When you travel across the plains of Punjab, the first thing to strike you is the heterogeneity of the region. In popular imagination, Punjab is about great plains, green fields, and a network of rivers and canals all around. That’s there, but there is lots more.

Take a road trip on a narrow, single road from Saddar in Rawalpindi to Chakri or from Mandara to Chakwal, and you will see a beautiful plateau landscape. More pastures than fields, more shepherds than farmers, and a general absence of men if you enter villages. Most of them are serving in the armed forces.

Take a trip from Minawali to Bhakkar to Jhang, and you’ll find yourself in a desert (Thal). If you thought the only desert in Punjab was next to Bahawalpur and Rahim Yar Khan, then get ready for a surprise and a once-in-a-lifetime experience if you can get to spend a night at the outskirts of Mankera, a town in the middle of a desert.

In the north of Khushab lies a hill station, the Soon Valley. Better than Murree, if I may add.

When you look close enough, there is much diversity in the hues and shades of the province of five rivers. This is reflected in change of language too: rivers in Punjab have defined the dialects of language, goes the wisdom in Punjabi folklore. When travelling in the province, it is beautiful to speak one dialect in one town or city and another in the next.

This trip was prompted by the desire to explore the diversity of dialects on a road less travelled: the border with India in Punjab. From Eminabad to Sialkot to Shakar Garh to Narowal and back to Lahore, the journey along the Eastern Loop was more about people — their languages, attitudes, stories — than about places.

Each destination on the map had some significance: Eminabad to know more about the largest Baisakhi mela in Pakistan jointly celebrated by Sikhs and Muslims. Sialkot, to see the two places that have spurred one of the greatest legends in Punjabi language, Qissa Purab Bhagat, or the Legend of Loona if you are a feminist like me.

This was followed by a ride along the much-troubled Indo-Pak border from Sialkot to Shakar Garh—the sleepy old town left to be forgotten, for the amazingly beautiful tibbay (dunes) outside the city along the border. And finally towards Narowal, visiting Kartarpur the village Guru Nanak made his home during the last years of his life, Kartarpur.

And so we set off, my motorbike ‘Bakki’ and I, on discovering the Eastern Loop. These are our stories from the road-trip along the Indo-Pak border in Punjab.

Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, March 15th, 2015

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