Is your husband Pakistani?

Day 20 - Lahore to Bangkok 

Our tour was officially over and we weren't leaving until almost midnight so we had a day to spend in Lahore. We enjoyed a leisurely breakfast before we battled the streets, negotiating the roadside motorbike parking areas on our 20 minute walk to a nearby government handicrafts store for a few last minute purchases. 

We found that the shop (Pakistan Handicrafts Shop) had the best range of all the shops we'd visited, however it didn't have the tiles K had missed buying earlier in the trip.

We hung out at the hotel for the afternoon, had dinner there and then took the hotel car to the airport around 8:30pm, the trip taking about 40 minutes in dense traffic.

Lahore airport was chaotic and normal rules at passport control like waiting your turn were not in play, instead of a normal queue people were squashed around the desks. Security was heavy and thorough with multiple check points (probably for the best as a suicide bomber had killed 11 people in Islamabad a week earlier). K had to go through separate women's checkpoint, for some reason they asked if her husband was Pakistani.

We found that the upstairs dining area was quiet so we waited there until we boarded our flight to Bankgok around 11:30pm, getting away pretty much on schedule.

Links to the Taj

Day 19 - Lahore

Another early start to see the old city of Lahore. We stopped briefly for a quick look at the Lahore Railway Station before heading to the huge grounds of the Tomb of Noor Jahan. The mausoleum was built in the 17th century for the Mughal empress Noor Jahan, with the marble centotaphs of the empress and her daughter side by side inside the main building.

 

It was a short drive from there to see the tomb of Noor Mahal's husband Emperor Jahangir, also set inside a large garden along with some other smaller tombs. Jahangir was the father of Shah Jahan, who along with this tomb also built the Taj Mahal for his wife. Similarities can be seen between this tomb and the Taj, with heavy use of semi-precious stones (like lapis lazuli) inlaid in the shape of flowers in white marble.

Next was a visit to Lahore Museum. It was quite busy so once again we attracted a bit of attention, what was amusing when we first arrived in Pakistan was starting to wear on us a bit! The exhibits were quite varied, ranging from a section on different buddha statues, a big (and not particularly flattering) statue of Queen Victoria, and odd things like a piece of the Berlin wall. After we'd seen enough we found a seat away from the crowds to enjoy some peace and quiet! 

Lunch was at Yasir Broast on Tourist Street near the Anarkali Bazaar, and in a very busy part of town and as we walked along the street had a glimpse of daily life in Lahore.   

From there it was back in the bus to the Delhi gate, walking along the busy street and then past a spice market to Shahi Hamman, a Turkish bath built by Shah Jahan in 1635. It had received awards for the quality of the restoration, with baths being excavated and highly decorated frescoes uncovered. 

Not far from there was the Wazir Khan Mosque with its detailed painted frescos and as well as the underground tomb of a Sufi saint. This was the most "touristy" part of Pakistan we'd seen on the whole trip, with a few shops just outside the mosque selling souvenirs and artwork.

The walk back through the bazaar and the wait for our bus on a very busy corner had us all choking on the fumes and smog of Lahore's chaotic polluted traffic.

Back at the hotel we had a last dinner with our travelling companions as they were all flying home in the early hours of the morning, while we still had another full day left in Pakistan.

You spin me right round

Day 18 - Lahore 

A busy day today starting with a visit to Lahore Fort. We entered via the gate right next to Food Street, which in the past was part of the red light district but now contains restaurants and shops. 

The fort covers an area of more than 20 hectares and contains twenty one notable monuments. It has been a residence for Mughal emperors and features a blend of Mughal and Sikh architectural styles.

A local guide joined us to provide useful information as we visited sights which included the Picture Wall, the Sheesh Mahal, Summer Palace, Naulakha Pavilion, and the Badshahi Mosque.

By the time we made it to the mosque it was starting to get quite busy, K had to put her scarf over her head so that people wouldn't approach her asking for a photo!

We then visited the Shalimar Gardens which covers 16 hectares, and is arranged in three terraces with water features and multiple buildings. Construction of the gardens was completed in 1642 during the reign of Shah Jahan, at the peak of Mughal architectural and cultural achievements.

After lunch we drove to the Wagah border crossing. We had previously seen the border closing ceremony from the Indian side in 2009, but with the border being closed due to the recent border skirmishes between Pakistan and India we were here to witness the flag lowering ceremony.     

The border was quite different from our earlier visit. Last time we felt a bit sorry for the Pakistani side as they didn't seem to have much of a grandstand and the crowd was a lot smaller than the Indian side. This time in Pakistan we were sitting in a huge newly built grandstand, they had people to rev up the crowd (including a one legged man dressed and spinning like a dervish), with massive video screens and an extremely loud sound system showing videos about the Pakistani armed forces - there's nothing like clips of missile launchers and planes dropping bombs to get the crowd in the right mood! 

It was still a fun show, the choreography hadn't changed much from last time, soldiers were still doing strange high kicks and silly walks and standing at the closed border gate shaking their fists at the other side, and on our side the crowd were really excited, shouting "Jan Jan Pakistan".

After the ceremony finished we headed back to Food Street, which was quite busy and we spent half an hour or so checking out the action along the street. There were food stands, shops, even a goat balancing on top of what looked like an upturned vase. We then had dinner at Haveli restaurant, sitting outside with a great view of the fort.  

No more police!

Day 17 - Multan to Lahore

A lot of driving today, with just one major stop at Harappa, the site of an ancient civilization from around 2600 BC, existing around the same time as the one at Mohenjo-Daro. 

We started the visit at the museum which is quite modern compared to others we've visited in Pakistan, with exhibits more like the style we'd see in museums at home.  

Then we walked through the site along some well defined pathways. It covered a large area and it was apparent that it hadn't all been excavated. The buildings were all made from the same sort of brick we'd seen all throughout our trip on old and new buildings, showing how the construction materials used back then are still in use thousands of years later. 

We had a little time to ourselves to explore after our guide had explained the main features of the site, but at all times we still had police escorts with us, one of them introducing himself to M as the man in charge and telling him he would give him a call some time! 

That was the last of our escorts as the police didn't follow us for the the rest of our drive to Lahore. We arrive in the bustling city after dark, battling very heavy traffic on our way to the Luxus Grand Hotel. 

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.

One Shoot, One Kill ...

Day 15 - Bahawalpur to Multan

Today's first stop was the Bahawalpur Museum which had a small but varied collection, including old cars, railway engines, intricately carved temple doors, examples of traditional weaving, and a model of Derawar Fort. 

The notable library building next door was in the last stages of being renovated. All the old bookshelves were up around the outside of the building, but as the front door was open we snuck in to have a quick look.

We then travelled to the centre of town to the Fareed Gate. We walked through to the bazaar though as it was still early many shops hadn't yet opened. Back near the gate we stopped at the government handicraft shop where a few souvenir purchases were made.

We then went on to Noor Mahal, a grand old building owned by the Ministry of Defense, which included a small museum and was still used for formal occasions. The grounds were extensive, and as it was a Saturday it was very busy with lots of groups of school children and families, there was even a jumping castle. We all attracted a bit of attention, regularly being approached by the locals. K and the other fair English woman in our group had become weary of the asking for selfies and felt that they had just a taste of what being famous might be like. At one stage they found a bench behind some bushes and tried to lay low out of sight.

We followed our police escort to quite a modern hotel in the city of Multan, our stop for the next two nights. We could see the logos on the shirts of our police, the back of one with "No Fear" while the other had "One shoot, one kill" and a picture of a person shooting a machine gun - I don't think that kind of work wear would go down well back home!

Of course, we were told we were not allowed to leave the hotel, even though there was a normal looking KFC opposite and some nice looking shops just down the road.

Uniformed hitchhikers

Day 14  - Bahawalpur 

No police car escort this morning, today we just picked up a policeman standing on the side of the road, he sat in the front seat of our van for about 20 minutes before swapping with another one.

We stopped along the drive to watch some women picking cotton. They were fine with us taking photos though most of them tried to hide their faces. Our guide told us these were nomadic workers, who would travel between farms to follow the different harvesting seasons.

We continued through the Thar Desert and  reached Derawar Fort, built in the 9th century and once a stop on the pilgrimage route between India and Mecca. We stopped outside the fort to get a view of the whole structure with 40 circular bastions in total, with different patterns built into the bricks on some of them. 

Once we entered we found a number of buildings in various stages of disrepair, though some renovation and reconstruction work was underway on the royal family quarters above one of the corner bastions.

Next to the fort was the Abbasi Mosque, made from white marble and with only a caretaker there apart from us.

   

A short bus ride away was a well preserved royal graveyard with mausoleums for the nawabs who had ruled the area from the 18th century to the early 20th century, including one for the last nawab's English wife. 

From there it was on to lunch and then back to our hotel in Bahawalpur for a second night.

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.

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. 

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.

Keep on truckin'

Day 10 - Karachi to Hyderabad

8:30 am and time to head further into Sindh province. First stop for the day was in the outskirts of Karachi, we turned off down a dirt road and a few minutes later after driving past parked trucks and ramshackle shopfronts we stopped at the intricately carved sandstone Chaukhandi Tombs, dating from the 15th century.

It was a clear and sunny morning, and starting to warm up. First our guide Sala briefed us on the history of the tombs, pointing out interesting features, then gave us some time to explore. We noticed a lot of large birds perched on the tombs, we thought they may have been vultures, Sala wasn't able to confirm what they were.

Back into the van for another hour, stopping next at Bhambhore Fort and archaeological museum. The Indus river flowed past the site until the river shifted, after which the fort was abandoned some time in the 13th century. The walls and ramp leading down to the original port had been excavated, and we met a fisherman who proudly showed us the big crab he had caught.

After a lunch stop at Cafe Imran we visited the UNESCO world heritage listed Makli Necropolis, a large burial site with monuments housing the tombs of royalty and other eminent people. Estimates of the number of people buried approach a million over a 400 year period.

Last visit for the day was the Shah Jahan mosque in Thatta, built in the 17th century and notable for its intricate brick and tile work.

Travelling along the highway to our overnight stop in Hyderabad we saw highly decorated and heavily loaded trucks transporting hay. We stopped where a few trucks were parked and the drivers were happy to pose for photos in front of their trucks. Even the insides were decorated, some of the trucks even having carved wooden doors!