Rupal: the south face of Nanga Parbat
28 April 2017
May 1994. Javid Anwer (JA) who heads Green Earth Organisation (GEO), an NGO that ‘cares for the environment,’ asked if I would like to join a cleaning expedition to the south face of Nanga Parbat in August. I had never seen this mountain close up and I did not have to think twice to say yes. In the end the expedition got delayed and it was in the third week of September that we arrived in Rawalpindi to fly to Gilgit.
As expeditions go Nanga Parbat Saviour 1994 was a pretty fancy one – with a name as pompous as that it was bound to be fancy. To begin with, it was to be multi-national, and it had a TV crew to film the operations. Naturally there was going to be an immense amount of equipment and a whole team of porters – just like any old climbing expedition. This meant not having to carry anything but your camera bag and some personal belongings while the food and tents were to be with the porters or the donkeys that were to be hired. After years of mountain walking on shoe string budgets where I had to carry everything myself this was a grand treat for me and I looked forward to it.
Read more »Labels: Gilgit–Baltistan, Mountaineering, Northern Pakistan, Prisoner on a Bus: Travels Through Pakistan
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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Stitching the Crack
23 February 2017
‘Seh ghwari?’ says the man sitting at the mouth of the tunnel: ‘What are you looking for?’
‘I am looking for the old railway,’ I reply in broken Pashto as I huff up the hill. The man does not smile, and he is not even trying to be funny when he asks if I don’t think I am a trifle late to be looking for the railway – the last train on this line had run exactly fifty-one years and eight months earlier. I smile and pass on and he tells my friend following behind that I must be mad. Three hundred metres away lies the yawning maw of the Chappar Rift that has brought me on this journey; a journey that I had dreamt of for the last seven years.
When, around the early years of the 19th century, the Raj became paranoid with the fear of a Russian invasion of India there was, among other things, a great flurry of railway building to reach Afghanistan and eventually Central Asia in order to pre-empt Russian influence in those countries. And as Russian railways inched across trans Caspian desert regions, subcontinental railways reached on the one side into the Khyber Pass and on the other across the treeless Kachhi desert on the border between Sindh and Balochistan on its way to Sibi at the foot of the Bolan Pass en route to Quetta. Simultaneously another line went north from Sibi to Harnai and Khost where it turned west to reach Quetta via Bostan. This was the Kandahar State Railway (KSR), for that is where it hoped to reach before skirting the mountainous regions of Afghanistan to Herat and head north for Merv in modern Turkmenistan.
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When, around the early years of the 19th century, the Raj became paranoid with the fear of a Russian invasion of India there was, among other things, a great flurry of railway building to reach Afghanistan and eventually Central Asia in order to pre-empt Russian influence in those countries. And as Russian railways inched across trans Caspian desert regions, subcontinental railways reached on the one side into the Khyber Pass and on the other across the treeless Kachhi desert on the border between Sindh and Balochistan on its way to Sibi at the foot of the Bolan Pass en route to Quetta. Simultaneously another line went north from Sibi to Harnai and Khost where it turned west to reach Quetta via Bostan. This was the Kandahar State Railway (KSR), for that is where it hoped to reach before skirting the mountainous regions of Afghanistan to Herat and head north for Merv in modern Turkmenistan.
Labels: Balochistan, Books, Prisoner on a Bus: Travels Through Pakistan, Railway
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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Trek to the Source of the Khenji River
22 June 2016
Two years ago my article on a journey to the Dog’s Grave, the second highest peak in the Khirthar Mountains, and my use of the words of H. T. Lambrick elicited a response from friend Raheal Siddiqui. He said the words I quoted, were used by Lambrick for another part of the Khirthar: the Khenji River and not the Sita that I had trekked along. Ever since he had wanted me to trek on the Khenji as well, but it was always one thing or the other that kept me until ten days ago.
In Larkana Raheal packed me off to the dusty little village of Warah where my fat, pot-bellied, bhung-drinking friend Wali Mohammed waited at the otaq of Tharo Khan Chandio, the local chief. A tea ceremony was followed by a visit to the local grocery with Tharo Khan’s driver fidgeting endlessly and reminding us how late it was getting and that we would not arrive at the village of Rahu jo Aitho before nightfall if we did not hurry. Yet we did not hurry. The tired Suzuki jeep rattled along raising a thick cloud of cloying dust on the bank of a saline drain. We passed the reedy shores of Daba Lake and then we were clattering over hard, stony ground. On the outskirts of the rare settlement ugly crop-eared brutes came out to bark our wheels out of their jurisdiction. They raced alongside, snarling menacingly and, seeing that our jeep so much the bigger than themselves, did not have the nerve to stand and fight turned back with some satisfaction.
Labels: Prisoner on a Bus: Travels Through Pakistan, Sindh
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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A Summer Sojourn in Upper Sindh
17 February 2016
Friend Raheal Siddiqui is an Assistant Commissioner of the old school. He is a lover of books who laments there is too little time to read. And he likes to know about the land and the people he has been put to administer. And so when he called from Larkana to talk about this ‘little village on the Indus with some lovely havelis,’ I couldn’t resist a visit. I did not realise though that it was a bad time of year for Upper Sindh – until it was too late.
The ride from Sukker to Larkana in the forty-eight degree heat and stifling humidity very nearly gave me a heat stroke. And if I had thought the thick walls and high roofs of the official residence of the AC would bring any relief, I was wrong. Nothing could stop the heat and humidity from getting to you. The one redeeming factor was that this turn of the century bungalow was steeped in recent history for it had been home to, among others, H. T. Lambrick. For some this administrator and writer of Sindhi histories is a hero; for others a villain, for he was responsible for the hanging of Pir Pagara in the final years of the Raj.
Labels: Prisoner on a Bus: Travels Through Pakistan, Sindh
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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The Red Pass
23 November 2015
When I met Bashir two years ago I had liked him instantly. A native of Naran in the Kaghan Valley he is a rather unusual man for his background. He has ready wit and a delightful sense of humour. Best of all he is genuinely interested in his work as a mountain guide and does not treat his wards as useless pieces of baggage to be escorted from one point to the other and got over with as fast as possible. His most endearing feature, however, is the warmth in his boyish face and brown eyes.
By the time our trek finished we were friends and we parted with promises to walk together again. And so it was that the two of us set off into the gorge leading to Rutti Gali – the Red Pass, east of Battakundi in upper Kaghan. This is an uninhabited valley that comes alive every summer when the nomadic Gujjars and Afghans invade it with their herds of sheep and goats, and recedes into an icy somnolence when the storms of winter dump metres of snow in it.
Labels: Gilgit–Baltistan, Kaghan, Northern Pakistan, Prisoner on a Bus: Travels Through Pakistan
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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Travelling through Kaghan
04 November 2015
If I thought I had perfected the art of travelling like a tramp, my friend Bashir from Naran has given it finesse. Trekking in the outback whenever we came across a shepherd he would quiz the man in great detail about the nearest Gujjar camp and the leader, or Chaudhri, there. Then as we would go our way he would chuckle, ‘Should misfortune befall us now and we have no food or shelter I will tell the Chaudhri all the good things that people say about him as far away as Abbottabad.’
Bashir maintained that it was every human being’s egotistical desire to hear complimentary things and this was exactly what he gave them. Having not only survived an encounter with Chilasi brigands in the Rutti Gali connecting Kaghan Valley with Azad Kashmir, but through subterfuge having deprived them of a quarter of good lamb was elated. As we crested the broad saddle of Jalkhad Gali back into Kaghan we ran into Yusuf, the strapping Gujjar youth from the encampment at the foot of the pass.
Labels: Gilgit–Baltistan, Kaghan, Nomads, Northern Pakistan, Porters, Prisoner on a Bus: Travels Through Pakistan
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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The Chandios
13 August 2015
Four kilometres to the northwest of village Ghaibi Dero (Larkana district) a group of domed buildings rises above the scrub and tamarisk-covered sand dunes. This is the family graveyard of the Nawab family of Chandio tribe of Baloch people whose ancestral seat is at Ghaibi Dero. All the buildings have plain exteriors while the interiors are painted with colourful frescoes of curving vines and bright flowers. There are also depictions of hunting and social scenes. These latter have largely been defaced, I am told, on the exhortation of some mullah who condemned them as un-Islamic. Of the two dozen odd tombs in this group the one on the far west end, an unpretentious little building, is that of Hafiz Wali Mohammed a.k.a. Ghaibi Khan. Although the simple headstone gives no date, the family’s genealogy would place him roughly around the beginning of the 19th century.
He was, they say, a man of great piety, humility and love for his fellow man. No traveller, rich or destitute, ever went by his door without partaking of whatever fare the good man could offer. One day, so the story goes, travellers arrived at his door seeking to be fed. Hafiz Wali Mohammed asked his wife to prepare for them, but unbeknownst to him, there was no food in the house. Nevertheless, even before the wife could tell him of their own want, foodstuff miraculously appeared in the kitchen. Now, since the victuals had come through divine (ghaib) intervention, so was Wali Mohammed to be known henceforth as Ghaibi Khan. From then on, too, there was never a fire to be burnt in the village of Ghaibi Dero for Nawab Ghaibi Khan established the tradition of feeding every single mouth in the village.
Labels: Chandios, History, Kohistan, Prisoner on a Bus: Travels Through Pakistan, Sindh
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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Hope for the Suleman Markhor
16 July 2015
Markhor – Snake Eater in Persian, is a magical name for a mountain goat. Some believe it actually ate snakes that earned it the name, but this shy and illusive animal has never really been caught dining on snakes. T. J. Roberts, the naturalist, therefore believes that the name comes from the Pashto: mar meaning snake and akhur for horn, that is, Serpentine Horn.
Belonging to the genus Capra there are seven recognised sub-species of the species falconeri. Of these five inhabit the mountains of Pakistan. Their corkscrew antlers that twist up and outward differentiate each sub-species and make these handsome animals valuable as trophies. The styles range from the single twist and wide spreading flare of Capra falconeri falconeri (a.k.a. Astor Markhor) in the Northern Areas of Pakistan to the three tight twists in the unflared horns of C. f. jerdoni (Suleman Markhor).
Labels: Balochistan, Prisoner on a Bus: Travels Through Pakistan, Wildlife
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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Prisoner on a Bus: Travels through Pakistan
13 May 2015
Nyla Daud
It’s a right royal deceptive title: Prisoner on a Bus: Travels through Pakistan. For inside the covers of Salman Rashid’s latest book is a freedom to wander if not at will, then by picking up the trail of a man whose wanderlust has lead him to places about whose existence most Pakistanis are totally unaware. Or totally unexcited about, even if they happened to have heard the names somewhere along the road.
The compiled version of travel columns that he has been writing for a newspaper, Rashid’s book, a very finely bound publication, brings to life a land and its people that according to the author is “just waiting to be discovered” or, again in his words, “to be rediscovered”. From Dadem Chandio, the dacoit with a price on his head and hiding in the boondocks of the Kirthar range, to the story behind the bus with green wheels, from unearthing the philanthropy of Sir Ganga Ram to reconnoitering Musa ka Musalla in the north or trekking across Upper Sindh in high summer, Rashid literally leads his readers in a dance.
Labels: Books, Prisoner on a Bus: Travels Through Pakistan
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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The House that Jahandad Built
05 May 2014
Even from a distance one is impressed by the grandeur of the chunky building with one tower rising above what seems to be a vaulted car porch. To match, it has a picturesque setting: smack on the shores of the blue-green Khanpur Lake in the midst of lush rolling hills not far from the village of Khanpur on the highroad from Taxila to Haripur.
Sultan Jahandad Khan Gakkhar, who receives honourable mention in the Gazetteer of Hazara district and who was part of the Muslim contingent at the famous Simla Conference, built this haveli back in 1875. Then there was no lake; only the winding Haro river, copper-red during the rains, azure otherwise, would have complemented the scene. The lake came about thirty years ago when the river was dammed to store the water supply for Rawalpindi and Islamabad. If anything, it added to the picture postcard quality of the house.
Labels: Heritage, Prisoner on a Bus: Travels Through Pakistan, Punjab
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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Thandiani to Nathiagali
25 December 2013
It was a totally aimless journey. And that was the best thing about it, for there were no schedules to keep and nowhere particular to go. And so around sun up on a June day that promised to be the kind when you can fry a cat on the sidewalk I rode a rattling pick up truck from Abbottabad to the well known summer resort of Thandiani (about 2700 metres). The idea was to walk to Nathiagali about thirty-five kilometres away along the curving ridge whose highest points offered breathtaking views of Nanga Parbat, the last great bastion of the Himalayas.
Past the straggle of shops and the rest house of the Forest Department the path to Biran Gali took off to the right through a forested hillside. It was a busy day with a steady stream of men coming up towards Thandiani to ride to work at Abbottabad or nearby towns. A solitary trekker is still a rare sight and I was stopped several times to be asked where I was headed. This was followed by three repetitions of instructions about getting to Biran Gali. The fourth was always hurled at me as I walked away; the more helpful kind kept up the banter as long as I was in sight.
Labels: Prisoner on a Bus: Travels Through Pakistan, Punjab
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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A Tale from the Lahnda
20 November 2013
Ahmed Yar, my friend, is a Bandial; and as blue-blooded as they can come. A native of village Bandial on the highroad between Sargodha and Mianwali, he is a romantic despite his urbanity and education. His line of work takes him all over the country, but his heart remains rooted firmly in the wide, fertile plains of western Punjab – the Lahnda, ‘land of the setting sun.’ Here the blue hills of Sakesar loom on the northern horizon and here the searing summer winds bring the sands from the Thal Desert in the south. Ahmed Yar is a teller of folk tales as they were told long before television put paid to the tradition of story-telling in rural Pakistan – and he might well be the last of a dying school. His tales naturally come in that Lahnda dialect; a language so beautiful that it can raise goose bumps on the most blasé of listeners. And that is how he relates the story of Aali Ghanjera.
Aali, of the Ghanjera tribe from the village of Vijhara, was a cowherd. One day as he was tending his flock, he came upon a group of banias (Hindu merchants) resting during the midday heat. Among their horses, browsing nearby, was a filly not yet into her second year that caught the eye of Aali who knew his animals well. In rapture this animal pranced about galloping through the meadows to the stream and in one great leap clearing the wide waterway. ‘If so young a horse can do this what will she grow up into,’ thought Aali and resolved to buy the animal off the banias.
Read more »Labels: Prisoner on a Bus: Travels Through Pakistan, Punjab, Telling a Story
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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Battle between the Rinds and a Chandio-Magsi Alliance
18 November 2013
The story of the battle between the Rinds and a Chandio-Magsi alliance fought sometime in the mid 1820s never made it to the history books. It is nonetheless a part of the annals of Upper Sindh – a part that is all but lost. That I came to know of it was for Imdad Chandio, the keeper of a dying tradition. And I tell it the way he would.
Read more »Labels: History, Prisoner on a Bus: Travels Through Pakistan, Sindh, Telling a Story
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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Oh, Pushkalavati!
30 October 2013
The most beautiful lowlands anywhere in the Land of the Pakhtuns are, without doubt, those around the present day district of Charsadda: great stands of shisham and poplar; the occasional pipal and sometimes a wide-spreading banyan above endless stretches of sugar cane fields provide welcome shade in the humid July heat. Through this virtual sea of green several tributaries of the Swat and the Kabul rivers meander to provide the land its picture postcard beauty. Muddy and languid, they are a fine contrast to intemperate Punjabi rivers during the monsoons.
We left the Peshawar-Charsadda highway five kilometres outside the latter and turned north on a dirt track leading into this picturesque country to the village of Sheikhan Dheri: Mound of the Sheikhs. Professor Farid Khan of the Department of Archeology, charged with irrepressible energy despite his fifty odd years, was at the wheel and as we went across one of the streams he pointed out the large mound that loomed to our right. That, he said, was Bala Hissar, the Peukelaotis of Alexander’s historians.
Read more »Labels: Khyber-Pukhtunkhwa, Prisoner on a Bus: Travels Through Pakistan, Pushkalavati
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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Travels with a superannuated Guerilla
05 October 2013
When S said her office was sending her to Mawand in the heart of Marri tribal country in Balochistan, I simply knew I had to go with her. Years ago riding a train from Sibi to Khost I had passed along the western fringe of this wild territory and had seen just about enough of the Marris to whet my appetite for a journey through their country.
What had then intrigued me the most was the way these hirsute Baloch tribesmen kept strictly to themselves. Travel in a train with Punjabis or Pathans and within the hour you will have a professed friend slapping you on the back and wishing you to get off with him at his station or at least offering an address for you to stay in the future. But here were very private people who kept to themselves, preened their immaculately curled beards with deliberate care and carried themselves with a pride and grace that I had seen in few people. Any attempt to start a conversation had been stymied by my illiteracy in Balochi and, what appeared to me, a polite rejection of my intrusion into their privacy.
Read more »Labels: Balochistan, Prisoner on a Bus: Travels Through Pakistan
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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The Giant’s Tomb revisited
22 September 2013
Book is available at Sang e Meel (042-3722-0100), Lahore
A few of kilometres outside the village of Gharibwal (famous for the cement factory) at the foot of the eastern escarpments of the Salt Range in Jhelum district, there lies, in a lovely grove of tall trees, a cement plastered grave. It is a saint’s tomb, or so they say. In normal circumstances that would have been fine, but this oddity is over 18 metres long. Some people, notable among whom is a local school master, assert that this is the tomb of Ham Alai Salaam, the son of the prophet Noah. And because in those days there were giants on earth, thus the eighteen-metre long grave.
Ask any illiterate bumpkin in the village near the grave and they will swear that every supplication here bears fruit. Surprisingly however, even in neighbouring Gharibwal it is difficult to get directions, for no one seems to know of this marvellous site. Consequently it is no surprise that as little as a dozen kilometres away, the tomb of Ham completely fades out of human knowledge. However, it is clear that someone is taking a lot of interest in this supposed prophet’s tomb, for it has a brand new brick wall surrounding it. Two years ago, when I first visited it, there was only a rough stone wall.
Ask any illiterate bumpkin in the village near the grave and they will swear that every supplication here bears fruit. Surprisingly however, even in neighbouring Gharibwal it is difficult to get directions, for no one seems to know of this marvellous site. Consequently it is no surprise that as little as a dozen kilometres away, the tomb of Ham completely fades out of human knowledge. However, it is clear that someone is taking a lot of interest in this supposed prophet’s tomb, for it has a brand new brick wall surrounding it. Two years ago, when I first visited it, there was only a rough stone wall.
Labels: jhelum: City of the Vitasta, Prisoner on a Bus: Travels Through Pakistan, Punjab
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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Rediscovering a great builder
15 September 2013
The octagonal building with the bulbous dome should still have been visible from the Grand Trunk Road near the Shalimar Gardens because according to Kanhayalal, the author of Tarikh-e-Lahore (written 1884) it was the highest mausoleum in Lahore. But now the surrounding concrete monstrosities of modern urban architecture have all but swamped it.
Standing on a high plinth its arched alcoves afford entrance to a spacious octagonal chamber with two sarcophagi. Below the plinth, in the subterranean burial chamber whose entrances are now blocked by debris, are two graves that mark the mortal remains of a man called Ali Mardan Khan and his mother. Originally the building had a facing of marble and mosaic tiles which were stripped when the Sikhs used the building as a gunpowder magazine under command of General Gulab Singh Bhowandia. To the north is a beautiful gateway, still resplendent with colourful mosaics; barred and disused it is now the abode of innumerable bats. Entry to the mausoleum is through a corridor separating it from the surrounding Pakistan Railways Loco Shed at Mughalpura.
Read more »Labels: History, Lahore, Prisoner on a Bus: Travels Through Pakistan, Punjab
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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Railway Station Ruk Relegated to Oblivion
13 September 2013
Except for those who serve on the Sukker Division of Pakistan Railways, there will be few to whom the name Ruk would mean anything at all. And when friend Raheal Siddiqui asked me recently if I knew why this railway station had once been important, all I could remember was that it had featured prominently in the laying of the Kandahar State Railway (KSR) – the line that was to connect Quetta with the rest of the country. And that is a great story, for it is connected with the Great Game - the 19th century struggle between the imperial powers of England and Russian for control over Central Asia. So, allow me to quote myself from an article published in this same newspaper almost five years ago.
‘When railways came of age around the middle of the [19th] century both nations saw in it the means to easily and quickly cross the great desert expanses of Asia. And so it was that while the Russians struggled to span the blistering Kyzylkum Desert, east of the Caspian, England was inching its way forward across the desert and mountains lying between Sibi and the garrison town of Quetta. Fear of the Cossacks riding in through the vast openness of Balochistan, the subcontinent’s back door, rode high and the “Kandahar State Railway,” as it was called, was top priority.
Read more »Labels: Pakistan Railways, Prisoner on a Bus: Travels Through Pakistan, Railway, Sindh
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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A forgotten page from History
07 September 2013
Even when hundreds of visitors would have passed through its doors or lounged on the patio around it sipping their drinks, few would have noticed the plaque on the west wall commemorating the sojourn in this room of the ‘famous traveller William Moorcroft’ in May 1820. Even fewer would have known who this person was. But for those who have any interest in the history of the Great Game, that epic struggle between Russia and England for the possession of Central Asia, Moorcroft’s name shines bright.
Read more »Labels: History, Lahore, Prisoner on a Bus: Travels Through Pakistan, Punjab, Shalamar Garden, Travelers
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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Encounter with a Dacoit
21 August 2013
‘So, are you really the infamous dacoit, Dadan Chandio?’ I asked.
‘Do I look like a dacoit, sahib?’ he replied with a question. Frankly, he didn’t. Standing at about 1 metre 75 centimetres Dadan is a wiry man in his mid to late forties with graying hair and beard. A vicious scar runs across the bridge of his nose and down to his left cheek barely missing the eye. It is from this wound perhaps that his voice gets the thick nasal tone. I ran into him up in the Khirthar Mountains west of Larkana and when I asked if he would like to talk to me he said he didn’t see why he should not. I would have expected a vicious looking man, rather in the mould of the Punjabi film hero, but here he was, soft-spoken with a face scarred from a hatchet blow and psyche scarred from over two decades of running scared.
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He was born into the same sub-clan as the Nawab family of Chandios and so is distantly related to them. Having spent his childhood in Ghaibi Dero Dadan took three years of schooling before dropping out to help the family in their meager agriculture. Now, the chief of the Chandios has long been one of the biggest land holders of rural Sindh, but in the Land Reforms of Ayub Khan this vast holding was apportioned out amongst smaller holders. Dadan and his father received 32 acres each. This was in Jagir number 6, but according to Dadan the Nawab refused to relinquish control over the property. Thus began a struggle between Dadan and Nawab Sultan Ahmed Chandio, a struggle that was to turn Dadan into a bandit – at least it was to give him that notoriety.
Labels: People, Prisoner on a Bus: Travels Through Pakistan, Sindh
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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