Would you like to say a few words?

Day 16 - Multan

We started the day with a visit to the Tomb of Hazrat Shah Rukn-e-Alam, the mausoleum of a 14th century Sufi saint. The building resembled those we had seen at Uch Sharif, with its octagonal shape though with not as much of the distinctive blue tilework. The tomb inside was surrounded by garlands of artificial flowers of many colours.

We then walked through the Fort Kohna Qasim Gardens to reach a building to get some good views of the city. The gardens we walked through were covered in rubbish from the previous day and evening, our guide was quite critical and thought it had probably been done by school groups like those we'd seen yesterday. We reached a building that had a few old paintings on the wall depicting historical Multan events, as well as lot of disconnected solar panels. We climbed up the stairs to the rooftop finding it very busy with a large group of local tourists. We were all asked to pose for photos, M found that most of the people were from a "Discover Multan" tourism group celebrating the group's birthday, for some reason they were quite interested in hearing what M had to say, even asking him to say a few words to the group, which he declined!

Next was another mausoleum, the Tomb of Hazrat Bahauddin Zakariya, a 13th-century shrine dedicated to the Sufi mystic Bahauddin Zakariya. This one had a lot of pigeons, along with a man selling corn to feed to the pigeons, though he wasn't doing much business when we were there.

We visited a very busy bazaar in one of the oldest parts of the city, with old hindu temples and other historic buildings. We stopped at one of Multan's famous confectionery shops to try some halwa, a milk based sweet similar to fudge.

Shahi Eid Ghah Masjid is very large and beautifully restored mosque, with elaborate painting. There were no worshippers when we visited, but there were some students from the nearby madrasa (islamic religious school) who walked with us as we explored and took photos.

After lunch we visited a pottery factory, famous for it's blue and white pots. We were able to witness most parts of the process, including the free hand painting and colouring. K was a little disappointed in the quality of the workmanship, but did buy a few souvenirs to bring home.