Railway Odyssey
Pakistan
The spanking new Krakoram Express (42 Down) running between Lahore and Karachi is a rarity in Pakistan. The original fittings like coat hooks, locks, handles and seat covers are in place, original gauges are working. There are no ashtrays (smokers use the dustbin provided in each compartment) in passengers’ bogies.
Late September, it is brutally air-conditioned and punctual. Six passengers share a compartment. There are no streams of persistent vendors. No one has the pleasure of hanging from an open train door as they are locked, stop to stop. Like the Lahore-Islamabad motorway, the train is a symbol of modernity and progress.
Most of my journeys started from the hinterland, on foot with few provisions. But this one began on a train. Suitcases were packed instead of backpacks, days in advance. Phone calls were put through to friends and relatives en route alerting them to our arrival.
My starting point, the Lahore Railway Station, fourteenth gateway of Lahore, was sturdy and imposing and an interesting place to hang around at any time. There were bookstores stocked with spiritual tracts, internet guides, archetypal books of love poetry and Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People. Other shops sold everything from souvenir (crude) clay ware to artificial jewellery, to fast food chain outlets and countless tea shops.
The platform was always clogged with goods going and coming, to and from, up and down the country. There was a grumble of departing passenger trains, the maddeningly frequent station announcements, attacks of red shirt porters (called coolies) and cab drivers on every passenger. Porters had a per-trip rate written on their shirts but they asked for more.
In all this bedlam, behind one barricade of luggage on the floor of the station, slept a family with their belongings tucked under their heads. This was because the utility of waiting rooms had been excessively marginalized over the years. In the holy month of Ramadan, the station became a huge eatery. Every tea stall was shrouded in curtains. If you have seen one railway station, you have seen them all.
The complete train (except engine) was built by the Changchun Car Company in China as part of Pakistan Railways consignment to import 175 passenger coaches, worth 7.77 billion rupees. The 14 coaches had already been commissioned and the rest were to be assembled in the Pakistan Railway Carriage Factory in Islamabad.
Two Chinese engineers (one electrical and one mechanical) travelled with the train to observe its performance that plied on the track laid by the British over a century ago. I tried to but could not converse with them. They only knew Chinese. But I was sure they were surprised to see Pakistan Railways use some of the old infrastructure. At certain places, one noted the old 1906 vintage equipment in use. The main strategic and commercial artery of the country, the railway line passing through the length of the country, needed to be doubled on priority.
My train left Lahore on time. Someone interrupted the recitation from the Holy Qura’an that was going on, and started making announcements, issuing instructions in Urdu and English on the public address system installed in the train. No pun intended but the announcement was a first shocker. Not only the subject and the contents of the announcement needed to be changed, but they should have been made by a qualified person. Or, at least use a pre-recorded audio tape. It seemed that someone was talking to himself rather than to the passengers. Later, the system started broadcasting songs of Noor Jehan and Jawad Ahmad.
Hurtling through countryside that had remained mostly unchanged, the train blasted imperiously through the smaller stations. It had only four stops – Khanewal (20 minutes), Rohri (20 minutes), and Hyderabad (5 minutes). The old engine, repainted to match the train colour and some of the administrative staff, went straight from Lahore to Karachi and came back the next day. No changing on the way.
Clattered on culverts, bridges and mud-hut villages, the train chiselled from the landscape. Over two hours of daylight before dusk, I saw buffalo lounging in village ponds, tiny houses decorated with drying cow pats, the immense sky bruised black with the smoke rising from factories, Pattoki nurseries, the deserted station, Tabrooq, and other familiar cinematic scenes of Punjab.
In the irrigated tracts, I rode through endless stretches of waving crops of different shades of colour. Too frequently, one saw long queues of road transport standing on either side of railway crossings waiting for the train to pass. The train track in most places was lined with extinguishing species of trees like Okkan and Salvadora (called Van). After the harvest this would change.
Dark outside, I moved up and down the train. The passengers, a kaleidoscopic mix, seemed oblivious. Some were sleeping, some eating food they had brought from home. Only a few people ordered from the dining car even though the staff presented mutilated menu cards to everyone, and the purser came to ask if everyone had a complimentary evening tea.
Several passengers pored over documents or books. Others glanced hopefully at their mobile phones to see if there was a signal, which, of course, there was not. Mobile phones only cover part of the journey, mostly around main cities.
So the high-tech train glided onward through a no-tech but beautiful and living landscape, silent except for a muffled symphony of snores and burps emanating from its curtained-off berths, and the soft beeps of passengers playing Snake on their otherwise useless phone sets. A group was busy playing teen-patti. I was invited to join in and at the end we exchanged contact cards. Others were travelling with feet tapping to a catching beat.
Moving while sleeping, I had some restless moments, spent some time gazing at stars. It was not always easy to find the least uncomfortable arrangement of my bones on the upper berth that was too high to climb and too near the roof of the compartment. The pillow and bed sheets provided by the train staff were not enough for me. Moreover, the train gave rough jolts whenever the brakes were applied.
But wait a second. Could sleeping while moving – if I may exploit the metaphor – be the problem? My problem? Is not the whole point of the exercise to wake up? Wake up at Rohri where Shahid was waiting to tell me what is new there? Wake up to Hussain Abdul Rahman who had come at Hyderabad Railway Station to deliver hot breakfast and tell me what he had explored in Thar?
Lahore to Karachi is always an amazing trip – mind expanding, horizon broadening, wallet emptying – and you are home again. Nothing much has changed and somehow your friends are not as excited about your cool travel tales as they should be. Homecoming blues are a price I always pay. What can be done about them?
One of my cures when I am stuck at home is to keep up with letters and emails to people I met while travelling. As time goes on, you never know what those sorts of contacts will lead to, future travel. It is all too easy to let travel friendships slide, and that just gives you one more thing to be depressed about. Developing these relationships allows you to think of your trip as the start of something rather than an ending to something.
