Elsien's Traveblogue

Lahore
Lahore has been an amazing experience. I started off staying in Malik's house, as the guesthouse was full. Malik was Benazir Bhutto's Press man, a journalist and a Sufi music enthusiast. He has been asked by Ms Bhutto to work for her again during the forthcoming election campaign, so you can imagine I was in my element talking politics. Malik's wife was Head of a Vocational Teacher Training College and now works in an Art College. She took me to her place of work and I spent a couple of days with one of her lecturers, Samira, who wanted to practise her already very good English. She was also a PhD student in Islamic Art and I met a lot of her fellow students, was taken to a lecture on miniature painting during the Mughal period in Lahore - see Orhan Pamuk's book 'My Name is Red'. Also the Lahore Fort, huge, impressive and in need of proper restauration - see previous e-mails. It was interesting to meet a lot of Muslim professional women; they were good fun but incredibly busy, responsible for 100% of childcare, housework, elderly relatives, study and jobs. Husbands just work.
Malik took us to Sufi concerts, qawwali (religious music, but also satirical, making fun of Mullahs!) in a Muslim shrine, the International Sufi Music Festival, Sufi drumming and trance dancing in another shrine, like whirling dervishes. There was a lot of hashish smoking there, surprisingly, not by Westerners, but the Pakistani in-crowd. After a few days there was room in the guesthouse where I met a bunch of interesting people, also backpacking and where there was another haunting Sufi music jam session on the roof terrace of the guesthouse.
Spent some time exploring Lahore, the most interesting and atmospheric of the Pakistani cities I have visited so far, but with all the provisos of towns seen previously. The Lahore Museum, the 'Wonder House' of Kipling's 'book 'Kim', is full of interesting and beautiful things and the mosque is big and stunning. The Old City is colourful and crumbling.
Missed Tony Blair by about 10 minutes, he'd just left the Governor's House when I walked by, it's near here.
Had dinner last night on the roof top of the most incredible 5-storey ancient house / art gallery / restaurant, overlooking the floodlit mosque and fort, absolutely stunning. The owner, a painter, paints 'nautch' = dance girls, a euphemism for prostitutes - his mother was one and the house itself is a former brothel, on the edge of the Red Light District.
Travelling to Amritsar in India today with my dinner companion from last night, Michael, a financial journalist.
I feel physically quite rested after a week in Lahore, but my mind and brain are buzzing after meeting so many interesting people, the Sufi music and possibly inhaling all that hash smoke!
I hope computers in India will be of better quality and connections a bit faster as I now have my pictures so far on CD but they won't send - I'll try again from India.