An excursion

trip to Taxila and

Khanpur Dam
Shaikh Muhammad Ali
22nd December 2012

By

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Again, it has been four months that I have written and published my last article. Maybe its the
hot sizzling weather of June, my old age or whatever that has happened around me in these four
months; I simply could not put my thoughts together to continue writing about my family
escapades.
Well, here I am again with a new fervor and zeal to scribble my new article although Islamabad
is sizzling at 42 Degree Celsius but I cannot wait for autumn since there is again so much to
write and much more to share with my ardent readers.
Before I take you along on yet another fairy tale; I would like to share that I was lately suffering
from an acute Reflux Disorder also popularly known as GERD (by Americans) who have the
biggest population of this disease globally (No pun intended). If you are interested to read about
this fashionable disease, then please click on GERD above and go for another ride.
Getting up in the morning with vomiting and motions. God! By the afternoon my burps would
taste like sulphur and I realized that I had some sort of stomach parasite. While having GERD
bouts for over a month; I was also diagnosed with H. Pylori. This virus found by the
Australians; mostly affects the body due to the consumption of contaminated water and as per
Wikipedia, half the worlds population has it without knowing it. So that makes the two of us.
LOL
It felt as if the world was coming to an end and there seemed to be no relief in sight. But
of course there is a God and he does come to your rescue after kickin your behind and
once you apologize enough then he lets go as always and you are back to normal with
your regular mischief. Indeed, we dont learn from our past mistakes and continue to
delve and eat the biblical forbidden fruit. Mere mortals thats what we are. Rascals!!!
Now that I am getting back to normal (yeah right!); let me divert your attention and confess that
the dormant gardener in me woke up again yet this time around, my garden space was my
rooftop terrace. Although I had experimented with flowers since the time I had moved to
Islamabad but had never ventured into the art / science (Whatchamacallit!) of planting veggies
but thanks to the Internet; a novice like me became a professional (A blatant lie indeed)
overnight.
After waiting for almost a month for my first seedlings to germinate, I was heartbroken to see
that my first plant turned out to be a wild Qasoori Methi (Fenugreek Leaves) although I had
supposedly bought and planted tomato seeds.

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(My heartbreaker: Fenugreek leaves)
But I continued my efforts and I got new saplings of Mint, Tomatoes, Karhi Patta (Murraya
koenigii), Capsicum, Green chilies and seeds of Coriander, Lady Finger & Garlic cloves and
planted them one after the other in big and small pots starting this spring 2014 and started
waiting for a miracle to happen.


(Here is my Mint plant)
One simply cannot appreciate the joy of gardening, vegetables, herbs or fruit growing until and
unless you take the plunge. And once you do; then there is no coming back.

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(Here are the Garlic plants)
Lo and behold; my seeds and saplings started turning into baby plants within weeks and I was
overjoyed and realized that indeed there is a God who puts life into humans, animals and plants
as and when he wants.
[Rahman 55:13] So O men and jinns! Which favour of your Lord will ye deny? (Al-Quran)


(Here are my green Capsicums)

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(My Green chili plant)

(My Capsicum turning red before going to sleep at night)

(My happy tomato plants at night)

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Well, the moment is here for which you have been waiting for. Laughter! On a chilly 22
nd

December 2012; we left home at 11:20 a.m. and headed for Taxila and ultimately decided to
visit the Khanpur Dam.
This is what Wikipedia writes about the Khanpur Dam:
Introduction:
Khanpur Dam is a dam located on the Haro River near Potowar Plateau and the village
of Khanpur, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan, about 25 miles (40 km) from Islamabad,
Pakistan. It caters to domestic water supplies in Rawalpindi and Islamabad, and irrigation
water to many of the agricultural and industrial areas surrounding the cities.
The dam was completed in 1983 after a 15-year construction period believed to have cost
Rs. 1,352 million. It is 167 feet (51 m) high and stores 110,000 acre feet
(140,000,000 m
3
) of water
1
.
The adjoining Khanpur Lake is the venue for Sarhad Tourism Corporation's annual
airborne and waterborne sports gala. The event, termed as the 'biggest' in Pakistan was
scheduled to take place between 9 and 11 April 2010. (I wonder if it ever took place).
History:
The dam was built by Gen. Ayub Khan, former President of Pakistan. The dam was
believed by many to be a way for Khan to settle political scores with the feudal chief of
Gakhars Raja Erij Zaman Khan.
The fore fathers of local Gakhars Rajas were given much of the local land by the British
during the nineteenth century. The British rewarded the Gakhars for their cooperation in
defeating the Sikhs, but deprived the local Awan and other farmers of their land. When
the decision to build Khanpur Dam was made, the Rajas wanted to receive compensation
for all the land, thus depriving all the local inhabitants of their land rights. The residents
desperately wanted to receive compensation or new land in the nearby New Khanpur.
The local community, led by Abdul Bashir Khan (the father of Saeed Khan), the young
secretary of Khanpurs WAPDA Union in the early 1970s, took on the Gakhars and their
friends in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa parliament. Amid threats and intimidation, the
campaign succeeded in uniting most local villagers, who had nothing but their land.
Abdul Bashir and his fellow activists decided to take their campaign straight to the then
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa governor Hayat Sherpao by camping outside the governor's house

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khanpur_Dam

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for days. Abdul Bashir and his fellow activists left Peshawar only after they had
succeeded in winning the land rights for the people of Khanpur.
The locals were promised free water and electricity by WAPDA and the then provincial
and federal governments, but are still waiting to this day.

Khanpur Dam (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khanpur_Dam)
On the way to the Khanpur Dam, it is our family ritual to stop at the road side farms of Maltay
(A local fruit from the Orange family) which we always take from the trees and then pay per
dozen to the people who own these farms. My children really love and enjoy this activity.

(The Shaikh clan enjoying the maltay)

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After feasting on the heavenly and juicy fruit, we headed towards our chosen destination. Once
we reached Taxila and passed the Taxila museum, I remember one of the sites called Nikra
Bungalow which I had not visited yet. Adil, my older son has also taken after his father and
takes keen interest in visiting new places. And this Nikra Bungalow is one of the 16 known
remains of the 1
st
Century AD 5
th
Century AD Taxilas places of interest.
At the spur of the moment we decided to visit Nikra Bungalow. This property is owned by the
Archaeology Department of KPK province. Located near Taxila, it is where the legendary Sir
John Marshall lived while excavating the historic Buddhist sites. Sir John Marshall is credited
with discovering and later excavating these sites.

(We are posing at the rear end of the Nikra Bungalow)

(This tree is believed to be 300+ year old and stands tall in the lawns of the Bungalow)

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After spending some time here, we ultimately left for our scheduled destination i.e. the Khanpur
Dam reaching there at 1:40 p.m. sharp. The weather was very cool and there were not too many
people around. So we practically had the lake to ourselves.

(The Khanpur Lake in the backdrop)
Since we have been here many a times thus there was not much to do other than boating and the
children convinced us to go boating again.

(Life is a lake so we went boating)

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(The three musketeers and Mamma enjoying the boat ride)
We enjoyed the boat trip till 2:20 p.m. and then spent a while walking around the place while
the children played around.

Mr. & Mrs. Outbound!
By 2:30 p.m. we were hungry as hell and on the way back were tempted to stop at a roadside
Dhaba (read restaurant) called Al-Shahzad to enjoy the local Salmon fried fish from the lake.

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(Sizzling fried fish is about to be served)
After stuffing our faces to our hearts content, we were on the way back home. Adil noticed a
signboard for the Piplan Stupa which again is one of the 16 known remains in the Taxila
vicinity and we decided to visit it this time around since we had somehow ignored it in our
previous trips to Taxila.
After taking a left turn and leaving the main Taxila Islamabad road; within 10 minutes we
reached an intersection and turned right while taking a small dilapidated road to Piplan Stupa.

(On the path of the Sufi, all roads lead to heaven)

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By 3:45 p.m. we were at the Piplan site and the kids (as usual) were rather excited to have
explored a new place. As a routine ritual, we took pictures at the entrance along with the
signboards which would later become part of our memories and some would go into these
articles.

(Piplan, here we are!)
Incidentally, the Internet is silent about this place and the only information available is on this
signboard which conveys the story about this particular stupa. While going around the place, we
saw an iron door which was supposed to be locked but strangely the lock was either mistakenly
opened or maybe the site was ready to be vandalized by the treasure hunters. There was no
caretaker around and we sneaked inside the four walls and saw the remains of the stupa.

(We are inside the premises and posing with the stupa)

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We rushed out after taking a few pictures since we did not want to get locked up in this small
8x 8 (Feet) jail like place and being arrested for trespassing. On the way back, we stopped
again for a hot cup of tea at a roadside stall around 4:00 p.m. Since we had already been to the
Mohra Muradu remains some years back so we just stopped at the signboard to take this
picture.

(Adil and I at the Mohra Muradu signboard)
We moved further towards our abode when we came across yet another signboard of Sirsukh
remains by 4:15 p.m. This time we just did not take a picture rather the children forced us to
revisit this particular site.

(Mohsin and Adil posing at the Sirsukh signboard)
This is what the Wikipedia writes about Sirsukh:

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The city of Sirsukh was founded by the Kushan king Kanishka after 80 CE, and is the
last of the great ancient cities of Taxila. The invaders decided to abandon the older city of
Sirkap and build a newer city on the other side of the Lundi-nala. The wall of the city is
about 5 kilometers long and about 5.4 meters thick. The city wall covers an area of
around 2300 x 1000 meters seen along the east-west direction, and is laid out in a typical
Central Asian style, complete with suburbs. Sirsukh was left uninhabited when the White
Huns invaded the Punjab at the end of the fifth century CE. To the north-east of the city
flows the Harro River whereas to the south the Lundi-ravine is present.
The ancient city was excavated only on a very small scale in 1915-16 CE, and further
excavation work has been impeded by a high water table which threatens the integrity of
ancient structures. It was included in the World Heritage List of the UNO in 1980 as part
of Taxila.
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(My better half at the Sirsukh UNESCO World Heritage site)
By 4:30 p.m. we left Sirsukh and touched the Grand Trunk Road (built by Sher Shah Suri) on
the way to Islamabad. We have been passing by the Nicholson Obelisk off and on our trips
towards Taxila, Wah Cantt., Abbottabad and Peshawar but this time around we stopped by and
decided to visit the Nicholson Memorial and then the Nicholson Obelisk (monument).

2
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sirsukh

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(Adil and Mohsin at the Nicholson memorial)
After parking your car, bike or horse; when you start walking towards the monument on an
extremely old pebbled street, you come across this signboard:

(Original portion of the GT Road)
Once we reached the monument, about 50 or so steep stairs were staring in our faces and
although we were quite tired but our boys did not want to miss the opportunity to go meet Uncle
Nicholson at the top.

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(My brats ready to climb the steep stairs)
The views were beautiful at the top but there were still some more stairs inside the needle which
were closed to general public; the reasons being known to the Archeology Department.

(On top of the world)
We took many a pictures at the top, stayed there till 5:15 p.m. and after descending from the
heavens; headed home reaching there by 6:00 p.m.

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(This was the parting picture of the trip)

Parting Note:
We cannot direct the wind, but we can adjust our sails which I religiously do every once
in a while. I sometimes imagine that I am not actually traveling so much as running in
place, just trying to keep up with a world that is spinning under my feet. Every morning I
wake to hear the whir of the butterflies wings, I am keenly aware that this day could be
my last. And I am thankful all day to God Almighty, for the blazing of the morning sun,
for the banging of the lunchtime boom boxes, for the meandering of the evening traffic
jams. Yes, even for the traffic jams, I am grateful.



Shaikh Muhammed Ali
The Wandering Dervish
E-mail: dushkashaikh@gmail.com
Cell: +00-92-321-5072996
Saturday, 15
th
Shaban ul Muazzam, 1435 H
14
th
June 2014, 18:00 p.m. (PST)