How does every day life in Pakistan look like?

A young Pakistani Pakhtun boy takes care of his (maybe) goats. The weather is cold but he's wearing slippers. Pakhtuns have made a strong place in Punjab due to hard work and selflessness. These folks are only concerned with their work, whereas Punjabi locals usually shy away from small jobs or working for people belonging to low casts.

Redefining transportation, a young Pakhtun boy toes a young girl most probably his sister to the other side of the road. In past they were living in mud huts but now they've built concrete homes on lad they've purchased.

When it comes to selfless hard work, Pathans are no doubt the best. We went to this young man to buy some fire wood for a funeral alms lunch. The wood he had was dry but it was wide cut, not suitable for cooking. So we asked him to chop the logs in half. All alone he chopped 450 kilos of wood in something like one hour.

Early morning in a local fruit market a vendor is washing oranges with a mixture of water and oil, it will make the fruit clean and shiny. On the left you could see the bags of oranges he's bought in open bidding.

That's a hell of a "helping foot", who needs a helping hand then? Two young men are pushing a broken car to a workshop(most probably) in Lahore Pakistan.

Once upon a time, I parked my car in the wrong place and went away for shopping. By the time I returned, the police had already lifted my tiny Suzuki 800 away to a foot path. "Getting carried away" has got different meanings for humans and cars. Had to pay a small fine of line $5 or 500 Pakistani rupees to get the car off the foot path.

Random photos from Pakistan

Going to school can be difficult yet interesting every day routine in Pakistan, picture given above (left) was taken in very cold month of December. The kids on the bus roof must be freezing, but they are still heading for their school(must be Gujrat city). Travelling behind the bus is a common thing over here, just check the "spider man" on the right ;)

 

Make shift truck powered by a diesel engine that's used to lift concrete up to roof tops on construction sites. Giving a new meaning to the words like bare bone and brute force.

 "Pre historic" hand pump some of the readers might think, but seriously these things were present in every home until 1994. In fact when we came to the village in 1992, our village had a lot of hand pumps like this. Later on donkey pumps invaded the country and dethroned poor "dhichkon dhickon" hand pumps.
The goats on the right are just cute.

 
"Koloh", or "Kaloh" is a large pan used to cook large loaves. It is used on occasions like weddings when there's a need to cook lots of loaves. The people shown in the image came to our village for a funeral recently. A crew of two arrived the evening before the event to create a ditch and fix their pan up properly. In the night they prepared dough for the loaves. And next day they started "operations" early in the morning, and stopped nead 2 PM a little before the charity lunch ended. A middle aged female also joined them as helper later in the day.

Building an electricity tower is a scene to be seen. I wonder if they train people using Lego, after all the operation is much similar to putting together Lego pieces.

Recently I was travelling on G.T road and saw a Pakistan Army convoy, moving big guns around. The weapons looked extremely graceful.
"Impotence is a state of mind."
Saw this man (right top) some time ago, he's got a wooden leg but still riding a bicycle. It must have been difficult.

Finally, its the end of the day and end of the post. Looks like sun has left writings in the sky before moving out to the other part of the world.

Bilal Lost, Bilal Found

After getting a double bed room reserved in PWD restaurant we came down to village bazar for tea. We should have snapped the bazar, but we didn't... Anyway there was this building under construction in the bazar...

There was a small camp set up by government, with three officers. Returning from bazar we had a nice chat with them. Bilal (Umar's younger bro) went back to rest house as we sat there with officers. We asked if there was a place where we can go and come back before sunset? They told us about a cricket ground nearby, on the mountain known by the name of
"Coopra".

Officers showed us the small foot way, leading to Coopra. There was one complication, the foot way was right next to a broad road and at first they just pointed to the foot way but we started walking on the broader road next to foot way. Officers had to come and tell us that we need to follow the small foot way in order to reach Coopra on hill top, not the broad road.

A snap after reaching the top.

They told us to stay careful because the jungle had a lot of blood sucking flees (چیچڑ). So we started walking towards the top, very cautious about the flees. We were staying away from the trees and stones. The jungle was calm and serene. The track was easy, and we reached the cricket ground on Coopra top in hardly 15 minutes.

The place was so beautiful, so wide and so soothing. Lush greenry everywhere. We didn't snap much up there because we were busy shouting "Echo" and our names, and what not...

In fact, I called my brother and a few other close friends from there... Was so much happy...

Umar points to "Ganga Peak", the core attraction...

This is the smaller play ground, the guys told us later on that there's another one a little far away but they did not tell us about it intentionally. They feared we might get lost in the darkness when returning, so they told us about the nearer and safer place.

That's me... :)

The cricket ground.

When we started downhill sun was already gone behind some mountain, and it was dark by the time we returned back to rest house. But the room was locket, and Bilal not there... We thought he'll be in mosque for prayers... Umar tried to call him but there was something wrong with the network and he couldn't reach him... We then went to Gov. officers camp and asked them about Bilal... They said that HE WENT AFTER US. Well, we felt worried because we did not see him anywhere when coming down hill. And there was only one way downhill.

Worried Umar and I started up hill once more, problem was that the lights we had weren't good enough. Officers had a torch but the batteries were almost dead, I had a Nokia 1200 torch phone, and officers had a lighter with an LED in it which they gave us. We had watched so many movies, so our minds were creating different stories like what if he found a Lion in jungle, or maybe he slipped from the narrow foot way and fell in the valley. Why his mobile was not responding? Both were shouting "Bilal" "Bilal" on back of our throats, Umar much louder than me. He was terribly worried, you know bringing your elder brother with you is hell lot of a responsibility. All the shouting was useless, I came back from the mid way to the officers camp to ask if there was any clue? Well they did not get any sign of Bilal anywhere either. Umar was continuously trying to call Bilal but his mobile was not responding.

Umar came back after a while, tired and worried. Then someone said that maybe he made the same mistake that we did i.e. following the larger road instead of smaller foot way. Well folks, Umar and an officer started going up hill again. I and an officer started treading the broad road. I was shouting "Bilal" "Bilal", after almost five minutes we saw a light waving at some distance. And that was that, we found Bilal.

We asked him where he'd been and he confirmed what we feared, he indeed followed the broad road :). He said that he was expecting the road to return where it started, because the road was build around a mountain and was supposed to be circular. Funny, ha ha... that's what we said...

I called Umar, and told him to return. I liked the polite way he behaved to his younger brother at that time, after going through such a cycle of tension.

We went back to rest house room, to comfort our itching bodies. After all it was an extremely busy day. You see, after leaving Lahore we didn't rest. In train I slept for hardly half an hour and in wagon I simply can' t sleep because the seats are very uncomfortible. Then the bath in ford of bagh, going up hill afterwards, the ride on roof of bus, then going up to Coopra, then hype around Bilal gone missing.

Umar woke me up after a while, because officers had invited us on dinner they'd cooked Capcicum (شملہ مرچ) mixed with Potatos. Food was nice, they'd cooked it by themselves. Afterwards we came home, and thus ended a sequence of frantic activity. All I know is that I hit the sack, afterwards God knows how time passed. I only woke up in the morning with itching legs and back.

Next will tell about going to Ganga peak.

Cheers... :)

Bilal

On Pakistan Winning T20 World Cup

Champions Medal On Green Shirt...

Wild Wild Super Celeberator

Trademark Afridi...

This one was published in today's Daily Express, URL is http://www.express.com.pk

In a Sober Mood

This one was my DP on MSN...

Khans Celeberating...

Man of the match... undefeated 54...

Winner team...

All above images were taken from Dawn.com, URL to complete gallery is

http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/news/media-gallery/12-team-euphoria--bi-05

Yesterday Pakistan won Twenty Twenty Cricket Worldcup (T20)...

Here's the link from Dawn News...

http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/news/cricket/12-pakistan-sri-lanka-set-for-emotional-clash-in-world-t20-final--bi-02

Sudhan Gali

Well, before I tell you the happenings at Sudhan Gali I would love to share this video which was shot on our way to Sudhan Gali...

The climate of Sudhan Gali(SG) was very different from that of Bagh city. In Bagh we were sweating, feeling hot. But in SG the weather was very nice, soothing cold. You see, there is a height difference of some 2000 feet between Bagh and SG.

We asked locals the directions to rest house, there are two government owned rest houses in Sudhan Gali. One is run by Tourism Development Department (TDD) , and other by PWD. All necessary info can be found here:

http://www.ajk.gov.pk/tourism/index.html

We approached the Tourism rest house, it is on a mountain with opening towards the valley. There are only 2 or 3 rooms in the rest house, and there was no room available when we reached. Omer tried a lot to call TDD before going but could not get a place reserved. the photos we took there were not clear, but we took a photo when coming back from Ganga Peak climb.

The most visible building in this photo is the rest house.

This part of the rest house was damaged due to 2005 earthquake.

Locals told us that the two rest houses will be soon re-constructed.

We asked the people present at rest house about where shall we go now, they called the PWD rest house gurad to ask whether there was any space available there. Luckily, we found a room in the other rest house. The charges were very minimal, 1000 rupess per night I guess.

Food was not available at rest house and we had to eat from Sudhan Gali bazar. The food was nice, (beans and boiled rice) and not expensive at all. The coffe was out class, and we really enjoyed it.

PWD resthouse from a side...

Stairs leading to the rest house, I should have snapped the end as well... :(

A few interesting things happened here, will write about them in next post... Like we went up hill to see the cricket ground on "Coopra". Bilal went missing, after dark and how we found him.