I was waiting for a long weekend, so I could travel somewhere. God listened and we got holiday of independence, from 12 – 14 august. After discussing with my family, we decided to visit Tharparkar. Tharparkar District is one of the twenty nine districts of Sindh province in Pakistan. It is headquartered at Mithi. It has the lowest Human Development Index of all the districts in Sindh. The thar district derives its name from thar & parker. Thar comes from thal which is a general term for the religions sand ridges and the word parker literally means to cross over.
On 12th august at 7am we packed our bags and left to travel. I decided to take a long route through mirpurkhas, umerkot, naukot, islamkot, NagarParker, mithi, Badin and then to Karachi. But on the last moment I changed the plan as we reached Hyderabad, then we went From Hyderabad to tando Mohammad khan; Badin to diplo and finally to mithi. It took around 7 hours to reach along this route. The road from Badin to Mithi was very beautiful and I enjoyed driving there. As mithi came closer, sand dunes were seen on the way and it felt like we entered a desert.Our guest house was already booked there.
We left our luggage at the guest house and went for “Ghati Bhitt”, a hilltop from where you can see the whole city and a famous picnic point of mithi. From there we can see the mithi city; we took some photographs, enjoyed horse dance and snake dancing on a been. We spent few hours there and came into the city for dinner. In the main bazaar, you can find some good restaurants, pan shops, sweetshops and banks.
After the dinner we came back to the hotel.The very next morning we started our journey early for NagarParker. It’s around 115km and a drive about 1 hour 15 minutes. A very beautiful sight seen throughout the way. You can have some wildlife experience like flying peacocks, etc. You can also see some wetlands, salt lakes where some small factories were extracting salt from lakes. As we crossed the check post islamkot started and we
turned right for NagarParker, before reaching NagarParker we saw a board directing towards a coalmine on our left side, till there the roads were good but as we travelled a bit the road started getting uncomfortable.Our first destination was Budhesar village; the first attraction over there is Budhesar mosque, its history starts from the arrival of Sultan Mahmood Ghaznavi. After his great conquest of somnath he was returning to ghazni, he chose this area to avoid upcoming battles in this area to return home.
He decided to stay in this area for water reservoirs. He occupied a small space for salah (Namaz) which was later built into a proper mosque by a Muslim ruler of Gujarat, Sultan Mahmood Begra. There is a water reservoir named Budhesar Talau made by a queen to save rainwater.Just after a little walk you can see a temple called Budhesar Jain mandir, 7.2 km from Nagar, was the region’s capital during Sodha rule. Remains of three temples are present. The remaining walls are unstable and partially collapsed. Parts of the building had been dismantled by the locals who used the bricks to construct their homes.
If you cross the temple and go towards the keronjar hills you can find two Hindu temples on the footstep of the keronjar hills. We went up the hill to be able to have a good view of the whole area; we stayed there for about half an hour and perceived the natural scenery of Budhesar.
To reach our next destination we had to go through the keronjar hills and had to pass through a long queue at a check post in the town of NagarParker, but if you are familiar with that area you should know a shortcut located before the check post going towards right, it goes through their local Bazaar (Market) and it leads you right past the check post. The road’s condition was not good there but you really enjoy the driving there. From there we went to the marui’s well where marui used to draw water and where sumra prince, umar saw her for the first time and kidnapped her to umerkot.
Then we went to the Jain temple at gorri which is just 4km far from marui’s well, the temple lies deep in the desert. It is very similar to the one at budhesar but it is far more superior in craftsmanship and finish. Although no inscription to the effect of its origin has been found from here yet it is said that it was built during the heyday of sodhas around 1376. The temple is located within an enclosure with an open space in front on the northern side. It is constructed with jodhpuri stone much like marble.
We went back to mithi and stayed there for the night. The next morning on 14th august we were headed back to Karachi, it was our independence day so we enjoyed it with our national songs. We went through Badin and Thatta to reach Karachi. Our total expense was around 30 Thousand Rupees.
By Khurram Saeed Khan
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