Once the money issue solved and with the next evening train tickets in our hands, we took a rickshaw to the Lahore fort. I guess that rickshaw had the carbon footprint of a WWII Antonov plane, for it was small, barely advancing the hill…but it was making the noise and the smoke of a fire dragon. I was not to find out until later that unlike Delhi, where all rickshaws and transport was forced to turn to LP Gas a decade ago, this is not the case in Pakistan, where rickshaws were THE major source of city air pollution.
Though not quite politically correct, I guess pollution is the first word that comes to my mind when someone’s asks me about Pakistani cities. After the first night in Lahore I was experiencing flue-like symptoms – a snotty nose and a sore throat complemented by tearing eyes. In just a few hours I realized handkerchiefs were of no use anymore, since spitting snots was a permanent occupation, whether in public or private… and this is not to mention the morning ones :-((
A stroll through the old bazaar in Lahore took me to the vibrant essence of Asia: ambulant sellers shouting their goods in the middle of the street, children playing, dogs barking, rickshaws hurrying within millimeters from porters carrying large packs, shop tenants dusting off their goods or chatting one another at a cup of tea. Every street or neighborhood is still specialized – only one type of goods are on sale in a particular area: spices bazaar, jewelers bazaar, textiles bazaar, clothes bazaar, sewers bazaar, an entire neighborhood for plastics of various shapes and sizes and another only for bathroom appliances…here and there, some chaikhanas and food stalls….the first outcome is that if you need to buy a toilet paper, a plastic glass and a scarf, you need to get lost for hours among endless arrangements in display, to the point that it is impossible to recompose your way back. The only solution out…was to keep walking straight ahead.
Typical stronghold of Moghul architecture, the fort in Lahore looks like the one in Delhi...but only from the outside. For the inside, although not as richly decorated as its Indian brother-in-law, combines an more austere look with an exotic charm, as if taken from classical movies where Indiana Jones would appear on an elephant back after the first corner.
“Hello, Sir! …..Where are you come from?”…”Your name is?”…”I am tourist specialist, authorized guide, I know everything about this place…come with me, I show you …please Sir, come…” – I was about to hear this approximate sequence in an endless number of occasions, several times at once and whenever I was paying an entrance to visit something…ah, those annoying touts, you’d say, nothing new about them?
