Eid in Lahore

so, continuing my chronology (not for ever, just during the crazy times)...

Wednesday, 1st of October

Apparently the moon was in the right place and the right shape last night, so Ramadan was officially declared over and as such, Eid, the equivalent of Christmas, begun.

Malek arranged for us to go to an Eid festival which was one of the most surreal things I have ever witnessed in my life. When we arrived we were immediately throbbed by people and brought to see horse dancing. Having being received by the event organiser, seats were brought for us and the horses were made to dance right in front of us, bring them right up over us... It was freaky stuff. Next was a Kabaddi match where groups of half naked men wrestled in mud and bitch-slapped each other... Twas great craic altogether.

When it started getting dark, we were brought to the rooftop of a nearby building for dinner with the Kabaddi players. Many of them were international and had played in India, the UK and around the world.

After dinner we were brought back into the melee of the carnival, being ushered through tents with lady boys, actual ladies (without headscarves), motorbike stunts, dancing shows etc. etc. etc. Eventually, the night culminated in a concert where about 7000 onlookers cheered their little hearts out as we were brought up on stage. We sat on stage for the entire show, getting fabrics (of respect) draped around our necks. One of the English lads, Alby, looks 'a bit alternative' (long hair, beard, nose ring etc.) and he was invited up on stage to dance with one of the singers. He gave it a good fifteen minutes of cringy 80's moves (he even threw in the ol' drawing the V-fingers across his eyes number). The crowd were going absolutely mental and when he went to go off stage they all surged forward and were cheering like crazy mofo's... it was unbe-frickin'-lievable.

We finally managed to drag ourselves away from the place at about three o'clock in the morning and came back to the hotel on an absolute high...

Thursday, 2nd of October

Thursday's in Lahore are famous. It's the 'Sufi night' where Sufi's or practitioners of Sufism, a mystic strain of Islam, get down and jiggy with it at the shrine of Shah Jamal. This is by far the most interesting cultural event I have ever been to. I've embedded a video of it below. This isn't mine, I just found it on the Internet, but I took no photos on this night (it was a night not to be interrupted by camera clicks).

Basically, there were two drummers with large drums hanging around their necks. They beat these in differing tempos and a group of young men (or dervishes) danced maniacally to the beat. The dancing mainly involved shaking their heads at frantic speeds and a lot of swirling around. The idea is to lull themselves into trance like states whereby they can get closer to God through the music.

The shrine was full of people that night and it was pretty clear that opium and hash is used in vast (vast, vast, vast) quantities so as to ease people into trances. I've never seen anything like it before.




After that Thursday, things started to calm down a bit... Eid drew to a close with only the occasional round of celebratory gunshots cracking through Lahore's heavy evenings and we retreated to hostel, watched some DVD's and took it easy.

Unfortunately on Saturday night, my gut started acting up and I spent Saturday night and all day Sunday on the toilet. I won't go into any more detail on that particular incident. Suffice to say that I was happy when things started staying in my stomach on Monday morning again.

So now I've left Lahore and am in Islamabad. We had to get tires for the jeep here and tomorrow morning, we're going to set off on a tour of the Karakoram highway. This is a roadway blown through the foothills of the Himilayas. It's a joint Pakistani and Chinese project back in the day and is supposed to be great for trekking...

So that's all for right now... will update from the KKH (that's what the cool cats call it)...

Also, a big word up for the McNamara's girls who have finally figured out how to use the comments function....

Ur man in Islamabad. C...