It was in December 1987 when I embarked upon fulfilling one my long-standing dreams. The dream was to navigate the Indus River from Attock to Karachi. I don’t come from a family of mariners. Ours was a family that hunted deer, ducks and fish. And we occasionally hunted quails in the Peshawar countryside.
It was during one of the excursions for duck shooting on the Kabul River near Pabbi when a curiosity got hold of me. “Where does this river go from here?” I asked the villagers who used to help us set up blinds for hunting. Their answer was always Nowshera or Jahangira, two small towns downstream from Pabbi. At the time I was eight-year- old.
Subsequently I learned in school that the Kabul River joins the Indus near Attock and the Indus flows in due southerly course for a thousand miles to end in the Arabian Sea. But the curiosity of an 8-year-old boy never went away. Now I wanted to travel on the Indus and see for myself.
After years of preparation involving charting the river, cultivating contacts, buying two rubber rafts and outboard motors, and selecting team members, I was ready in December 1987. Since the Indus changes its course over the years and in the process creates new sandbars and obstacles, we needed a river pilot who knew the river well. We hired Tooti Khan, a wiry middle-aged man from Jahangira, who had for decades taken Jahangira-built boats to customers as far south as Sukkur, and also to other fishing villages in the south. Tooti Khan knew the river like he knew the creases on his hands.
Our team consisted of 10 members who brought with them variable/veritable expertise. But most of us were novices at what we were going to undertake. The only experienced hand among us was Capt Azam Jafar (now retired colonel) who had some experience exploring parts of the river in the past. We were being helped by the National Transport Research Centre (NTRC) in Islamabad. They provided one chase vehicle and an able staff member to facilitate our passage. The vehicle would carry our excess gear and meet us at our scheduled stops to refurbish us with food and other supplies. In return, we were to do depth readings of the Indus during our voyage. The Centre’s boss, the late Sadiq Swati, was interested in using the river as a highway to transport goods, as had been done a hundred years ago. We were all too happy to oblige.
Involving the government in any project has its benefits and pitfalls. The major pitfall was the official sendoff ceremony that NTRC arranged in Khairabad rest house located on the bank of Kabul River, just short of its confluence with the Indus. A minister from the government was supposed to inaugurate the expedition, and as usual, she was late. Here we were getting a bit restless because our next stop was in Khushal Garh, a distance of 45 km or 30 miles from Attock. It took the better part of an hour for the speeches to be over and finally a ribbon was cut and we launched our boats and sailed off. We skipped the obligatory tea at the end of the ceremony.
At Khushal Garh, there is a two-tier bridge over the Indus that carries vehicular and rail traffic. Somehow wires got crossed and we were booked in a resthouse that was about an hour away. The police officer in charge of the bridge was offered to give us a large vacant room at one end of the bridge. It was located between the two tiers of the bridge: overhead train tracks and below vehicular traffic. We accepted his offer and made ourselves comfortable by spreading our blankets on the cement floor. We would have been better off sleeping on the riverbank. All night, the trains overhead and vehicular traffic under the floor kept us awake. We called our accommodation the Kushal Garh Hilton.
After that, we settled down into a rhythm where we slept in a government resthouse if one was nearby and available, otherwise we slept in tents on the riverbank. Our chase vehicle met us at various places and refurbished our food stocks.
We experienced the kindness of ordinary people along our route. In southern Punjab, there was not much flow in the river. At places the mighty Indus was ankle deep. It was due to retention of water upstream at the dams and barrages for watering the winter crops.
On this one particular day, because of low water levels and frequent fishing nets in the river, we could not cover the distance to our next stop and therefore had to camp on the riverbank. We set up our camp, and collected camel droppings to start a fire to make tea. We had some trail food but nothing else to eat. We could not see any lights in any direction. Just then, we saw a shadowy figure making its way to the river. He was an older peasant who was going home across the river. He told us that the nearest village was at least three miles away. Realizing that we were hungry, he invited us to go with him to his home. He lived in a hamlet a few miles from the opposite bank. We thanked him for his kindness and told him we were just too tired to go with him.
Our team consisted of 10 members, but most of us were novices at what we were going to undertake. The only experienced hand among us was Capt Azam Jafar
About two hours later, the man came back with a basket of fresh baked bread and a bowl of boiled vegetables. We tore through the food. We asked him about the price. He said there was no price to be paid. What startled us was not only his refusal to accept money but the reason behind it. He said his religion taught him to help and feed the wayfarers. By bringing food to us, he was just following his religion. He collected the basket, the small dastarkhwan and the bowl, said his salam and disappeared in the dark stillness.
From that point it took us another two weeks to reach Thatta. We bade a fond farewell to our guide Toti Khan. He had never navigated in the delta and thus we looked around to hire a guide who could take us through the delta to a tiny coastal village called Keti Bander located 110 km from Thatta. We thought we could easily cover the distance in about six hours.
Finally, we found a man who was recommended by the townspeople. He assured us of his knowledge of the delta, and after agreeing on a price for his services, we took off the next day on our last leg of Indus journey.
When we started from Thatta, the tide had come in and the river flowed full and tranquil. After a few hours, the tide started to recede as we entered the delta. Our guide was confidant while we were traveling on the river. Once we entered the delta, he lost his bearing. He took us in many channels that he thought would lead us to Keti Bander but each time we retreated. By this time sun had set and we were grappling in the dark. The only light we could see was the bioluminescence created by the churning of water by the propeller of our outboard engine.
Our dilemma was simple. If we were pushed to the open sea, we had no mechanism of correcting our course. Getting lost in the open sea in a small raft was the nightmare we were not ready to accept. While we were debating what to do, we saw a medium-sized fishing boat anchored in one of the canals. We asked the occupants if they knew how to reach Keti Bander. Yes, they knew where the village was but were not interested in guiding us there. The promise of monetary reward did not do the trick. But when one of our members mentioned that we were on a mission by the Government of Pakistan, the fisherman relented. In a way, we were doing some work for the National Transport Research Centre so technically the statement was not incorrect. The man hopped on one of our raft and we started in earnest towards Keti Bander. It was amazing how our new guide knew the topography of delta even in total darkness.
We had been with our new guide for an hour that my walkie talkie came alive.
It was our deputy leader Major Azam, who in an excited and agitated voice asked where we have been. Azam and others had reached Keti Bander as per program by road earlier in the afternoon and had been awaiting a message from us. With the sun setting in the Arabian Sea, their concern turned into panic.
To Azam’s excited panic-ridden contact on walkie talkie, I asked him if he had heard the name of a Pakistani Urdu poet by the name of Mohsin Ehsan. “No sir, I have not,” he replied. Here is a couplet by him that portrays our situation rather well, I said, and recited the following couplet:
امیر شہر نے کاغذ کی کشتیاں دے کر
سمندروں کے سفر پر کیا روانہ ہمیں
(Our leader has commanded us to travel the oceans but provided us with paper boats)
There was laughter at the other end and the tension dissipated.
I asked Azam to turn on the lights of their four-wheel vehicle and direct the beam in our direction. Soon, we saw the flashing light and were able to follow the beacon to the village. Thus ended an eventful day where we were at the verge of being pushed into the open sea and the day ended with the beautiful verse of Mohsin Ehsan.
Postscript:
1.) In three subsequent expeditions, Team Indus explored the river in Pakistan and also at its source in the Kailash Mountains in Western Tibet.
2.) That one couplet cemented a bond between Maj Azam and I, where, while camping on the Deosai Plain a few years later, he introduced me to the poetry of Ibn Insha. In the process, he got to learn more about the beautiful poetry of Mohsin Ehsan. Here is one ghazal:
گرم سورج کی تپش آئ گھٹا سے مجھ کو
Tina Sani has immortalized this ghazal by lending it her beautiful voice. In the last couplet of the ghazal, Mohsin wrote about the girl he married.
سانولے رنگ کی اک موھنی صورت محسن
ڈس گئ اپنے تکلم کی ادا سے مجھ کو