Day 11 in Pakistan: Tombs and more tombs on a trip to Thatta

I was glad I had decided to wait until today to visit Thatta, as it was beautifully sunny all day and the roads were mostly passable again after yesterday’s downpour. Still, we had some trouble finding our way to the Chaukhandi Tombs on the outskirts of Karachi. All the paths leading to them from the N5 were dirt, and we had to drive back against the traffic searching for a passage without too many puddles. Once again, I had asked my hotel to help me find a driver with a car for the day. I was glad of his punctuality – a delay of ten minutes does not even feel worth mentioning anymore – and for what it’s worth, I think he enjoyed the trip as well. He had never been to several of the places on my list and was avidly taking pictures everywhere we went.

The Chaukhandi Tombs were constructed for fallen warriors and their families by various Sindhi tribes, mostly between the 17^th and 18^th centuries. They are tall, tiered structures densely packed with carved floral and geometric patterns, as well as the depictions of the military positions of the men – such as horsemen and archers – and various bodily ornaments, especially bracelets, in the case of women. These features were pointed out to us by the caretaker, who also spent the beginning of the tour chasing away the stray dogs that either ran up to bark at us or were sunning insouciantly on top of the tombs.

Had I had my way, we would have stopped at Chaukhandi last, but I yielded to the driver who said it made sense to stop there on our way to Thatta, as it lay to the left of the highway. I did, however, insist that the next place we would visit would be the Shah Jahan Mosque in Thatta rather than the Makli Necropolis, which also lies on the left of the highway. My reasoning – which the driver accepted – was that neither of us knew when the Shah Jahan Mosque would be open considering it was a Friday, so we probably stood a better chance at finding it open to tourists if we came outside of prayer time. Whether by luck or perspicacious planning, the mosque was indeed open.

While it is not a very big city by modern standards, Thatta served as the capital of Sindh under three medieval dynasties. Under the Mughals, it was eclipsed by other ports, but it made an unexpected entrance onto the stage of the empire’s history when Shah Jahan (then under the princely name Khurram) sought refuge there after unsuccessfully rebelling against his father Jahangir. Out of gratefulness to the city for its hospitality, Shah Jahan had a glorious mosque built in Thatta, which had been struck by a terrible storm a decade earlier. It took over another decade to complete, and by then the throne was occupied by Shah Jahan’s son Aurangzeb. This new emperor had coincidentally served and trained in Thatta as governor.

The Shah Jahan Mosque is famed for its beautiful blue tiles, which cover much of its outer walls and the ceilings of its largest domes with intricate patterns. This interesting feature reflects the influence of Central Asian architecture on the Indian subcontinent, which was in many places ruled by families descended from that region. Altogether, the mosque has 93 domes. The largest among them are entirely covered in blue tiles arranged in bafflingly complex patterns, while the smaller domes are made of patterned brickwork.

Right next to Thatta stands a long plateau known as the Makli Necropolis. Makli started out as the burial place of the Sufi saint Shaikh Jamali, around whose tomb many local rulers, scholars, and other Sufis built their final resting places. Their total number ranges somewhere from half a million to one million tombs. Interestingly, the most monumental mausolea were built in various styles, some of them showing clear Central Asian influence while some of them are much more obviously Indian. The tombs themselves are patterned along the same way as the tombs at Chaukhandi.

We did not pay for any entry tickets at Makli, but as a foreigner I was assigned a policeman to accompany me, so in between his tip and the tips I gave the men who opened the tombs for us and went around explaining everything in Urdu, I paid roughly the equivalent of what a ticket might have cost. The tip seemed to inspire the first of these men to recall that we could also visit the northern part of the hill. With our policeman taking shotgun, we trundled along the dirt road all the way there. The northern part of the hill seemed more rundown and simply not quite as big, but what distinguished it from the former experience was meeting the caretaker, who immediately guided us to the staircase that led to the top of the biggest tomb. Of the tomb itself, he pointed out that no two flowers in its interior were quite the same. I of course could not sleuth along every wall to test this assertion, but based on the many flowers I saw there, I concluded he may well be right.

Our last stop for the day was Bhambore, an archaeological site that dates to the Scytho-Parthians around the first century BCE. Strategically important for its location on the Indus Delta, Bhambore grew to become a major port city with a large fortress and a madrasa until it was abandoned in the 13^th century due to the changing flow of the Indus. Nowadays, it is a quiet place whose renovated waterside walls look over a very thick cluster of mangroves. Farther across the water, we could see some houses and a vast forest of windmills.

I still had plenty of daylight left when we returned to Karachi, so I asked my driver to drop me off at the Mohatta Palace instead of my hotel. The lavish villa was holding an exhibition on Sindhi cloth, which I must admit was not very interesting to me until one of the student guides started telling me about all the symbolism embedded within it. She told me how Sindhi clothes often employ floral and animal patterns as opposed to the geometric designs on clothes from Balochistan; the flowers are mostly those found in the desert, while the animals each have their own associations – for instance, peacocks with beauty and scorpions with danger to be overcome. A bride must weave a shawl for her groom to wear during the marriage ceremony, and after she is married, she weaves an elaborate border pattern onto her own clothes to communicate her new status. Sindhis, the guide said, also like to weave little glass mirrors into their cloth so that they can be seen from afar in case they ever get lost in the desert. Weaving, she explained, is a communal activity, with patchwork often being made by the women of many families coming together and bonding over their work.

Before returning to my hotel, I also made a stop by Frere Hall, a colonial-era building that now serves as an exhibition space and library. The park around it is a popular area for local people to relax, whether by lying down or by playing cricket.