Under police protection

Day 11 - Hyderabad to Sukkur

Leaving the hotel today we were joined by our police escort, a few policemen in a beaten up old police truck. Having a police escort was a definite advantage in the heavy traffic, as cars would let them through while we followed closely behind.

Our first stop was Dargha Hazrat Shah Latif Bhittai, the birthplace of a famous Sufi mystic and poet. It was still early so most of the shops in the small market street leading to the shrine weren't yet open. 

 

 

We had arrived just as a group of musicians was warming up, so after exploring the shrine we stayed and listened to the Sufi music for a while.

  

We drove on to the town of Selwan, making our first crossing of the Indus River along the way, stopping for lunch then visiting the Shrine of Lal Shahbaz Qalandar, one of the most important Sufi shrines in Pakistan, with a mausoleum dedicated to the 13th century Muslim and Sufi saint. The police pointed out marks in the marble floor right net to the tomb that were made by a suicide bombing in 2017, where 88 people were killed.

 

Our visits for the day complete, we finished with a four hour drive to the RT Grace Hotel in Sukkur, our home for the next two nights. Now that we were under police "protection", we were not allowed to leave the hotel, so the negative aspects of police being required to escort us were becoming apparent.