We were up early and set off, without Jan for once, to the Pak Tea House for a superb breakfast of omelettes and toast. Our next task was to book a bus to the Indian border for tomorrow, so we walked along the Mall in the blazing sun to the tourist bureau.
They directed us to the minibus ranks at the station, so onward we trudged to collapse exhausted into a welcome chair in the restaurant that we had patronised yesterday. A few cokes and teas refuelled us for our mission and after being passed from stand to stand like an unwanted buck we discovered that there was no booking system but the buses just set off for their destinations when they had a full load.
Next on our agenda was sight-seeing so we set off to explore Lahore Fort and the adjacent Badshahi Mosque via some very poor alleys where man and beast lived in close proximity in dingy surroundings. The mosque was an unexpected treat, supposedly the biggest in the world, it looked rather like the Taj Mahal.
The Badshahi Mosque was built by Emperor Aurangzeb in 1671, with construction of the mosque lasting for two years until 1673. The mosque is an important example of Mughal architecture, with an exterior that is decorated with carved red sandstone with marble inlay. It remains the largest mosque of the Mughal-era, and is the second-largest mosque in Pakistan.
Bare-footed we mounted the 204 steps to the top of the corner minaret and gazed out over the grubby noisy city with it’s wide mall, and the picturesque fort opposite. As we left these ancient monuments we met Jan looking like “Pa Bear” slouching towards us, his head lolling on his chest as usual. He learned about the buses from us and disappeared into the fort.
We wandered through the bustling town amongst all manner of vehicles, motor and beast driven, passed Kim’s Gun (The Zamzama Gun, also known as Kim’s Gun or Bhangianwali Toap, is an ornate large bore cannon. It was cast in about 1757 in Lahore, now in Pakistan but at the time part of the Durrani Empire. It is currently on display in front of the Lahore Museum in Lahore, Pakistan.) and into the Pak Tea House for a vegetable curry.
We passed the afternoon in a merry “window shopping” spree in the bazaar. George bought a new shirt and trousers to replace those that he had thrown away to lighten his bag. Despite scouring the town I was unable to find some suitable sandals or a shoulder bag. Our final quest before returning to the YMCA was to reconvert our excess Pakistani Ruppees into usable money for India. When we changed our money into Pakistani Rupees we were assured that such a transaction would be easy, but as we were shunted from bank to bank we realised that this was a fool’s errand and returned to our room to chortle over an article on “British Tribes” in Time Magazine.
An alarming article was also brought to light: “Prime Minister Indira Ghandi has declared the Punjab ‘a disturbed area’”. Five companies of paramilitary reinforcements were rushed to Amritsar (our next destination), the Holy City of the Sikhs, bringing the number of security forces there to 3,000. Meanwhile turbaned, blue-uniformed “Lion Warriors” manned machine guns in the highest towers of the Golden Temple, ready to repel a Government assault.
“Almost every night the rattle of gunfire echoed through Amritsar, occasionally punctuated by the explosion of a bomb”, and “at weeks end the Punjab remained a tinderbox, it’s air poisoned with mistrust, it’s people deeply fearful”. This was in Time Magazine 24th October 1983 and was especially relevant to us as we are intending to cross the border into India and stay in the Amritsar Youth Hostel tomorrow!
Lahore-Amritsar is the only border crossing between Pakistan and India so we have no alternative. Fate has indeed dealt us an alarming card. Amritsar , historically also known as Rāmdāspur and colloquially as Ambarsar, is a city in northwestern India which is the administrative headquarters of the Amritsar district and is located in the Majha region of the Indian state of Punjab.
We had dhal and vegetable curry in the Pak Tea House and an abortive walk with Jan before we went to bed. A reasonable night ensued and I awoke only once, probably disturbed by the noisy chuntering of our ceiling fan or the hardness of the bed.
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