Tag Archives: @AFkarachi

‘Tis the Season for Sind Tourism

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(Well, not the “climatic season”!)

June 30, 2021

So once again, our AFK photography class was off to explore Sind.  Never in my life have I ventured as much into Sind as I have with this group…and it’s a pleasure to finally see the sights (and sounds) of the province I live in.

FIRST STOP … Makli Necropolis … is about 2½ hours away from Karachi on N-5 (National H’way).

               We first stopped for breakfast at Café Imran, apparently a well-known joint in Gharo.  Can’t disagree with that assessment as it was jam packed when we arrived at 8.30am. What we lost in a little waiting time we made up with a hearty and enjoyable breakfast — Sweet Lassi, Sweet Chai, Paratha, Channa & Omelette … DEFINITELY NOT for the diabetic, cardiac case or Cholestrol affectee 😊 😊 😊.

  • Diabetics “DELIGHT”

Makli is beautiful … and in summers, dreadfully, frightfully HOT.  If you go, remember to take bottles of water and keep drinking; and as my closest friend, and doctor, Shahrukh Hansotia says, a packet of ORS to replenish the evaporated salts.  Makli is apparently the largest Muslim burial ground in the world.

Visiting Makli’s tombs reminded me of similar places in Italy, Iran and other such preserved sites.  An UNESCO Heritage site, the government and UNESCO seem to be doing a decent job but more needs to be done, especially with regards to cleanliness. 

SECOND STOP … From here we went onward to visit the Tomb of Sultan Jam Nizamuddin and the Shrine of Jam & Nuri Tamachi (among other structures) … Beautiful but need preserving.  An interesting 2016 (but old) DAWN article gives a good summary of the problems being faced there- https://www.dawn.com/news/1257429 .

By then we were hot and tired … so we decided to break for lunch – we all needed cold cold drinks.  My friend was dehydrated and got himself a litre of water with ORS. 

So, for our THIRD STOP, we went to a little “BOUTIQUE” … FINE DINING so to speak … of a restaurant in Thatta city – a haven for “covid” and any other germs & diseases you can think of 😊 😊 😊.  Barring the “ambiance”, the vegetables and the freshly baked naan was … to die for (absolutely delicious)!  TIP I LEARNT THERE- don’t order anything other than vegetables and daal – you won’t exactly know what [substitute for] “meat” or “chicken” has been put 😱.

  • Certainly NOT for the faint hearted!

FOURTH STOP … Freshly energized with food, we went to see the famous Shahjahan Mosque in Thatta – absolutely beautiful.  Needing to kill 1 hour, most of us actually snoozed on the cool flooring for a while. 

The Shahjahan Mosque is beautiful.  More than the courtyard, it’s the two side corridors and the ceiling of the main prayer hall (as you enter) which is fabulous.  Down the right corridor, suddenly there is a very unusual, crooked doorway.  There must be a reason for this but we could not find out the reason.

We ENDED THE DAY by seeing the Chawkandi Tombs on the return.  These were even better preserved than some of the Makli ones, inspite of being older than Makli. 

Two interesting nuggets we learnt at Chawkandi-

  1. Those graves with a turban implied a male was buried there; and
  2. There is one grave (apparently the only grave in the Muslim world) with a horse symbol on it and it’s located at Chawkandi.

I made three new friends, Muneeb, Gulzeb and Baboo 70 (the latter I think believes he’s a villain from some Pakistan or Indian action movie 😊).  I told them I’ll somehow try to get their photos over to them at Chawkandi one way or the other.

With the permission of the author/videographer (and member of our Makli group), Abdul Qayoom (Pakistan Scape), I am posting his two YouTube links on our photography tour –               

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wsG-n_hr6k & https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsL1Y3pItZI  

The N-5 is prettier that taking the Super H’way.  There’s so much to see of Sindh, the barrenness, the greenery and the main canal supplying water to Karachi, which runs parallel to N-5.

  • Main water supply for Karachi runs parallel to N-5

‘Tis the season for Sindh … and I mean season for “Sind exploration” this year! 

So much to see … and plenty of time to do it in 😊 … next stop, hopefully, MITHI !

“An Idle Mind … Is a Devil’s Workshop”

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June 25, 2021

(Chaucer was said to have said “idle hands the devil’s tools” in the 12th Century)

April 2020 started out as a “novelty”- for the first time ever, our generation, the Millennials, Gen Z experienced lock-down life and, later on, its effects.

Initially it seemed like a holiday to me – shorts, sadrah (our Zoroastrian undershirt), socks and slippers.  There was ABSOLUTELY no work. 

I had started blogging in 2019; so suddenly, a torrent of topics came up, I wrote them down and decided I had enough topics (plus other impromptu ones) to run the lock-down period.

Before you know it, I was the EXPERT in everything (and master of none 😊) … from travel, tourism, joke master, poet, religious expert, environmental expert … hell, I was even an expert on COVID SOPs, precautions, protocols & standards (advisor to an imaginary government 😊)!  I even wrote an opinion piece is the papers (https://tribune.com.pk/article/96698/how-has-covid-19-impacted-pakistans-hotel-industry) !

REMARKABLE.  I was “Mr. Know It All”!

Well, I couldn’t blog daily, yet I had to stay busy- with absolutely no work, no business, no emails, all I did was sit in front of the computer screen with the music on.

I had started a photography course with Rahmatullah Khan at Alliance Francais Karachi (AFK) in 2019 so with the AFK closed, the class met on the shores of Beach Luxury Hotel; with the gardens & environment of Beach Luxury and Chinna Creek and the beautiful sunsets to continue classes (what a relief!).

Next, I took up two EdX online courses- Art of Rhetoric and IOT (Internet of Things) just to keep occupied.  Actually the Rhetoric subject was really interesting as it taught me how great orators created their speeches (not that I can do so, even now ☹).  https://dinshawavari.com/2020/07/09/reason-should-frame-a-good-politicians-goal-to-persuade/ .

Lets see … ummmmmm 🤔🤔.. oh yes, my son taught us Poker!  I really suck at that 🤣😂!

In spite of this attempt to stay busy, come June, I could feel a general apathy on a daily basis.  I started seeing the Turkish soaps with my wife (very well produced!) but something was missing (https://dinshawavari.com/2020/06/26/black-money-love-more-than-just-a-movie-review/).

In an attempt to try to reorient things-

  • I moved into my dining room with the computer;
  • This followed with my wearing a casual shirt (with the shorts)
  • Then I decided I needed to wear pants
  • That was followed with shoes 🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️
  • By August my brother started sitting in the office (without a/c), which I could not manage and I continued in the a/c comfort of our dining room.
  • By end-September things reopened and I started in the office … but it just wasn’t the same.
  • Eventually, this “idle mind” HAD TO wear a tie and jacket to psychologically feel any semblance of normality 🤣🤣🤣 – I think 30 years of wearing a suit just couldn’t be forgotten! (https://dinshawavari.com/2021/04/16/the-home-office-just-doesnt-cut-ice/)

Finally, as my wife says, I officially attained MID LIFE CRISIS- when in November I started to learn to drive a bike (https://dinshawavari.com/2021/04/01/i-bitched-ranted-raved-and-then-joined-them-%f0%9f%98%8a/) and come 2021, went out and purchased a cheap, 70cc, second hand motorbike 😂😂😂!

  • (maxine.com)

The lockdowns continue but normalcy has returned in large part … thank GOD!  The “idle mind” seems to have dissipated as I don’t get the regular mental calls to “blog” anymore 😊.