KARACHI: The first of four special Eid Trains arranged by Pakistan Railways to cope with the Eid rush of travellers departed from the City Railway Station here on Sunday evening though most passengers caught the train from the far busier Cantonment Railway Station where it made a brief stop before chugging off to Landhi and beyond.

Although there are restrictions on how much luggage one can carry when travelling by air, there is no such check when it comes to travelling by train. It was also interesting to see the different things people were loading into the train with them for spending Eid holidays with their loved ones.

There was Mohammd Isfaque, going to Multan on the special Eid Train, who was taking bags full of nimko (saltish savoury items). “What to do? My entire family in Multan wanted this stuff. I received requests for peanuts, chewra, gaathia, channay and what not? I know there is a tradition of cooking vermicelli during this Eid but my family prefers nimko,” he laughingly told Dawn.

There was also the family with a cardboard pressure cooker packing among their other bags, sacks and bundles. When asked where they were headed, they said that they were going to Rawalpindi on the Eid Train. When asked again if they didn’t get pressure cookers in Rawalpindi they chuckled as one of them explained that they had packed their LCD player in the pressure cooker box.

Travellers take with them all sorts of interesting things to celebrate Eid with their loved ones

Another excited family heading to Wazirabad, near Lahore to spend Eid with their grandmother and other brothers, sisters and cousins there had a big orange water cooler among their luggage, in which they said they were taking cooked beef trotters. “The most important things in our luggage are the cooked trotters and the diaper bag as both of our younger children are sick. One is down with fever and the other has diarrhoea,” said Samia, one of the two mothers in the group.

Another young couple also travelling to Lahore were taking with them a cage with two pairs of hummingbirds. “We were finding it difficult to take care of the birds here so decided to offer them as Eid gifts to our relatives there,” said the husband.

One family of five heading to Islamabad had many bags and they had decided to sit on them as they waited for the Eid Train. “Well, we have so many bags, we might as well use them to sit on as the platform benches are taken already,” smiled Sadaqat, mother of three.

Asked if they didn’t plan on coming back to Karachi because it looked like they had packed everything they owned, they explained that they were also taking with them the “tabbar’s [big family’s] luggage”.

“My husband’s family were visiting us sometime ago and they shopped so much that they didn’t have room in their bags for all their things back. So we are now taking their things back with us,” it was explained further.

For some very strange reason a father and son boarding the Eid Train had a broom and a cobweb duster with them. Asked what they planned doing with those, the younger of the two only smiled sheepishly and shrugged before hurrying off.

Pakistan Railways arranges special Eid Trains every year to facilitate travellers during the Eid rush. Two of these trains were to depart from Karachi, one on April 7 from the City Railway Station with Peshawar as its last stop and the other on April 8 (today) from Cantonment Railway Station with Lahore as its last stop.

This first train that left from the City Railway Station on Sunday evening, was to make brief stopovers at the Karachi Cantonment Railway Station and Landhi before heading to Hyderabad, Nawabshah, Rohri, Khanpur, Bahawalpur, Multan Cantt., Khanewal, Shorkot Cantt., Toba Tek Singh, Gojra, Faisalabad, Sangla Hill, Hafizabad, Wazirabad, Lalamusa, Jhelum, Rawalpindi, Taxila Cantt, Attock city and Nowshera to reach Peshawar Cantt at around 1.15am on Tuesday, April 9.

The first Special Eid Train has 17 economy coaches with capacity for 1,110 passengers though there were 1,200 passengers on it, according to Pakistan Railways, which also informed that the first Eid Train earned the Railways more than four million rupees.

Published in Dawn, April 8th, 2024