While usually the USP of Sunday
mornings is the alarm-free dawn, this Sunday was exciting for a bigger reason –
The Super Savari Express tour of Karachi that we had booked for the four of us
– me, my husband, my daughter and our house-help. All four of us are from
Lahore and my life in Karachi generally runs between do and teen talwar, so
going all over town seeing different parts of Karachi was a pretty exciting
prospect.
At 8 in the morning, with swollen
faces, we met our fellow tourists and Jehanzeb, the tour operator, outside the
Super Savari office in Saddar, behind Karachi Gymkhana.
We were super excited to see our
ride – a signature Pakistani bus decorated with colorful truck art from the
outside as well as the inside! It cannot get more Pakistani than that!
We first went up to the Super
Savari office which was no less than a treat – truck art slogans decorated the
walls and red fairy lights lit up the place. The office desk itself was a
‘theyla-cart’ decorated with truck art – I thought the idea was quite original.
Lots of truck art frames were up for sale – I’d suggest spend a few $$$ on
those if you don’t already own such pieces. I heart them. For details about the tour and how to book, you can check out their Facebook page at www.facebook.com/superkarachiexpress/?fref=ts.
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| The office door opens to this.. |
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| Home Decoration (itmes for sale) |
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| Wouldn't mind a wall like that in my house! |
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| Paul Smith shoes anyone? |
The ride through the empty
streets in the usually congested and polluted Karachi was an absolute treat.
The crisp, clean air and the need for shawls added the X-factor to the city
tour. We started off the tour from the Abdullah Haroon Road, formerly known as
the Victoria Road from the British times. The State Guest House on this road happened
to be the first Prime Minister House in Pakistan – its address being 10 Vitoria
Road (sounds like 10 Downing Street address of the Prime Minister House in
Great Britain). We passed by the Sindh National Assembly, the High Court and
the first Free Masons Lodge in Pakistan (now Sind Wildlife Dept) with Jehanzeb telling
us interesting bits of history. We even passed by what Jehanzeb called us ‘our
version of the Trafalgar Square’ – this round about had hundreds of pigeons and
we made them fly as the bus roared past them. At 8 in the morning, this
sight was indeed beautiful.
The bus then took us into the
heart of Saddar, Elphinstone Street, where it parked and we got down. We got a
walking tour of Saddar, with the stories of various historical buildings being narrated
to us. We saw buildings owned by the
Portuguese and by the Belgian (with European architecture), a mosque built
by Kattchi Memons, the Parsi Dar e Meher and a Bori mosque (with
North African Architecture) showing that Karachi is indeed the melting pot of
Pakistan where you get so much religious and cultural diversity.
As you walk
around Saddar, and take a closer look at some of the colonial buildings you see
architectural details you see in Europe. With good imagination and memories
from Vienna if you have been, you will be able to see these buildings in their
times of glory. Now, they are cracking and unkept, ‘khandar-type’ facades
of buildings with renovated interiors. Sadness. Otherwise, with a tourism
budget and without paan peeks, we too could have had something like the
Viennese city centre. Also as you walk around, more than breakfast at this point,
you might want a ‘jharoo’ to clean up
the garbage that pollutes our beautiful city. Shame to the city government.
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| Suba ka suraj, scooter aur kachra. |
As you walk some more, you see
little street hawkers get ready for daily business – pathans opening stacks and
stacks of cloth which you would probably get at amazing prices, chai walas
brewing fresh tea and desi bakery walas making bread and biscuits – which btw
make the streets actually smell so nice and make you super hungry. Now, finally
we stopped for breakfast at a typical Karachi dhaba and ate hari mich walay
omlettes with parathas to our heart’s content. They also serve really nice
mix-chai.
Post nashta, we stopped at the Tit
Bit book stall, saw a mandir as well as a gurdwara. We also saw the New Memon Mosque
– reminiscent of the Badshahi mosque
with its white domes and red structure – not as grand of course, but grand enough to make you wonder – why
didn’t I ever see it? Why didn’t I even know about it?! The courtyard of the mosque
was tiled with flooring that looked like individual jaa-e-namaazes – which I
found quite interesting.
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| Tit Bit book shop |
It was wonderful to stop at the
Big Ben of Karachi – The Merewhether Clock Tower – which I have always found
interesting but could never stop to have a clear look because of traffic AND
the fear of getting mugged. Getting a closer look at it today reminded me of
the towers of the Rathaus towers in Vienna in terms of architecture – of course this
is just a single tower, but it is beautiful.
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| like totallys |
St.Patrick’s Cathedral was our
next stop. The white marble structure decorated with statures of angels and
behind it the cathedral itself, made of beige stones during the British Raj –
so marvelous.
The tour usually ends here but today
was special – we were treated to seeing one more place – the newly rejuvenated
Eduljee Dinshaw Road! And that was made
possible as one the people responsible for this great effort and venture, the architect
Shahid Abdullah Sahab, was on this tour with us! When we walked inside we saw
people working hard to set up the area for the official inauguration event to
be held this evening (13th December, 2015). This street was basically
a dump yard, serving two prestigious architectural landmarks of Karachi:
Karachi Port Trust building and the Imperial Custom House. With joint efforts
and finances of some private sector companies, this area has been refurbished,
decorated with Victorian style lamp posts, fountains, benches and freshly laid
stone walkways. The rehabilitation of
this road has also been covered by Sharmin Obaid Chinoy. The intention is to
make it a pedestrian zone.
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| Names of Private Sector Donors. Awesome people. |
When Shahid Sahab narrated his
vision to us, I could clearly imagine this street looking like a street in
Paris, lined with bistros and musicians and artists and happy people. Too
optimistic? Maybe? Maybe not. Maybe more of maybe not! Though I was already in
awe of our history and the colonial heritage and the potential our city holds
as being a tourist destination, at this point, I felt SO, SO proud of our
people. The trustees of this project took out the time AND money from their OWN pockets to clean up and reclaim a street of our city, to give back to their city –
spending half a million a month over the last 9 months to give their vision the
colour of reality. What an amazing act of patriotism.
We are a lazy bunch of people, true.
But maybe all we need is a push. We want to change things. We want our city
back. We want to feel we own it – and we do own it. We need to come out on the
streets. We need to come out and enjoy our food, our history, our people. We
need to take our cameras out and show the world what we are about. Karachi is
about Pathans and Afghans and Punjabis and Sindhis and Balochis and Sunnis and
Shias and Boris and Sikhs and Hindus and Parsis and Christians. Karachi is
multi -cultural, multi-lingual and that’s what makes it vibrant, tolerant,
refreshing and beautiful! Till we don’t take pride in ourselves, we will not be
able to change the perception the rest of the world holds about us. Instead of
apologizing for what a few hundreds do, let us celebrate the good things the
thousands do.
What was the best part of the
tour? I guess many would ask as a lot of the stops on this tour are places we
see every day while going about our daily business. But the very fact that we
were a group of ‘burgers’ out on the streets of Saddar with our ‘bags’ and
phones and some of us with our cameras too, enjoying what our beautiful city
has to offer, fearless, was a THING in itself. That is the best part for me.
The sense of security, the sense of ownership. So thank you Super Savari for
this brilliant idea and Jehanzeb for being a super duper tour guide. Thank you
for making us love Karachi even more today!
So take out 2500 rupees from your
pocket ‘coz I’ve got your next Sunday morning planned for you.
Ye watan hamara hai, ham hein
paasbaan iskey!
