Archive for the ‘Travels’ Category

Glam to Lahore’s Roads

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It’s not everyday that you find such a shiny Glamorous beauty roaming around Lahore’s busiest roads in the Peak hour.

I don’t know about lahoriites but that’s for the first time I’ve seen a beauty of her kind … and guess what NO Murphy’s Law applied in this case. Yes usually all the aaLa cars or bikes have (God Forbid) kind of people in … in this one the hunk was perfectly well-suited for her … made for each other. BTW, It’s BMW Z4Roadster .

Ciao before the string splits :-)

SAARC Car Rally 2007 in Lahore

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The participants reached Lahore through Wagha Border crossing on the 28th.

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Welcoming Crowds at Wagha Border

A convoy of dozens of Tata Safaris passes through The Mall-Canal Underpass crossing.
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From London to Lahore: Qissa Ek Flight Ka

Last year, while flying from London to Lahore I made the following observations:

The Senior Purser, the man in charge of the cabin crew, was quite an older man – perhaps in his late 50s. May be it was the classic “naukar-shahi” attitude, may be it was sheer fatigue of traveling at his age, or may be the classic Pakistani chauvinism; he spent most of the flight sitting down and ordering young cabin crew, mostly female stewardess, around. The stewardesses were visibly tired and weary towards the end of the entire journey, and understandably a bit agitated.

But it was not just their boss who was ordering them around. I was in the section of the plane that directly faces the cockpit. And the cockpit had the cabin crew bringing them water, tea, sandwiches, meals, dessert (once Nirala’s ras malai) throughout the entire flight. Seriously, I was flabbergasted to see the cabin crew spending more time serving the cockpit crew than the passengers. Every fifteen or so minutes the cabin staff would be knocking at the cockpit door to take dishes out and bring something else in. It felt as if there was a party going on in the cockpit being catered by the flight stewardess.

Someone I know who has been working with PIA for the past 26 years told me that more than 250 directors run it. Even Wasim Akram was one of the directors. Most of money earned are used to make those directors Happy and Live Safe. The amount of money spent on the directors can better be spent buying a couple of new aircrafts for PIA fleet each year.
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Lohawarana

Ok so isn’t it strange that not many Lahorees actually know how their city came into being and where did word Lahore come from? I asked a few friends the same question and only one of them could come up the answer.

According to Legends Lahore or Lohawarana was founded by two sons of Lord Rama Chandra about 4000 years ago. One of them was Loh (called Luv or Lava in Sanskrit) and most historians agree that Lahore was named after him. Kush, Rama?s second son, also founded the town of Kasu (present day Kasur). Ptolemy’s “Geographia”, written about AD I50, refers to it as “Labokla” and locates it with reference to the Indus, the Ravi, the Jhelum and the Chenab rivers. Some of the other old names are Laha-war, Laha-noor, Loh-pur, Mahmood-pur, Labokla, Samandpal Nagiri, Lohar-pur. There is enough historical evidence to prove that the city is atleast 2,000 years old. Hieun-tasng, the famous Chinese pilgrim has given a vivid description of Lahore city which he visited (on his way to Jalandhar) in the early parts of the seventh century A.D. He describes it as a large Brahmanical’ city.

However, there are a few unanswered questions like why did Lav/kush built a city so far from Ayodhya (if Rama was ever born at Ayodhya as extremist Hindu groups claim) considering that we are talking about thousands of years back? And if they did build these cities who rules Ayodhya after Rama? Makes me wonder if only I had a time machine :o).


There is a temple in Lahore Fort dedicated to Loh. The temple is located near the Alamgiri gate where the old jails of the Fort used to be. In Ziaul Haq?s regime the temple was completely closed as the dungeons were being used by the police. It was opened for public later on.

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