Making a racquet

Day 13 - Sukkur to Bahawalpur

It was an early start as we briefly gave our police escort the slip to run across the road from our hotel to get a good view of the Sukkur Barrage, used to control the largest irrigation network of its kind in the world. It looks like a bridge but is a long series of gates that can be used to control the flow of water from the Indus River to the many canals built to support the surrounding farmland. Built in the 1920s it is quite an impressive engineering feat, especially considering its size and location.  

A couple of minutes further by bus found us at a viewing point where we hoped to see an Indus river dolphin. K was lucky enough to see one come to the surface of the murky brown water, M had wandered off to see what else was around the area so missed it. 

It was then a long drive (stopping along the way for an icecream while the bus was being refuelled), our police escorts changing every hour or so as we left one police district and entered the next. We left Sindh province to enter the Punjab region and arrived at Uch Sharif, a historic city founded by Alexander the Great. 

We visited the Shrine of Hazrat Syed Jalaluddin Surkh-Posh Bukhari, devoted to a Sufi saint and missionary. 

After leaving the shrine we walked a short distance to a monument complex that included the very Tomb of Javindi Didi. From one side the building was very impressive, octagonal in shape and decorated with distinctive blue tiles from the city of Multan. Walking around to the other side of the monument showed that it was really only half a building, as some of it had been washed away in floods in the 1800s.

The complex contained a number of smaller tombs and mausoleums, all impressively decorated with blue tiles from the city of Multan. We later found that the complex wasn't that easy for foreigners to visit after we met some workers from the UN who hadn't completed all of the correct paperwork beforehand and were denied entry.   

From there it was a late lunch then a drive to Bahawalpur where we checked in to our hotel around 4:30pm, a little earlier than normal. As it was still daylight and we were once again confined to the hotel grounds, M took part in a game of badminton on the lawn with our British travel companions while K looked on from her vantage point in our hotel room.