Ancient Civilizations

Day 12 - Sukkur

Today we were headed to the ruins of Mohenjo-daro, one of the world's earliest major cities which was built around 2500 BC, during the same period as the more well known civilizations like Egypt and Mesopotamia. Our route meant we were backtracking slightly, but as the accommodation options in the closer city of Larkana weren't great we'd stayed in Sukkur instead.    

A lot of sugar cane is grown in the Indus River valley, so along the way we stopped to visit a roadside sugar extraction operation. Two boys fed sugar cane stalks into a petrol driven crusher, and the resulting liquid was boiled in a large pan over a wood fire to extract the raw sugar. The resulting product was sold from nearby table. A little further on we visited a rice harvesting setup, where the cut rice plants were threshed by hand to extract the rice grains.  

After entering Mohenjo-daro we stopped for a look at the museum, then walked through the nicely maintained gardens to see the ruins, which covered quite a large area. Not all of the brick buildings and structures had been excavated, with progress on excavation being hampered by a lack of funds as well as a need to protect what had already been exposed.

After a short guided tour we had some time to explore the ruins on our own, and as the morning progressed a lot of locals had entered the gardens, it seemed to be a place that families and groups visited for an outing or a special occasion. Once again K and other women in our group were quite popular, especially with school age girls and young teenagers.

Lunch was next served to us in a room next to the museum, we them headed off with our ever-present police escort to Kot-Diji Fort, which is close to some more ancient ruins from around the same period as Mohenjo-daro but was actually built in the 1780s. 

After walking through the elephant proof doors fitted with huge iron spikes we walked up the ramp to the upper level with soldier's barracks and the small regal residence where some of the original wall decorations were still visible. There were some great views from the fort walls of the surrounding area. 

After that it was back to Sukkur for another night safely locked behind the walls of our hotel.