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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