A Visit to Lahore.

(This one's a long one, folks! I've broken it in half so that it doesn't seem to go on and on forever, and so that anyone who's not interested won't have to scroll forever just to get past it.)

When planning our first trip to Pakistan, about a year after we were married, we decided we would do a little traipsing around the country while we were there. I had, after all, spent the last two years reading everything I could about Pakistan. So I had gotten a little curious about all the places and things I had come across. Retrospectively, it was a fantastic idea to do that pre-kids and while we could reasonably call ourselves newlyweds. Now if we were to plan that kind of trip, family members might be offended that we'd rather travel alone than visit with them, and taking a kid with us would have been much more difficult. Our trip was a four night, five day jaunt through Lahore and Islamabad/Rawalpindi in January of 2005. First stop was Lahore.

We were met at the airport by an old friend of M's that I had never met before. He had gone to graduate school with M here in America, and had graduated (and moved back to Pakistan) just one week before M and I met. He'd lived in Lahore since then and had married and had a son. He's a professor at a university there, and when M called him up to say we'd be in Lahore, would he be available to hang out, he had insisted we stay with him and his family. So that's how I ended up sleeping on a Lahori school's campus for two nights.

The Professor and his wife were perhaps the most amazing hosts I have ever met in my life. Every need, want or comfort had already been thought of and provided for us. They planned our entire two day stay and included some of the most fantastic outings. Meals were extraordinary, they never let us pay, and on the first day I realized I would have to stop saying how much I liked things because they just kept buying everything I talked about and gifting it to me, refusing repayment. Books, toys, trinkets, bangles - if I said it was nice, they would find some way to get one and give it to me. Seriously, just thinking about it makes me want to send them a Thank You note five years later.

So what did we do while in Lahore? A lot! And I have old pictures to prove it, but it's a long pic-filled post, so you'll have to read more after the jump.

Upon our very arrival in Pakistan, it was clear that everything was going to be different. Even the airport was fantastic. On the AeroAsia airplane, it seemed like we'd been stuck in the 1970s. It was old, outdated, cramped, and the air conditioner was broken. After the elderly aunty turned around in her seat for the eighth time to stare at me, the stifling heat almost led to my first fight with some old Pakistani lady, but M was there to fan me with his newspaper. (Unfortunately that would only illicit more stares.) But the Lahore airport was the complete opposite of a stuffy, judgmental and mean old lady. It was a beacon of shiny newness, so seemingly well designed and executed, so beautiful, and such a spectacular homage to the Mughal architecture there. I was excited after my very first step in there, and the rest of the city would not disappoint, either.

The view inside the brand-spanking new Lahore Airport. (Photo credit) 

The Professor piled us and our luggage into his car (also nice & new) and took us back to his home where we freshened up a bit and ate lunch his wife and maid had prepared. While driving there, I took lots of pictures through the car window. Everything looked so different from Karachi, even the rickshaws.  Every street seemed to have these huge buildings with intricately decorated facades, remnants of the British Raj.

Weird rickshaws.

Fantastic Lahori building, through the moving car window.

We then began on our first sightseeing adventure - the Badshahi Masjid. Badshahi was amazing. It was the first mosque I ever went to in Pakistan, because try as he might M was never able to find a mosque in Karachi that would allow women. But these tourist-y mosques in the north allowed everyone, and even had a prayer area and washing-up area for women so for the first time I too was able to make my prayers in a mosque when it was prayer time rather than trying to maneuver around in the car. We looked around for a bit, took lots of pictures, made the evening prayer, and then went out to dinner at The Village restaurant, which was the first "nice" restaurant I had ever gone to in Pakistan. And it was really nice, too - so much food, such great service. The Professor and his family really made sure I got to see a different side of Pakistan than I had theretofore seen.

M making wudu, washing up for prayer.

Badshahi at night.

The next day we went the Qila, or castle, also know as the Lahore Fort (or so Wikipedia tells me.) The Professor told us all about how the city center of Lahore had been guarded by all these walls and gates and the castle. It was in the process of being restored while we were there, so some areas weren't open. But the parts that were had been turned into a museum, and it was filled with other tourists. The entry prices were different for tourists too; an adult Pakistani was charged 10 rupees (20 cents at that time) while a "Foreigner" was charged 200 rupees - four dollars. Sure, it's no big monetary deal, but it still pissed me off and I took a picture of it.

The castle was really beautiful and the handiwork was so intricate. 

Small elephants in the awnings. 

While walking around we saw another tourist - a white girl. You know I had to take a picture of her too!

One of the gates of Lahore.

We saw a couple of the gates of the city that the Professor had told us about, but not all of them. Some of them were better restored than others, but they were all huge and incredibly detailed. The Professor had warned us that we would likely be accosted by unwanted "tour guides" and he was right. Right after entering the Qila, there was a large crowd of men all clamoring for our attention, some with cameras or video cameras offering to accompany us and document our trip through the castle. We declined them all and were able to view most of the area at our own pace, but towards the end we did somehow attract another guy.

At first he seemed different than the rest of those tour guides, he was older and dressed differently, and it seemed more like he worked there, as if he were a museum curator or something. He wasn't annoying or following us around like the other guys, he seemed genuinely like he wanted us to know about how great this place was, and he had some really great stuff to tell us about. It was like we were following him. In the end though, he was just a tour guide - but a better one, I guess. He at least knew not to stay at the front and compete with all the rest of them.

"One piece!" he's telling us - that whole inlay was carved from one piece of marble.

That evening we went out to Wagah to see the border post's flag-lowering demonstration. But THAT is a whole 'nother experience that deserves its own post. Oh wait, I already wrote that one !

Later that evening we went for dinner at Lahore's famed Food Street. There we saw even older buildings, some with old Hindi signs. We ate in one of the larger restaurants there, and later we did some shopping. I was looking for accessories to go with the pink outfit I'd bought for our upcoming wedding reception in Karachi the next week, and Lahore has lots of stuff that Karachi didn't have, so the Professor's wife took me into all sorts of shops looking for shoes, bracelets , jewelry and other stuff while the guys and the baby stayed in the car reminiscing about grad school and their old advisor, I suppose. (The guys, not the baby. I'm pretty sure the baby hadn't gone to grad school...)

Sign in Hindi from 1914.

Our dinner on Food Street.

The restaurant we ate at. 

The view from inside the restaurant. 

Another restaurant on Food Street, this time with an extra leary guy!

Some of the shopping areas. 

A guy selling tea that's been cooking all day in this huge pot. Oh man, I miss Kashiri Chai.

On our last morning in Lahore, we woke up extra early, picked up some breakfast to go and drove out to the Professor's susral, or his in-law's house. His father-in-law was retired from the Army, but he'd obviously been way up there in rank - as evidence by the special treatment we received while at the Wagah border. He also had this crazy nice home about an hour (maybe more?) outside of Lahore.

The drive there alone was so gorgeous. The Pakistani countryside is so, so indescribably beautiful. I've never seen anything so vibrantly green in my life. And the scenes we drove past were like from a movie. The village woman with a huge bundle on her head, the doodhwala's motorcycle crash with his milk strewn about the highway. When we finally got there (it was a long drive and I was seriously ready for breakfast) my eyes popped out of my head. Here, in the middle of Pakistan, on the out-out-outskirts of Lahore, was a white freaking picket fence, y'all!

I felt like I was home again!

We weren't able to stay long at the Professor's in-law's house, but we did have a lovely morning. A tour of "The Grounds" (they had their own grounds, yo) and the house, introductions to the rest of the fam and even some of the servants (plural), a lovely breakfast and an invitation - nay, insistence -  that should we ever return to Lahore we must visit again. Then, only hours later, we were back at that lovely airport, on our way to our next travel destination, and on our way to imposing on another one M's school friend's parents!

But that's a story for another day.

Goodbye, Lahore. Hope to see you again someday.