. I pointed out that one day a bridge will span this part of the river adversely affecting his business. What will he do then?

‘The fishermen of the Sindhi lakes as well as those of the seaboard will never go out of business. If it comes to the worst, we’ll have to move either to Karachi or to Gwadar. But we will carry on the profession we have followed since the time of Hazrat Nuh.’ Ghulam Arabi, the boatwright, was spot on. He and others like him will never run out of work.

The Musalla, at last!

2011-07-18T15:57:00.000+05:00

Salman Rashid

It is called Musa ka Musalla -- the Prayer Mat of Moses, and it is a 4055 metre high whaleback of a mountain forming the watershed between Kaghan valley in the east and Siran in the west. The first time I saw it was twenty two years ago from a hilltop in Abbottabad: being mid winter the mountain was glinting a brilliant white in its coat of virgin snow and I had remarked to my friend how it so fitted Melville's description of Moby Dick.

As mountains go this isn't even the kind that spawns heroes; it is too puny for real mountaineers to care about. In order to keep their skills honed for the great peaks further to the north, they would perhaps condescend to tackle it in midwinter when several metres of snow and ice make it a bit of a challenge. The Musalla really is meant for lowly mountain walkers like myself -- even so lowly mountain walkers are known to have failed on it.

In October '91 a friend and I tried climbing it only to discover that we had selected the wrong time of the year: the ridge leading up to the mountain was completely desiccated; but for a couple of filthy ponds, and to locate the few springs one had to be more than well acquainted with it. A second attempt was made in July '93 which was thwarted by the worst weather for many years and at one point, tormented by thirst, we decided never to return to the Musalla. But failure is one thing and giving up the mountain wold have been ignominious defeat.

Back in the comfort of my home I was again dreaming of making it to the top, only this time I knew we would have to do it early enough in the season when there would be some snow on the ridge. And so in mid June the most unlikely climbing group arrived in Shinkiari to haggle with Babu Khan, the jeep driver, over the price to Kund Rest House. It comprised of Javed Anwar (JA) the quiet, soft spoken engineer, Javed Buttar (JB) the brash lawyer full of risque stories from the bar room, and yours truly who would dearly have loved to term JB insufferable but for the fact that this would be a classic case of the pot calling the kettle black.

Not long afterwards our jeep was straining around the hairpin bends as it went higher and higher into the forested ridge until the paddy fields and houses in the Pakhli plain below us looked like a monochrome print through the smog and the afternoon light. And if we had thought mid June would be the "right season" for Kund (2500 metres) with plenty of water from some spring or the other, we were in for a surprise. No season is the right season at Kund. Its only water supply is a slimy tank (dicky in local lingo) that takes the run off from the roof and into which the rest house staff dip their buckets and lotas with total disregard for all principals of hygiene. The result is a thriving population of tiny red things writhing merrily about the tank. The staff bring their tumblers brimming out of it and drink them with complete sangfroid. We, however, restricted ourselves to our supply of mineral water.

Moreover, with Kund not exactly in very keen competition with corresponding places in Switzerland, the bearded chowkidar (who looks like he's taking time off from looting travellers on the Karakorum Highway) has not learned what is to be gained from being nice to tourists. He absolutely refused us the use of any of the drinking water that he was getting by the donkey load from some spring which, if one were to believe him, was somewhere near the Durand Line. However, when JB laid on the solicitor's finesse the man promised to organise a pack horse to get our gear to Shaddal Gali where we hoped to camp the following night.

Irfan, the fellow with the horse, arrived about seven in the morning and it seemed that he had the express orders of his elders never to smile. Either that or God in his infinite wisdom had considered it improper to furnish him with those facial muscles that make a smile -- rather like one of our retired cricketers. And to top it, he was a devious little sneak as I was to learn later.

The load was secured and we set out along the wooded crest of the ridge that runs into the southeast flank of Musa ka Musalla. Soon we had left habitation behind; now the only people we would meet would be Gujjar nomads on their way to the summer pastures in Kaghan valley. Being on the knife edge crest we had views both to the Kaghan and the Siran sides and on either side we could see several columns of smoke rising from the forest. These we naturally took to be forest fires set off by the unusually long dry spell.

Later we learnt that every June, just before the monsoon breaks, the locals set fire to the grass on the forest floor because, they believe, it grows lusher once the rains come. I don't know what all this burning does to the grass but it certainly ravages the environment: sure enough the distant mountains that in October three years ago had sparkled against a crystalline sky were all swathed in a formless grey cloud.

A pleasant three hour walk brought us to the fork where a trail leads down to the rest house of Shaheed Pani. I was a couple of hundred metres ahead of Irfan and his horse and the two Js were somewhere far behind when the man hailed me. "This is Shaddal Gali. This is as far as I had contracted to bring you," he said. It was just too bad that he did not know I had twice before walked this ridge and knew one place from the other. "Is that right?" I asked innocently. The man said it was and started to undo the load. That was when he got what was his due. I told him since he did not know Shaddal Gali I was going to show it to him so that he would not forget it in a hurry and Punjabi being the language it is, there was no ambiguity in the meaning.

In a sweat the man changed tack saying he had never come this far and did not know Shaddal (which was clearly a blatant lie) and since he considered me as venerable as an uncle (thank heavens for grey hair!), he would very willingly follow me to the ends of the earth. In another hour we were at Shaddal, a narrow saddle between two grassy knolls. On the nearer side a large rectangular heap of stones marked the grave of some unknown shepherd killed by raiders from the distant Kala Dhaka mountains near which a Gujjar tent flapped lazily in the breeze. On the far side a hill rose sheer and blocked the view to the north. To our left and right the mountainside fell sharply away to smoke laden valleys, levitating above which in the east was a line of snowy peaks.

Shaddal was a sort of pit stop on the route between Kaghan and Siran valleys and there was a constant coming and going with everybody stopping briefly for tea or a meal: the Gujjars were busily preparing lunch as we came in and soon afterwards were gone; a group of men were making tea; yet others were simply lounging in the warm sunshine before resuming their journeys. There were naturally stories to be told and questions to be asked and our gear to be examined. We were told, as countless before would have swapped the same tale, that a certain shepherd called Musa vowed a session of prayer on the top if Allah would grant him just one favour. The favour was granted and the man betook himself to the mountain. Others believe that it was none but the prophet Moses himself who came here to pray on this mountain.

It was also said that the Gujjars periodically took up their cattle to the shrine on top so that the animals could pay homage to whoever this Musa was. If this was true, it was without doubt a throwback to some long forgotten pagan cult that had been appropriately altered after the coming of Islam to this part of the sub continent.

At 3200 metres Shaddal Gali forms the apex of two wide couloirs on either side of the ridge and despite its height was rather warm so we set up camp on a slight eminence hoping to get the best of the gentle breeze. This was a patently foolish thing to do, more so since it came from me with the boast of "20 years of trekking experience". If that was folly, I don't know what it was when neither tent was secured with pegs. About ten at night the wind rose to a howling 40 knots and our tents began to flap wildly. It seemed the topography of the pass was funnelling the wind up to and over it, magnifying it almost to a storm.

No one could have slept in the din but I was jolted into full consciousness by a frantic call from JB's tent: it had flipped over and JA said I would have to handle this one alone. The tent had turned on its entrance trapping JB inside and was wedged against ours which had probably prevented it from rolling down the slope and carrying on down turning JB into the finest mince meat ever seen in Kaghan. That it had not set our own tent rolling was simply the greatest good fortune. I struggled against a banshee of a storm to deflate the outer fly-turned-parachute and when the tent was right side up JB helped me drive in the pegs. But that was all the sleep to be had that night, for lying in my sleeping bag I had visions of the storm intensifying, yanking the pegs out and sending us crashing down the mountainside.

Sometime towards morning the storm blew itself out and when I started breakfast at four, it was as quiet as death. JB opted to remain in camp and catch up on sleep and so with a light load of stove and tea things JA and I set out just as sunlight was beginning to creep down the mountainsides. The top of the hill that had blocked our view to the north was a wide grassy meadow with excellent views all round. Malika Parbat and Burawai Peak to the right looked deceptively benign and easily climbable in the morning light; Makra was thinly streaked with snow and ice. Straight ahead loomed the Musalla wreathed in nebulous mist beyond which was a great tangle of snowy peaks and to the left far across the Pakhli Plains was the purple ridge of the Kala Dhaka -- Black Mountain.

Within the hour we had descended to the saddle of Thandi Gali where the empty tent of another team of five trekkers told us that we weren't going to be the first to climb the Musalla this season. Snow lay thickly in the corries and there was ample water making this a better camping site than Shaddal at this time of the year.

Another hour and a half and we were at the saddle were my friend and I had turned back more than two years ago: a great crack cutting across the contours of the ridge, three hundred metres across and as much deep. Beyond the crack great patches of snow and ice gashed the ridge and far away at the base of the Musalla we could descry the colourful jackets of the five preceding us. But JA was beginning to flag, complaining of being drained because he had not eaten breakfast. I egged him on promising tea and biscuits just before the last push to the top. And tea we had as I watched in envy the five beginning their climb to the summit.

From a distance it had been difficult to assess the condition of snow on the ridge and now we discovered that traversing the snow slopes without ice axes and crampons was tricky business. But ice axes lying safely in Lahore were no good for the Musalla and I had no one to blame but myself for JA had wanted to bring them along and I had said we wouldn't be needing them! Presently we were confronted by a wide snow slope marked by the footsteps of the team ahead of us. I blundered right into these steps and half way across paused to look down. The slope fell clean away more than two hundred metres without a rock to punctuate the slide of the unfortunate trekker who would slip.

Needless to say that it was the kind of situation that could scare the living daylights out of me -- and it did. I leaned against the upward slope and scurried across shouting for JA to take it only if he really, really felt up to it. A little later I was confronted by another patch of snow and the only way to take this one on was to go straight up. This I did by kicking the toes of my boots into the snow and virtually running uphill until I was out of breath. Eventually I was in the maze of shattered rocks beyond which was only snow and ice. The slope again rose at a dangerous angle and knowing JA was tired I shouted for him not to come any higher for the fatal mistake is made only when the body is overcome with fatigue.

Spurred on by proximity to the crest that had twice before defied me the last bit was quickly done. And then I was on the edge of the flat top that stretched almost five hundred metres to the northwest. In the middle distance a cairn stood grey and stark above the white snow and far away the flags that mark the shrine of Musa ka Musalla fluttered in the wind. Even at midday the snow which lay about two metres deep was still firm and scrunched underfoot as I walked to the shrine.

Only four of the five other trekkers had made it to the top, one having succumbed to altitude sickness. I met them as they were returning and a quick photo session was done. Then I was alone in the consummate silence on the summit. The shrine itself was a large plinth of dressed stones topped by a platform made to look like a prayer mat; but it faced more to the north than the traditional west. Next to it was a small dugout which must have once been a room. Its timbers were burnt, presumably by some shepherd or mountain walker benighted on the windswept summit. I cast about for cow pats to confirm if cattle had ever been brought up to the shrine but found none. These, however, could easily have been concealed by the snow.

The ultra violet glare from the snow was intense (glasses were another implement I had left behind!) and there was no question of stopping long enough for the ceremonial cup of tea for fear of snow blindness. And so, in the tradition of all mountain walkers, having added my rock to the cairn I ran down the snow slopes to where JA was waiting with the others. At Thandi Gali JA opted to stay with them for tea but I hurried on and by four thirty I was back in camp where JB fed me noodles and tea while I screamed at him for not having organised drinking water during the day.

That night I slept so soundly that I did not even know when our tent came off its moorings and the two Js did it up again. After breakfast we made down the slope on the Kaghan side and within two hours were at the beautiful, tree shaded rest house of Nadi Bangla. The sound of running water, the first in three days, was like music to our ears and with it came the much needed bath, shave and change of clothing.

JA and JB fell in love with the setting of the rest house and wanted to stay. But my real objective, Musa ka Musalla, had been achieved and I only wished to get home as quickly as possible. After lunch the chowkidar pointed me in the direction of Kaagan wali Gali (Pass of the Crows) where he said I could get a jeep. But there was none, the nearest they said was at Jabra. There was not one but two jeeps at Jabra -- both waiting for repairs, and it seemed they would be waiting long.

The two brothers who ran the tea shop laughed and said it was pointless waiting for transport and if I kept to the foot trail I would be in Balakot well before sunset. By five I was at the bus stand looking back at Musa ka Musalla and Shaddal Gali, both swathed in the smoke from the grass fires. Twice before I had stood here in failure. Now the Musalla was mine.

Related: Salman Rashid in Solomon Range

Salman Rashid is author of eight travel books including jhelum: City of the Vitasta and The Apricot Road to Yarkand

Wanna ride a dinky in Lahore?

2011-07-12T11:17:00.001+05:00

A resident of Allama Iqbal Town, Lahore has stunned people with a collection of more than 4,000 dinkies (toy cars) at his home. A 39-year-old Aamir Ashfaq has been collecting dinkies for the last 31 years, consisting of various car models. Aamir claims that he has the biggest collection of dinkies in Pakistan. Passionate about his hobby, Aamir has designated a special room in his house to place the toy cars.

Aamir is married and has three daughters. Talking to Pakistan Today, he said that although his daughters were not much interested in cars collection but they help him while cleaning the dinkies.

Aamir’s dinkies have various interesting features including hoods, trunks, doors and fuel caps that open, ashtrays that slide out and glove compartments that work are some of the realised features. Some models of cars even have hanging ignition keys and removable hood pins to open the hood. Most have working steering and suspension with real materials used in interiors. Aamir said, “New models have always attracted me, whereas, Eidul Fitr, was the day full of excitement for me each year because car models were presented to me as Eid gifts from my parents. Similarly, I always preferred to purchase dinkies from my Eidy.”

Aamir has a variety of toy car models such as Chevrolet, Oldsmobile, Buick, Cadillac, Pontiac, Plymouth and Dodge, Mercedes Benz, BMW, Audi, Porsche, Volkswagen, Lamborghini, Ferrari, Alfa Romeo, Lancia, Maserati, Fiat, Peugeot, Renault, Citroen, Rolls Royce, Rover, MG, Austin Martin, Austin Healey, Lotus, Morgan, Land Rover, Range Rover, Honda, Nissan, Mitsubishi, Suzuki, Isuzu, Mazda, Toyota, Lexus, Subaru, Saab, Volvo, Holden, Ford, Hyundai and others.

Talking about his wishes, Aamir said, “It is my dream to drive the world’s fastest sports car Bugatti Veyron. This kind of treasure takes decades to build, hours and hours of care but if you have the passion then all that hard work brings pleasure and always keeps a smile of satisfaction on your face.”

Aamir also possesses antique cars such as Nascar, London Bus, London Taxi, American school Bus and Hollywood movies cars such as Knight Rider, Dukes of Hazard, Gone in 60, The Italian Job, Fast & the Furious Series, Back to the Future, the animated movie Cars and various cartoon characters. Aamir said that his parents always facilitated him in the collection of cars, especially his father told him about the matchbox dinky, made in the UK and Majorette dinky cars, made in France, which were easily available at super stores in Lahore worth Rs 10 in 1977-1978. The friction power Tin dinkies, made in Japan, were also available in Pakistan in the 70s at Rs 25.

Related: My Passion Collection

Degh River

2011-07-10T12:18:00.000+05:00

Salman Rashid

Long before he became the emperor of India, Jehangir, Prince Salim for all and sundry and Sheikhu for his father Akbar, used to go hunting in forested country some miles west of Lahore. Later, after a pet deer died, he ordered the building of a memorial tower as well as a water tank and pavilion. He also had a fort built nearby and called it either Jehangirpura or Jehangirabad. Today we know it as Sheikhupura after the emperor’s childhood name.

Aside: both the emperor’s names, that is, Sheikhu and Salim are after the saint Sheikh Salim Chishti for whom Akbar had great regard.

Like his father Akbar, Jehangir was a great exterminator of wildlife whose Tuzk (diary) lists at various places rosters of all the animals he bagged during his hunts. Indeed, without seeing the irony in it, subsequent to one hunt his diary complains of the paucity of his bag. But one supposes those were times when nobody connected dwindling wildlife with wanton hunting.

Toward the fag end of the monsoon of 1620, Jehangir was encamped with his wives and court at Jehangirabad. It was the month of October and the monsoon had not yet petered out. As the court began the short journey back to Lahore, the rains continued to fall. And they fell with a vengeance.

Now, the Degh River that rises in the hills below Jummu, flows past Sialkot and dumps itself into the Ravi south of Lahore, lies between Jehangir’s hunting lodge and Lahore city. As the royal caravan neared its banks, it was found to be a roaring, surging alluvial-red torrent. It was impossible to get across even astride the elephants. For four days the royal court was held up until the sodden tents became too much for the king and his family.

The rains eventually let up, the water receded and the procession passed on to Lahore. Those were days when monsoon rains were what young people today have never known. Indeed, anyone who cannot recall the rains of 1973 and again three years later takes a shower of fifteen minutes to be a monsoon shower. Those were days when the rain would not cease once it began. When it started to come down it would continue for days on end until the rivers flowed over their banks to flood farmland and cities.

To forestall a future repeat of the hold up on the Degh, Jehangir ordered the throwing of a bridge across the river that is normally fordable. To this day the bridge spans the river and serves as a connection between the village of Kot Pindi Das and the Lahore-Sheikhupura highroad.

Haroon, my young companion, and I asked for the umpteenth time for Kot Pindi Das before turning off the highway to the right (north). The new black-top road had not been there when I first went this way nearly twenty years ago. This branch lies just after one goes over the Degh River bridge heading for Sheikhupura and is about eighteen kilometres short of the latter. Kot Pindi Das is six kilometres from the turning and the bridge itself lies a kilometre southeast of the village.

We were joined by a trio of pre-teenage boys who said the bridge was probably built by the angrez. I smiled and by way of explanation the tallest among them said all such things had been done by the angrez, hadn’t they. When I told them the bridge was nearly four hundred years old and that was much before the angrez, they wanted to know how I knew. They had heard of the Chugattas – the variation of Chughtai by which the Mughals are known in parts of Punjab, but Jehangir was a name that rang no bells for them.

The bridge is actually two separate structures about thirty metres apart. The one to the south has two arches while the main structure is lop-sided with a main arch flanked by two smaller arches on one side and one on the other. And the once-good river Degh that flows beneath now stinks with dark untreated poison that it carries down from the factories of Kala Shah Kaku.

Yet buffaloes wallowed in the poison and I found myself wondering what sort of milk we would be getting in Lahore if they also drank the water. When I warned my three local companions against swimming in the river, the tall one said the river was good. A minute later he had stripped and was paddling about midstream.

Thirty years after this bridge was built, in October 1652, Shah Jehan face a similar situation as his father: the rains had persisted and the Degh was flooded. Only this time, the flood was so high that even the bridge was submerged. Once again the royal camp had to halt four days because ‘certain members of the forward party of the entourage had already been swept away …’

Floods in the Degh have passed out of living memory. Surely 1976 would have seen the swollen river almost touching the top of the arches. After that rains steadily dwindled away to a time that we now regard a fifteen-minute shower a proper fall of rain. Meanwhile, the bridge continues to serve. We saw tractors with trailers laden with sand or bricks going back and forth and I stood at a respectable distance regarding the crumbling foundations of the bridge piers.

There is a branch of the Degh called the Chhoti or Lesser Degh not many miles to the west. That too has a bridge; only that one collapsed, so they claimed, during the floods of 1976. Its debris lies in the bed of the stream and I cannot but wonder if overuse by laden trailers and lack of maintenance will one day cause the demise of this bridge during a similar flood that may yet come one day.

Nagar Valley

2011-07-07T22:05:00.000+05:00

This article also appeared at BootsnAll

Sometimes we know a journey will be a grand adventure. The three-week expedition this winter with my botanist friends, who were to carry out some fieldwork, to enchanted northern Pakistan was surprising. My friends were to work in the dispersal areas surrounding the Nagar Valley and I was content with stumbling into a wonderful experience of seeing a new valley I had only read about.

People from Baltistan who arrived over the mountains by crossing the Biafo and Hispar Glaciers might have been first to settle in Nagar, the former kingdom across the river from Hunza. A man called Borosh is said to have founded the first village in the Valley and married a Balti girl he found there. The legend has it that the girl and her grandmother were the sole survivors of a landslide that killed all the earlier Balti settlers in Nagar area.

Just beyond the Ganesh Bridge across the Hunza River, the jeep track leaves the Karakorum Highway to enter Nagar. The first few kilometres of this pathway are dry and barren, and then the path bifurcates: a branch crosses the Hispar River on a bridge and climbs up into the fertile villages of central Nagar. Trees that one sees here owe their existence to the human hands and the careful construction of irrigation channels by natives.

A trail to the Nagar Valley winds around the mountain, with splendid and ever-changing Himalayan views, arriving at a little village with apricot trees in bloom next to a huge glacier. Botanists say that the original genus of apricot, the ur-apricot (also walnut and rose), comes from this area or the nearby Pamirs. The climate is certainly ideal for them.

Located about 65 kilometres north of Gilgit, the capital of the Northern Areas, the Nagar Valley is a cluster of small hamlets. The Valley expands northwards from these villages, adding in their summer meadows, gorges and snow capped mountain ridges.

Nasirabad is the largest village in the area with about 400 households. It has grown since the opening of Karakorum Highway, which passes through Nasirabad. The other villages of the area are smaller, dotted amongst the tapestries of fruit trees, small fields and painstakingly structured fields. The people, forests, plants and wild animals have all adapted to find a niche within this unique environment. Nasirabad has one such spring that is famous for having excellent mineral water. The white marble mines in Nasirabad are known to be the second best in the world. Minerals like zumurrad and ruby are also found in and around the Valley and are on sale in shops for travellers mostly.

There is a cultural craft centre in Nasirabad where local women have been trained to produce local handicrafts. This is an important area of development, supporting local people. You can be sure that the purchases there are 100 per cent natural, meticulously hand made and directly benefiting the communities. Local handicrafts include woollen handbags and small purses, sharma (carpet), traditional mats, rugs, and bedspreads, caps, and pattu (cloth prepared from sheep wool used to make waist coats).

The only facilities on the route to the Valley are informal camping grounds and occasional huts of shepherds. Informed backpackers taking this route go fully equipped with tents and sleeping bags and other necessary accessories so that they can enjoy these unfrequented destinations or they have to rely on local help, which is found easily. You may find friendly locals with horses (and other offers) following at some distance, waiting for the call that you will make when tired.

And you are sure to make a call on Mayoon bar trail, the name given to one of the summer pastures above the village of Mayoon, leading up to Mayoon nullah. The hike passes through steep undulating areas along the valley side. In summers, pastures come to life and a whole variety of plants transforming the area into a green carpet dotted with colours. Shepherds live in their huts keeping a watchful eye on their stock. Easy access to get quality water from the torrents makes Mayoon Bar (and Rooi Bar) a wonderful camping location. Look out on the way for the birds of this area including chukar, jungle crow, yellow-billed chough and magpie. Also keep alert and you may be rewarded with a view of the Himalayan ibex or the snow leopard.

It is cold in the winter, with temperature below freezing point. Snows not only confined to the peaks and ridges but also decorating the trees of the Valley bottom, the area takes on a new and stunning beauty, making it worth braving the cold. The area used to be domain of snow leopards that are now on the verge of extinction. Winter visitors stand much better chances of seeing the prized wildlife of the area, as they venture down the slopes in search of food. Given its remarkably elusive nature, there are good chances to actually see one of these great creatures in the wild but the sighting of snow leopards depends almost totally on luck and luck most commonly favours at dawn or dusk during winters. It is also pleasing to see areas covered with thick flocks of birds and large herds of four-legged creatures roam free. If you have any capacity to wonder, you will experience wonder. I had no difficulty satisfying my addiction during my zigzagging in Nagar.

Few animals match the rare beauty and quite mystery of the snow leopard. Seldom do people see these animals in the wild. They live in remote pockets of Asia. The big cats differ in appearance, body types and functions, live in different habitat and prey on different animals. Scientists believe that the last ice age, which ended about 10,000 years ago, wiped out but a few species of big cats. The exact number of snow leopards is difficult to estimate as they live in rugged terrain and researchers mostly rely on indications of the animals rather than direct sightings. Snow leopards are superb jumpers and leapers. They can spring and pounce on prey that is up to 45 feet away. Some of them can still be found in the Nagar area.

A strategic plan for the conservation of snow leopards in Pakistan was presented on April 20, 2001 by an international NGO in collaboration with the International Snow Leopard Trust in Gilgit. The presentation was attended by a large number of potential partners and stakeholders. It was revealed there “the total remaining population of snow leopard (Panthera uncia) – a globally endangered species – is estimated around 7,000-10,000, out of which approximately 300 are found in Pakistan.” Some of the critical habitats of the snow leopard have been identified by the NGO and they plan to extend scope of activities by focusing on identifying critical habitats in NWFP, AJK and Northern Areas.

The plan also identified various threats to the survival of snow leopards. Based on these findings, various strategies were proposed, which could be implemented by both government agencies and the NGOs which are interested in big cats’ conservation. Only last winter, a young snow leopard was caught in Nagar Valley. Work of international NGOs to save different species of the big cats’ family in Iran’s Kavir Desert and Nakuru area in Kenya is a good example to follow.

The most dominant geological feature of the area is Rakaposhi, first climbed in 1958 and ranked among the world’s 50 highest peaks. The people of Nagar claim that they have the best view of their peak. And it is true, stunning views of both Rakaposhi and its sister peak, Diran, can be seen from the Valley. And downwards, towards the Hunza River and the tall thin poplars way below reminds one of the scales of the Karakorum Mountains.

“Tourism is like fire, you can cook your dinner on it but if you are not careful it will burn you house down,” an old Asian adage reads. Tourism is the largest and fastest growing industry in the world. It has significant environmental, cultural, social, and economic impacts both positive and negative. If undertaken responsibly, tourism can be a positive force for sustainable development, conservation and environmental protection. Whereas an unplanned tourism can be socially, culturally, and economically disruptive and have devastating effect of fragile environments. Northern areas, to a large extent, rely on the existence of attractive, uncrowned and clean destinations. These are often in environmentally fragile areas that are biologically significant and rich in wild life. In addition, these mountain areas have now also become the object of desire of a number of competing interests: resort hotels, polo tournaments, adventure tourism, and big game hunting. What the public as well private tourism sectors in Pakistan are aiming at is a common goal: the long term preservation of the natural environments.

Go to Nagar and you may still have a good probability to see the big cat, sometimes called the snow queen in addition to enjoying the diversity.

Asif Khan’s tomb

2011-06-29T19:54:00.000+05:00

Asif Khan’s tomb is situated among a group of monuments situated in what was once the Mughal Dilkusha Bagh (Heart-expanding Garden) in Shahdara.

The group includes a cluster of interlinked monuments of a serai forming the forecourt which leads on the east to the spectacular tomb of Emperor Jahangir, built by his celebrated wife Empress Noor Jahan, and on the west to a mosque and the tomb of Asaf Khan or Asaf Jah, one of the most powerful grandees at the courts of Jahangir and Shah Jahan. Close by is situated the tomb built to house the mortal remains of Empress Noor Jahan and her daughter Princess Ladli Begam.

A left turning from the Maqbara Road leads to the cluster marked by a double-storey imposing Mughal gateway. From here the route is by foot since the direct access since the entrances on three sides of his Chahar Bagh Rauza (paradisal garden mausoleum) were blocked in recent times. The route is to turn left towards the mosque in Chowk-i-Jilau Kham (Jahangiri Serai quadrangle).

A small door in the cloister immediately adjoining the mosque on the left (south) leads into the Asaf Jah Chahar Bagh, enclosed by a wall. As one emerges from the low-roofed cloister, they are struck by the high bulbous dome of the octagonal monument. The gateway is exactly like the gateway of the Akbari Serai, single storeyed in the centre and double storeyed on its flanks, with an internal flight of steps. Immediately behind this gateway is a canal about three feet wide which goes right up to the octagonal platform on which the mausoleum building stands. Remains of the canal, once supplied by a well, are still visible west of the southern gateway.

The walled garden around the mausoleum is a square with 800-foot sides. The tomb is a typical Mughal construction with a graceful high-pointed dome set on an octagonal base. Its huge arches were once fully lined with expensive floral Kashi work, but most of this is now gone, as is the chaste white marble facing of the dome. There were once four fountains at the four cardinal points on the plinth around the tomb. Both the platforms were made of red sandstone inlaid with white marble in the style of Jahangir's tomb. The interior was adorned with pietra-dura work. Eight doors had glittering bronze gates with finely wrought metallic motifs. From the dome hung expensive chandeliers. All these were removed by the Sikhs and sent to Amritsar to decorate the Darbar Sahib. The cenotaph of Asaf Khan is made of white marble and inlaid with decorative motifs and inscription. The actual grave was in the form of Jahangir's grave, but it was uprooted by Ranjit Singh in a search for treasure. The floor around the grave today is brick-paved. Inside, there are remains of stucco decoration. A gallery runs along all eight sides. The arched openings at the gallery level have a double frame made of rope molding in white stucco featuring cloud-like knots on stems. The floral arabesque is an exquisite example of the geometrical arrangement of natural forms.

A set of stairs on the western side leads to a gallery, and thence via another flight of steps to an ambulatory placed between the drum of the dome and the huge parapet wall, 12 feet high and 3-4 feet thick. At each end of the base of the octagonal parapet there are two small arched openings to disperse rain water. Two door-like arched openings at a height of about 8 feet in the shell of the dome are located on the northwest and southeast. The tomb of Asaf Khan provides a very clear example of double-dome construction. At the base, the drum is a circular or true dome about 3 feet in height. Above this, the drum transforms into a 24-sided drum. The height of this storey is about 10 feet. The original dome was a bulbous structure like those of the Badshahi Mosque or the Taj Mahal in Agra, for which it served as a prototype, but its apex was destroyed by the Sikhs when they pulled off the marble slabs. Its current conical vertex shape does not represent the Mughal style.

Although today but a shadow of the once grand edifice as a befitting permanent abode of the closest confidante of Shah Jahan, the tomb was built by the emperor himself at a cost of Rs 3 lakhs.

When Asaf Khan died in November 1641, he is reputed to have left behind "a colossal fortune," his house in Lahore alone having cost Rs 20 lakhs at the time of its construction. Employed by the Iranian court in Tehran, Asaf Khan went bankrupt and migrated to India in 1546. Sheer good luck brought him to the court of Akbar, where he became a distinguished lawyer and became the emperor’s brother-in-law when Jahangir married his sister, Noor Jehan. In 1612 his daughter Mumtaz Mahal (the title given to Arjumand Bano Begam), in whose memory the world-famed Taj Mahal was built, was married to Shah Jahan. Referred to as 'my adopted son (farzandi)' by his brother-in-law Jahangir, Asaf Khan rose to unprecedented heights, achieving the status of commander of 9,000 personnel and 9,000 horses, a mansab once reserved only for royal princes. Shah Jahan granted him the title of Yamin-ud-dawla and appointed him sipah-salar or commander-in-chief. Asaf Khan was not only instrumental in securing the Mughal throne for Shah Jahan in the struggle for succession, but the latter relied implicitly on the taste and judgment of his father-in-law whenever erecting his monumental architectural tour de force for which his reign became so famous. [Pakistan Today June 29, 2011 issue]

On the Apricot Road to Yarkand

2011-06-27T08:19:00.000+05:00

Is there anything more beguiling than a true tale of high adventure well told? Stories about places like Pakistan and China sides of Muztagh Pass, braving difficult odds under overwhelming conditions in far flung locales, relating to people of Pakistan and Chinese Turkistan who had been in the area centuries ago, can keep anyone glued to The Apricot Road to Yarkand by Salman Rashid.

The Apricot Road to Yarkand is a spellbinding tale of journey from Shigar Valley to Yarkand in the North, over the glaciated Mustagh Pass by Salman Rashid. The author is master of conveying what seems to be going on in his heads in gripping prose that is never clichéd.

First, a word about the author. Salman Salman is Pakistan's foremost travel writer. His passion for writing is matched by his passion for photography. His research, range of visual subjects and narratives make a remarkable combination. In addition to eight travel books, his work appears in leading English language journals. In The Apricot Road to Yarkand, Salman Rashid has also told how he switched his career in the army to become a full time researcher and a writer. (I keep thinking how Salman Rashid would have been in appreciating tactical situation on battle grounds if he was still in army?)

Salman Rashid is a historian in the truest sense. He writes from a knowledge standpoint as opposed to a position biased toward the dominant paradigm and its conquests. A moving writer, Salman reminds the heart of its search for power in a world which has forgotten its purpose for existence. As usual, Salman Rashid, 54 when he undertook the journey, delivers a ton of current information all based on historical research. No one else seems to have half the energy of this man. What is more, Salman Rashid is currently translating the book into Urdu language.

In The Apricot Road to Yarkand, Salman Rashid recounts his journey from Shigar Valley to Yarkand and he does so in frank and honest terms. Result of sixteen years of dreaming about everything that sits on the historic route from Baltistan to Yarkand, The Apricot Road to Yarkand is an epic to the essence of exploring mountains, but it is also about of the cultural, geological, and biological make up of mountains, people of that area, human behavior in difficult situations, and history and about joy of about watching purple-gray clouds spreading out like an atmospheric ocean in all directions as far as the eye can see.

Alan Hovaness once wrote, "Mountains are symbols of mankind's search for God," and Allen Ginsberg told us, "Things are symbols for themselves." In The Apricot Road to Yarkand, Salman Rashid allows the mountains to be symbols of the seeking soul and at the same time symbols of themselves - they are encountered as we internalize them in our quest, and they are encountered as they really are: cold, hard, lonely, mighty and sometime hazardous.

The Apricot Road to Yarkand inspires its readers to explore the less explored areas and experience for themselves what only a few had the fortune to discover. Well-written and wonderfully presented, the book is a must read for anyone remotely interested in mountains, adventures or for those who want to find out why a chunk of land was handed over to our best friends. I highly recommend it.

Fellow of Royal Geographical Society, Salman Rashid is author of eight books including jhelum: City of the Vitasta

Also at Logic is Variable and Light Within

The world is a slippery place

2011-06-24T10:16:00.000+05:00

The world is a slippery place; Tread carefully for ‘tis dark; - Bulleh Shah

Colour of the sand

2011-06-18T10:05:00.000+05:00

Salman Rashid

In February 2006, freewheeling around Sanghar district in Sindh I ended up in the village of Ranahu. Now Sanghar is nearly equally divided between barrage-irrigated farmland and sand desert. What makes the desert remarkable in this region is the texture of sand. While southward in, say, Mithi or Umarkot districts (of the erstwhile vast Tharparker district), the sand is dark gray and hard packed, it is light in colour and texture. Here the sand dunes are rippled.

Because of the pale colour of the sand, this part of the Thar Desert is called Achhro (White) Thar. The flowering trees were here too mobbed by purple sunbirds and babblers whistled from the thorny thickets, but I did not see any peacocks that usually run across your path in Tharparker to the south.

Ranahu, caught amid high rippled dunes was idyllic. The well was its centre of activity and in the two days I spent in the village, I never found it idle: there were always two or three men working it either to fill large canvas bags fitted on camels for domestic use or topping up the watering trough for the livestock.

The water was drawn in a sort of bucket made from old tractor inner tubes which brought up around fifty litres at a time. Since the well was about a hundred metres deep (that’s three hundred feet!), it was difficult to pull up the bucket manually. Consequently, a camel was used to raise it from the unseen depth. One man drove the camel with the rope attached to it, while the other minded the bucket as it came up and emptied it into the various containers lined up by the brink.

Out of curiosity I spoke with the men at the well and learned that having to spend the livelong day at this tedious chore, they were good for nothing else. They could not go to the city for work nor could they mind the livestock grazing out on the range. There being no agriculture, livestock was the only source of income here. Though they had plenty of milk, butter, ghee and lassi, they annually sold a part of their herds to purchase other food items to make life go. Livestock was therefore their very lifeline.

Recently I returned again; this time with a friend from Sindh Agriculture and Forestry Workers Coordinating Organisation (SAFWCO). Between my first visit and now, SAFWCO and Pakistan Poverty Alleviation Fund (PPAF) had joined hands to gift a wind turbine to the people of Ranahu. The simple device was connected to a pump on a deep bore and a pipe emptying the delivery into a large masonry water tank. Overflow from the tank went by a lined channel to a nearby watering trough where camels and goats were drinking.

As against the old well, there was no one minding the wind turbine. It worked by itself. Children came with plastic buckets to fill at the water taps on the tank and animals slaked their thirst at the trough. Hathi Singh whose guests we were to be overnight, came around to tell me one startling thing which had not occurred to me at the time of my first visit five years ago.

Every family had two men engaged in the water chore. In winters with lower water requirement the work was easier, but summers were a blur of engagement at the well. From daybreak until after sundown, two men from each family were at the well, either drawing water or waiting their turn for it. That, said Hathi, left only boys to mind the grazing livestock.

Now, the desert is home to the wily fox. Indeed, as we were driving in we had come across two at different times that quickly trotted off behind some bushes. Boys being boys and a little irresponsible, they failed to mind the livestock as mind they should. Since they were not always paying attention, foxes took a sizeable toll of suckling kids. Hathi Singh said it was not unusual for a livestock owner to lose every year up to as many as a dozen kids to the prowling foxes.

This was a major setback when livestock was their only source of income. But there was nothing for it. They were caught between a rock and a hard place: the men could not leave the well to go either with their animals or to the city to seek work.

Hathi Singh told me that the wind turbine was installed in 2007 and in the past four years, the number of animals sold has jumped up on average by forty percent for each livestock owner. I thought that was an exaggeration, but then others like Khan Mohammad Rajar from a neighbouring village (also with a wind turbine) confirmed.

Hathi had other statistics too. He said the maintenance of the old well cost about three thousand rupees annually. In comparison, the leather washer of the piston in the bore needed changing once every three months. In the beginning they got a man from Hathungo (the nearest town) who charged six hundred rupees to come out to fix it.

But the men of Ranahu watched him work. Just by looking they now have three trained pump mechanics and they do the job themselves. Not only they have acquired a new skill, but the repair now costs only one hundred rupees.

There is now the dream of getting another wind turbine, perhaps somewhat larger for a greater delivery of water, to turn the troughs between the dunes arable. I observed that may be a long way off and Hathi said there was no harm in dreaming. If I return in another few years’ time, I may find Ranahu completely transformed. Who knows, as Tharparker in the south has become a tourist destination, Achhro Thar too might if some enterprising goat farmer sets up a two-room doss house with his savings from livestock sales. And all because a simple wind turbine and pump were installed in the village.

Where is this heaven in Pakistan

2011-06-14T12:47:00.000+05:00

No, it is not in mountains. Read here and find out.

Network!: Pakistan’s First International Social Media

2011-06-14T12:45:00.003+05:00

Pakistan’s Golden Thrones

2011-06-05T13:39:00.002+05:00

Tommy Heinrich, a photographer for the National Geographic Magazine and a mountaineer from Argentina, launched his book of photographs from mountains of Pakistan on Saturday at the Governor’s House.

The book titled Pakistan’s Golden Thrones is a joint effort by the Argentinean Embassy, Bago Laboratories, Argentina and Ferozsons Laboratories Limited, Pakistan.Ferozsons CEO Osman Khalid Waleed also spoke on the occasion while Argentinean Ambassador to Pakistan Rodolfo Martin Saravia and Punjab Governor Latif Khosa also addressed the function.All of them endorsed the collaboration between the two countries for this cultural experience and to show the beauty of Pakistan’s natural landscapes.

They concurred that this cultural exchange was an ‘excuse’ to strengthen bilateral relations. Heinrich, who is the first Argentinean to climb the Mount Everest, told Pakistan Today that this was his sixth visit to Pakistan and he was very impressed and awestruck by the beauty of the mountains, which fringed the northern borders.

“I made my first visit in 1997 and since then I have been under the spell of Pakistani mountains. Other than Pakistan I have also climbed mountains in Nepal,” he said.

“I began to then compile my pictures that I had taken there and to bring them in book form and though it was no easy task to select these pictures, I was supported by my countrymen. I am thankful to Pakistan for letting me see these places and to experience them and make them part of my life,” the photographer said.

Summits of K2 are yet other places that he has been to. “K2 was a lot more difficult than Everest in that it was much steeper and more dangerous to climb,” he revealed. “At times it got really dangerous and I did feel nervous and scared; other times we braved on.

Up there, there is a lot of air pressure, mist and it is extremely cold,” he said. Heinrich has managed to climb around 8,000 metres of K2, and says that he includes it in one of his biggest achievements.

About Tommy Heinrich: Tommy Heinrich was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He began climbing at an early age in northern Patagonia and the high mountains of the Andes. After graduating with a degree in Animal Sciences, Tommy departed for the US, from where he traveled for over 15 years throughout the world combining his passion for photography and climbing the highest and remotest mountains.

He has also been on an assignment for the National Geographic Magazine, where he photographed a Polish team doing a winter ascent of Nanga Parbat, located in Pakistan, which at 8.125 meters is the 9th highest mountain in the world. In 1995, he became the first person from Argentina to reach the summit of Mount Everest. Along with Brad Bull from the US, Apa Sherpa, Nima Rita, Arita and Lobsang Jangbu Sherpa, from Nepal they were the only six people to reach the summit of Everest through the South Col route during the entire 1995.

Member of 10 Himalayan expeditions, he is the only person from Argentina to reach the summit of Lhotse, the fourth highest mountain in the world. In 1993, he did a solo ascent of Cholatse in Nepal, a 22,000 feet mountain in the Everest region. He has done several successful ascents of Aconcagua, the first one Solo in 1992. He has also done several first ascents of unnamed peaks in the Andes region. Through the years, he has done many alpine and rock climbing ascents in the US, Thailand and Argentina.

Heinrich has done many big wall ascents in California's Yosemite Valley, El Capitan, Half Dome, Liberty Cap and many other challenging rock routes in the valley. He was hired to photograph and also film expeditions to Mt. Everest, Dhaulagiri and Aconcagua by CBS, Dish Network, and Canal 13 from Argentina. Heinrich’s film footage was shown on CBS, Discovery, CNN, Univision and most TV networks in Argentina. While working with photographer Doug Menuez, he assisted in commercial photo shoots for Versace, ABN Chicago Bank, Ford Motors Ltd, Levis Strauss, Verizon and others.

He has documented both on film and photo, World Polo Championships in Argentina, England and France. He attended Rich Clarkson's photography workshops given by National Geographic and Sports Illustrated staff, specializing in nature, adventure and sports photography. His photographs have been published in catalogs and magazines in the US, Argentina and Europe.

Dolly Good

2011-05-29T15:20:00.003+05:00

Thatta Kedona Dolls House

About Salman Rashid

2011-05-17T12:41:00.000+05:00

“The panoply that Salman Rashid paints through his pen and his photography is simply breathtaking- a delight for the connoisseur and general reader alike,” writes Agha Akbar, Editor Sports and Magazine Pakistan Today.

The author of several books (The Apricot Road to Yarkand, Riders on the Wind, Between two Burrs on the Map, Prisoner on a Bus, Jhelum: City of the Vitasta, and Sea Monsters and the Sun God) and hundreds of travel pieces that have appeared in most List A newspapers and magazines, Salman Rashid is a travel writers travel writer, by far the best in the country.

Though there are many in Pakistan, both in English and vernacular languages, with claims to be masters of the genre, what makes Salman the standout by a distance is that his is no ordinary travel writing. One only calls it such as a matter of convenience, or perhaps for wan of an expression capable of summing up his piece in one work. In effect, what Salman gives you is substance that goes far beyond a travel piece, for he just doesn’t write about places of landscapes. Each of his pieces is a free flowing specimen, with most knowledgeable description of people, customs, history, legends and yes, anthropology woven into the story - and in language that is fluent and crisp, and also at places containing a fair dose of humor and sarcasm. The panorama that he presents turns most of his work into literary master piece.

Another aspect of Salman’s work is the accompaniment of his landscape photography, which is not merely a visual delight but also, as aptly described in the flap, “replicates, as lucidly, the spatial notations and ambience he articulates in words”.

The panoply that Salman paints through his pen and his photography is simply breathtaking- a delight for the connoisseur and general reader alike. [Extract from Logic is Variable]

Hassan Sadpara on Mount Everest

2011-05-12T12:36:00.000+05:00

Pakistani mountaineer and adventurer, Hassan Sadpara, reached the summit of Mount Everest on May 11. The expedition was launched by the Alpine Club of Pakistan (ACP) under the patronage of President Asif Ali Zardari. The expedition team left Islamabad for Nepal on March 30. Hassan, 48, is a native of Skardu who has also climbed five mountains of over 8,000 metres in height including K2, Nanga Parbat, and Broad Peak.

Hassan Sadpara is the second Pakistani who has hoisted Pakistani flag on Mount Everest.

Life

2011-05-04T11:02:00.003+05:00

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2011-04-23T15:39:00.000+05:00

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In Karachi

2011-04-22T12:00:00.000+05:00

A man peels Neem twigs at a sidewalk in Karachi. Branches of the Neem tree are commonly used as traditional toothbrushes for medical purposes. – Photo by Reuters

In the Karakoram

2011-04-21T13:35:00.000+05:00

With the advent of the higher temperatures of spring, vegetation in the valleys and meadows of the Karakoram comes to life in a frenzy of colour. Because of the distinct temperature regimes that exist due to differing altitudes, this phenomenon continues for several months with the wild flowers in the higher ablation valleys being the last to flourish en mass.

The photographs you see here are taken at and around the villages of Shayar, Askurdas and Sumayar in Nagar at altitudes ranging from 2,000 to 2,300 metres. Askurdas, translated from the Burushaski, means “plain of flowers”. The white blossoms are cultivars of apricot and pear while the pinks are two distinct cultivars of cherry.

The profusion of blossoms indicates a vast quantity of fruit to the extent that livestock too feed on the produce. However, due to the lack of infrastructure it rots rather than provide an alternate avenue of resources generation.

Batholith Saltoro is a miner grateful for the opportunity to lay waste to beautiful regions of this very Earth and to pollute pristine watersheds. [Dawn]

Of those quaint rest houses

2011-04-20T09:00:00.000+05:00

Salman Rashid

My friend Kashif Noon called to tell me of a string of forest rest houses stretching from Kallar Sayidan southeast of Rawalpindi all the way to Murree by the road less travelled through Kahuta and Lehtrar. He had heard of them on the good authority of a certain Rizwan Mehboob.

According to Kashif, Rizwan, while serving in the Forest Department nearly twenty years ago, had become very well acquainted with the rest houses and the lore attached to them. It would be useful to travel discover these little known rest houses, some of which owing to a lack of maintenance are now ruinous and may soon be lost forever.

And so, because Kashif can never start on time in the morning, we left Rawalpindi an hour late. Turning off the Islamabad Highway for the Sihala-Kahuta highroad, we were soon at the latter place to stop at the forest Department office in order to peruse one of those old diaries written by officials of the department. Some of these, Rizwan had earlier said, went back to the early years of the 20th century.

Instead we picked up a very talkative sub-divisional forest officer whose name is withheld to protect the guilty. And guilty he was for even now being enamoured of the accursed alien eucalyptus. Now, years since the government has banned eucalyptus, it is people like him who are yet incapable of recognising the damage this imported species has done to our land. The man was in favour of planting it on good farmland as a cash crop. He did not know of the wretched experiment carried out in Mitha Tiwana near Khushab.

Funded by an international donor agency, this 1990s project had, over five years, promoted a mono-culture of eucalyptus on farmland. The pipe dream fed to local farmers was that a paper mill projected to be set up in a nearby district would lap up all these trees making the farmers millionaires. The mill owner absconded with the loan and farmers were left with the trees that they eventually got rid of for as little as a hundred rupees each.

When they went back to their usual crops, the farmers discovered that their produce had fallen to less than half of what it once was. Most of them just barely literate, they did not know that eucalyptus leaf litter had damaged their land, nor too did were they aware that this baneful pest’s root exudates destroy fertility. And here we had an ‘expert’ who would much rather remove all indigenous species to replace them with this imported blight. He was coming with us as a counter-balance to Rizwan’s good sense.

As a junior forest officer Rizwan spent four years walking every inch of the Murree-Kahuta Forest Division to prepare the last ever Working Plan. Of that later, but first a word on the division: after they started building the bomb which should have protected us from all and sundry and which we have ended up protecting with our lives, first from the Indians and now from Al Qaeda, the forest was re-designated Murree-Rawalpindi North Forest Division. Someone somewhere thought that by wiping out the name Kahuta, they would obliterate the place from human memory as well as from the satellite maps that the Jewish-Hindu lobby possessed.

As for the working plan, this was instituted back in the middle years of the 19th century when the British first established the various forest departments. Rizwan, all admiration for the systems those men had established, said they treated the forest as a living entity. They knew a healthy pine (Chir or Pinus roxburgii) lived up to a hundred years and they divided this span into four parts. The first twenty-five years, the tree was a child, the next quarter it was in its youth. From fifty to seventy-five it was a mature tree and could be felled. Thereafter it entered old age.

Those long-forgotten forest officers laid down that no tree would be felled in the first quarter of its life. In the second, only thinning was permitted to remove weak trees. In the last two quarters, the tree was used for resin extraction or could be harvested for timber. Even in the last case, cutting was meticulously planned. In an acre, says Rizwan, five or six mature and healthy trees were permitted to stand while the others were removed. These were ‘mother trees’ for regeneration of the forest.

An over-crowded forest of this species of pine will contain only mature or over-mature trees. And that was how the first British foresters found it and devised the Punjab Shelterwood System and a hundred-year cycle for the Chir pine. Because this tree sheds its needles to lay a thick mat on the floor, a crowded forest can create a carpet so dense that seeds cannot germinate. That necessitated thinning of the forest which followed a thirty-year Working Plan.

The question then is what happened when there were no foresters to intervene? Then, forest fires took control. In the dry, hot months, the carpet of parched needles would spontaneously catch fire. The nutrient rich ash and humus would then percolate into the ground to revitalise it and any new seeds hitting the forest floor thereafter would easily take root. Thus, so said Rizwan, a healthy forest was not a crowded forest of aged trees. It was the one that had trees of various ages and a floor sufficiently clear of tree detritus to permit regeneration.

The last Working Plan in the Murree-Kahuta Forest Division was prepared in the early 1990s. And it was Rizwan, then a young forester, who spent four years roaming every inch of this good land working on it. But by then ‘conservation’ had become a buzzword on the tongues of people who scarcely understood conservation and felling was banned. The Working Plan was put on hold and since then the Forest Department has worked on ad hoc day to day planning. Meanwhile, the forest will by and by turn into a living fossil with over-mature trees and little or no regeneration because of the floor being covered with a thick mat of dead needles.

Our first rest house of call was Rajgarh. From Kahuta with the eucalyptus forester with us, we had taken the highroad to Kotli in Kashmir and had to ask where to turn off the road for Rajgarh. About a kilometre off the road, we were forced to abandon Kashif’s jeep and walk the rest of the way. A man coming the other way said it would take us half an hour to reach the rest house. We took about ten minutes and Kashif said he must have taken our paunches into consideration.

Beautifully set on a flat piece of ground amid wooded hills with a stream flowing below it, this was where Rizwan stayed many nights when he was doing the Working Plan in 1991. Today it is a roofless hulk; the victim of neglect that is endemic to most government departments. Though there was no plate on the premises, I suspected this one would have been built in the first or second decade of the 20th century and just a little tender maintenance would have kept this romantic little place serviceable. But, no, we had to let it go to pot.

As we were leaving Rizwan also spoke of another rest house, a haunted one, where a young forest guard, Niaz, had been murdered. The poor man’s mother still haunts the surroundings and every night wails, ‘Vay puttar Niaz, kithay ai!’

Rizwan said he had heard her back in 1991. I said we ought to spend a night at that one and perhaps tell the woman she should be looking for her son where she herself now resides. But it turned out that the rest house in question was also now a ruin. Kashif suggested we come with our tents and camp out to update the old woman. Rizwan smiled benignly and advised us to be kind. That was what he said every time I launched on one of my many censorious orations.

When the Brits built these rest houses, they paced them at every sixteen miles, the distance a sahib on inspection could easily cover on horseback in a single day and arrive well before nightfall. But with motor transport coming into its own, these distances became redundant and many of the rest houses lost their importance. Within three quarters of an hour of leaving the ruined hulk of Rajgarh we had fetched up at Panjar.

A right lovely little building it was and shaded by, among others, spreading mango trees. At 840 metres above the sea we found them somewhat peculiar. Rizwan said these were not unusual and that he had seen mango and jamun trees in this forest at several places. Time was when people planted these trees because they knew better. Now idiots rule the roost not only on private properties, but also from the Parks and Horticulture to the Forest Department and we have either eucalyptus or all sorts of imported species of trees.

Today nobody, not even these so-called experts heading the various departments, understand that native species should take precedence over all others. Today, having failed to transform this good land into Australia with an over-abundance of eucalyptus, we suffer from the sickness of turning it into everything save what it really is. We are now going overboard with all sorts of exotic species at preposterous prices. If we had any sense at all, we would be planting this land with what has always grown here and what comes free.

As we sat in the mellow afternoon sun, the keeper of the rest house came around to chat. He was surprised that Rizwan knew so much about forestry and asked why and how. Rizwan said he had once worked for the department before moving on in life. The man next wanted to know what Rizwan did now. This dervish among us lesser men hedged shy of telling the chowkidar who he really was. I could not keep myself and blurted out that our friend was the DCO Chakwal currently on leave.

Built in 1902, Panjar rest house was in perfect condition – just the getaway for a few days. The only drawback was the red and white telephone tower right besides it. But thankfully it made no noise; it simply stood their looking as ugly as death. But now word is that someone in one of these tourism development corporations has come up with the bright idea of taking over these largely disused buildings to turn them into resorts. This will be the most foolish thing to ever be permitted. And as certainly as night follows day, it will happen in this blighted land.

We have seen what TDCP did to pristine Kallar Kahar in the Salt Range. The lake shore is infested with rides of all kinds and there are boats let loose in the lake. The migratory ducks that paused there twice every year no longer visit it. In their mindless bid to encourage tourism, the corporation has killed one little piece of ecology.

We can be assured that once they get their hands on these rest houses of this less travelled road, the surrounding trees will be chopped down to make way for the rides. The mango trees that have overseen so many changes to their world will be lost, and so too the pines. In this verdant place the rest house will stand out like a lonely waif in the midst of an ugliness of shuttering and cables.

Will it be asking for too much to encourage not the ride-seeking kind of madness, but eco-tourism? That is, people visit these places to enjoy the bird song and the solitude. And to look up into a velveteen sky studded with stars like they have never seen before. We have examples from neighbouring India where such facilities have been opened up for the public with plenty of good sense. Why cannot we follow suit? If the Forest Department relents and permits whichever tourism development corporation wishes to ruin these lovely retreats, it will be guilty of a great crime against the environment. But I fear the worst will happen.

Having started late from Rawalpindi, we had to drop the other rest houses. The last on our itinerary this day was Lehtrar. Only six months earlier I had been here and well remembered the hordes of butterflies that flitted about painting rainbows as they went. But in early November, they were gone. We lounged on the veranda waiting for the lunch that Rizwan had asked to be cooked on a wood fire. I must concede that wood smoke does give a distinct flavour to the food.

We turned back for Rawalpindi at the end of this unfinished journey. There were still three other rest houses to check out. And there was the one where the inconsolable old mother still sought her son in the dark of night. We resolved to return one day soon to complete the circuit.

Fellow of Royal Geographical Society, Salman Rashid is author of eight books including jhelum: City of the Vitasta and The Apricot Road to Yarkand.