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We didn't stay long in Bahawalpur and the next morning we took a mini bus to the small town of Uch Sharif. The town is famous for its old mosques and shrines. Also legend has it that Alexander the Great spent a day there though that can be nothing but mythical talk. At least it is sure that Muhammad Bin Qasim took the city in 710 AD and turned it into an Islamic centre for pilgrims and students in Asia. His conquest could be seem as the beginning of Islam in this region and most of Pakistan, which has remained so in the country to present day.
Uch, dusty and filled with goats and caged chickens. Men with longer and thicker beards and females dressed more in burqa's than on other cities. The natural adaptation for a holy town. We walked through the narrow streets, stepping aside for many donkey and man pulled street carts. Soon a little schoolboy offered to take us around. Not that we asked or needed it, but he didn't stress us like most so we let him be and he took us on a nice route through the maze of the bazaar. At a little shop of a retired army officer we sat down by his request and had some chai. He was from Chitral (the rural mountain area where the Kalasha tribes still live) and sold plastic toys in his shop. Like imitation Miffy stuff and so on. Imitation is the standard for any brand of anything. After leaving our bags there, the boy took us to the old site where was saw the mosque, shrines, tombs and graveyards. All in aquarian blue and indigo, the mozaique art was amazing and still intact. The mosque and tombs were quite damaged, halfed, by the hand of ancient floodings and earthquakes but still were beautiful in their crumbled state.
The afternoon was coming to an end and we quickly wanted to get to Panjnad Head before sunset, where the 5 big rivers of Punjab merg together into one river. We didn't see the Indus as that river only gets merged more south of the state at Mithankot. We got off at the beginning of the bridge, a long one of nearly one km. It's not allowed in Pakistan to take any pictures when standing on bridges, whether you just want to photograph the water or something else other than the bridge itself. Just a defensive and security rule as ordered by Pakistani law. But we did, photographing and filming, a few 100 metres down on the bridge on a dam ridge. The guards didn't seem to mind either. Many farm trucks and tractors were passing by on the bridge, with sugarcane reeds stacked 5 metres high while kids were running after them. Pulling sugarcanes loose by the plenty, the slow pace of the wagons allowing them to take their beloved sweet sticks. Kids walked with bundles of them, chewing the juice out of the raw cane flesh. Soon enough I got my own sugarcane too, pulling the strong bamboo strips off with my teeth. Mhhhh, sugarcane juice. Back at the beginning of the bridge we visited the many fish-only shops. Fresh river fish from the Punjab rivers. Mostly trouts and other fishes that we hadn't seen before. In my pescatarian hunger, as I do like to eat fish now and then, I ordered some trout. The way they make it here is slicing them up in flat slices, but batter and massala herbs on them and throw them in the frying pan. A more exotic way of how it's made in the UK. And way more tasty too. We even got the fish for free as a gift, another sweet gesture of hospitality that we encounter here day by day. At least we gave the owner and his kids some chocolate cookies in return for it. Uch Sharif
tailor shop with election posters
tame bird (woodpecker we think), I held it too
Panjnad head, river at sunset
side canal
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