Day 3 in Pakistan: Other Islamabad sights
The day started out quite cloudy, making it a perfect time for my planned museum visits – I prefer to use my sunny days for taking pictures outdoors. My opinion diverged entirely from that of my hosts who, as proper Pakistanis, only refer to a day as good to spend outdoors when it is cloudy and “not too warm.” Fortunately, we found an intersection between our priorities. In the morning, we would use the lower temperatures to visit the Shah Allah Ditta Caves, after which we would drive to the Faisal Mosque and the Islamabad Museum.
We found the Shah
Allah Ditta Caves different from how my hosts remembered them: one of the wells
had been entirely coated in a thick concrete wall and its ancient stones tossed
aside onto the road. A similar fate seemed to be awaiting the other ones. My
hosts were understandably upset, blaming incompetence and idiocy at the highest
levels. They thought it only a matter of time until the caves themselves,
dating to around the fourth century BCE, would succumb to the newest
“development programme” of the government. When we struggled to find the
Buddhist carvings that were supposed to be there, they concluded that someone
in the government had torn them out and sold them.
We made a quick stop
by the Kenthla Baoli, a seventeenth-century stepwell built by Sher Shah Suri,
who ruled the short-lived Suri Empire bookended by the rule of Mughal Emperor
Humayun. The Baoli, which now stands above a modern winding road into the
mountains, originally served as a watering hole for travellers along the Grand
Trunk Road, an ancient route connecting cities from Kabul all the way to
Chittagong. Incidentally, we passed by men walking up the asphalt bends with
two camels loaded with fodder.
Our stop by Faisal
Mosque was relatively short, as I had already seen it and taken many pictures
of it from farther away, and also because – once we were inside the compound –
we found the main prayer hall closed. Our visit to the Islamabad Museum was not
much longer, as the right wing was closed as well. The left wing, however,
still contained quite a few interesting artefacts, from the five-thousand-year-old
statues of Mohenjo Daro to the Buddhist monuments of Gandhara and finally the
decorative arts of Pakistan’s Islamic period. Among the most interesting sights
at the museum were the two murals in the entry hall, the one on the left
depicting the most important figures of independent Pakistan, and the one of
the right depicting older history beginning with the Mughals. One part of the
right mural showed Bahadur Shah Zafar – the last Mughal Emperor – being
presented a tray with the severed heads of his three sons by the British.
Later in the
afternoon, I made a short visit to the Lok Virsa Heritage Museum, which
displays dioramas and various artefacts from all the major cultures of Pakistan
as well as neigbouring countries. The deep dive was just a bit too overwhelming
and I am not sure I took in much at all, but I did find it amusing that several
of the information boards were clearly copied from Wikipedia, as indicated by
the numbers in square brackets and even the occasional bracket saying,
“citation needed.” I ate dinner with Humza at a Hunza restaurant to make up for
the fact that I would not be visiting Gilgit-Baltistan on my trip. I had some
kind of torn broad noodles in a fragrant green sauce, which I found delicious.
Comments
Post a Comment