Road to Sukkur

 Road to Sukkur 

We left the police guest house and met our first escort. It was two motorbikes, one of them being riden by the same two policeman that had first met us at the boundary of the city and had accompanied around the city the following day. It was the usual being escorted to the edge of one police precinct and being handed on to another escort. We were going back along the same road and the exchange points were at the same places. Once we were out of the urban sprawl, we were on a main road...but there was a traffic jam of a different sort, this was a herd of cows, sheep and goats. 

As we went past I noticed that some of the goats had long hair as if they had a fleece like a sheep. Angora goats have a fleece as do cashmeres but my goat breed recognition skills is not one of my best fortes.

We drove west from Bahawalpur to stop at Uch Shakir. The city was founded by Alexander the Great near where the Cenab River joins the Indus. The city was a reginal centre between the 12th and 17th centuries and became a refuge for Muslim scholars fleeing persecution from other lands.  

We we going to see some shrines. The mound on which the shrines are located. The first shrine was that of Jalaluddin Bukhari (1190 - 1295). He was a Sufi saint and descended from the 10th Iman, Ali al-Hadi. It is alleged that on his way to India, he met Ghengis Khan and tried to convert him but failed.

The mosque beside the shrine with blue mosaic decorations.

The colomns inside the mosque. the architecture is quite different from the other mosques that we had seen in the last few days. The tall slender carved wooden columns are very similar to those found in mosques in Central Asia such as Bukhara which was where Jalaluddin Bukhari's family came from. from.

Another detail of the mosque. Behind the cloth hanging in front of some of the alcoves is the tomb of a notable individual. For a small fee, visitors and have the cloth pulled aside and touch the tomb. 

The entrance to the shrine of Jalaluddin Bukhari.

The roof is finely decorated timber.

The week before had been his urs and the decorations were still abundant. There were strings of flowers and paper baubles in differnt colours hanging from the ceiling.

His tomb was festooned with decorations, and so many and thick that it was hard to see the actal tomb itself.

A detail of the decorations of the wood surrounding the tomb.

He has many descendents and many are buried here and his tomb is surrounded by them.

The entrance to the Tomb of Bibi Javindi. She was a 12th century muslim saint.

Looking back to the entrance.

The tomb of Bibi Javindi. Also on the same site are the...

                                                                   

..Shrine of Baha'al-Halim...

and the Tomb of Ustead Noriya, the architect who designed the buildings here. The buildings are brilliant but only imposing from a certain angle. The damage to the Tomb of Ustead Noriya is obvious. These are photos of the other two buildings from the other side; 

                                       

                                                  

Thre was a massive flood in 1817 that washed away half the mound that the buildings sat on. They have since been repaired and the mound reinforced.

It has left the buildings sitting close to a vertical drop, with the ground level some distance below the foundations of the buildings.

A view from the road looking back towards the shrines, unfortunately taken looking into the sun with the Tomb of Bibi Javindi on the left and the Shrine of Baha'al-Halim o the right.

The area is known for its mangoes. There are more than a thousand varieties and 300 are grown locally but just 15 varieties make up the bulk of the production. It is claimed that mangoes from here taste better than those from anywhere else in the world. Before we left the city, we pulled in at a juice bar. I had a delicious mango smoothie. But I am not a taster and I love mango so it would have tasted good wherever it had come from.

After the shrines we took the motorway to Sukkur. The smog had cleared sufficently for visibility to be good enough for the authorities to open the motorway. At last, I was having my first experience of a Pakistani motorway.

A view of the motorway in front of us. It was largely empty for the just over 300 kilomtres from Uch Shakir to Sukkur. There was other traffic occasionally but the trucks out numbered the cars.

A NLC locomotive but apologises to train enthusiats about the picture as it was taken from a noving car on a motorway over the parapet of a brighe that crosses the railway.

Some of the carriages of the train.

The scenery didn't change much, passing through flat agricultural land and crossing several irrigation canals. Then there were huge planatations of date palms which I recognised immeadiately having worked on a plantation for a year. We were approaching an area known for its date production centred around Khaipur.  

Following on from the claim about mangoes, I felt that I was listening to some propaganda produced by the Pakistani Agricultural Produce Promotion Board (and my apologises to any real life organisation that carries out this function). Pakistan is the fifth largest producer of dates producing 535,000 tons annually behind numbers one and two being Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

The paddles on the central reservation had seen better days but there was a story here. The motorway is just three years old so why were so many of the paddles for long stretches broken? It is a government road but built by private contractors. The lowest price won but to deliver at a lower price, some corners were cut. Sub-standard (and therefore cheaper) materials were used. 

They were meant to last for ten years but just three years later whole sections have failed. The relentless heat, sun, extremes of temperatures and strong winds have taken their toll. Some of the paddles became pliable in the heat and have been blown over by the wind.

There was a long section of upright standing immaculate paddles. Then I saw a team replacing them. I wouldn't have liked to do that work for any amount of money. The motorway hadn't been shut or a lanr closed. All three lanes were open. The only protection the team had was a red cone standing next to the concrete central reservtion and a bright yellow flourescent jacket.

We reached the indus, my first sighting of it. We crossed over a bridge that ran parallel to a couple of other bridges. I couldn't get a decent photo but was promised a better view tomorrow so something else to look forward to enjoying.