(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-
- Those graves with a turban implied a male was buried there; and
- 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 !
Dinshaw Avari- Trying my Hand at Blogging! 