Pakistan 50 Years Ago

As mentioned in an earlier post, my parents and my big sister lived in Pakistan during 1970/71 and I used to travel out to visit them from UK during my school holidays. My big brother was studying at university in England at the time but he joined us on at least one of those holiday trips.

These were fun family times. Here are some of Mum and Dad’s photos of Pakistan fifty years ago.

Murree

Bus on the road to Murree.

My Dad was working at the British High Commission in Islamabad. Whenever he had a day off he would drive us up into the hills to places like Murree, a hill station only 19 miles from Islamabad. Here, at an altitude of around 7,500 ft, the air was cooler (and snowy in winter), the air was fresh and scented with pine and we could see for miles.

Cecil Hotel, Murree

We sometimes had a lunch or afternoon tea at the Cecil Hotel, one of the oldest hotels in Pakistan dating from 1851. It was used for a while as an official residence for Lord Mountbatten, the last Viceroy of India.

Church in Murree

The Holy Trinity Church on the Mall was built in 1857 and was the centre of colonial life in the town during the days of the Raj.

The Mall in Murree.

New West End Hotel and Restaurant with three bookshops downstairs.

The Ambassador Hotel boasted a ballroom, skating and billiards.

Cable Car near Murree.

On the way to Abbottabad.

On one occasion Dad drove us as far as Abbottabad in the mountainous Hazara region of 75 miles north of Islamabad. This town was founded and named after Major James Abbott in 1853. It was here that Osama Bin Laden was found hiding in 2011.

Islamabad & Rawalpindi

View of Margalla Hills from my parents’ house. Obviously security was not such an issue in those days.

My parents’ house in the British High Commission compound in Islamabad looked out towards the Margalla Hills. The compound had a communal swimming pool, a tennis court and a clubhouse for High Commission employees.

My Mum never learnt to swim but she was happy enough to splash around in the shallow end. My sister was on what, today, we would call a gap year which mainly involved lying around the pool working on her tan. She enjoyed the club and found that she could order a steak and chips and Swan Lager and just sign for it on my Dad’s account.

Staff of the British High Commission Club.

My sister was young and pretty and attracted a good deal of unwanted attention from gawking locals. To better blend in, she sometimes wore locally-made trouser suits instead of the short skirts which were in fashion in Europe at the time.

The Durzi

The durzi (tailor) would come to our house with his sewing machine and find a shady spot on the terrace and in a couple of hours he would make up whatever clothes my Mum and sister requested.

One of our short-lived cooks.

Mum was happy with the house which was modern and simply furnished by the British Ministry of Works. On arrival in Pakistan she was told that she should hire a cook but she had difficulty in finding a Pakistani cook who could live up to her exacting standards and they didn’t stay long. The record was Mohamed who was fired on his first day. Mum sent him to the market to buy a few things and he came back with some scraggy old mutton and tried to cheat her out of the change. She decided then not to bother with a cook. She was always a good cook anyway.

Government Offices in Islamabad in 1970

When Pakistan became independent in 1947 its capital was Karachi but in 1958 the Pakistani government started looking for a site for a new national capital. It selected a plateau below the Himalayan foothills near Rawalpindi and a Greek architect and town planner was chosen to design the master plan of a new city to be named Islamabad with spacious verdant avenues arranged on a grid pattern. Construction began in the 1960s and the British High Commission compound was still incomplete during my parents’ time.

A general view of the new city of Islamabad.

The Intercontinental Hotel, Rawalpindi.

Horse drawn tongas were still a common method of transport in the 1970s and not just for tourists.

Habib Bank Computer House, probably in Rawalpindi. If the building housed Habib Bank’s computer centre it must have been quite advanced for its time. My Dad banked with Grindlays Bank in Rawalpindi.

A pretty pink mosque near Islamabad.

Smiling street urchins in Rawalpindi. They’re probably all millionaires living in London now.

Camels all decked out for a wedding.

I think this is St. Paul’s Church in Rawalpindi.In 2017 it was estimated that Christians made up 1.27% of the population of Pakistan.

After writing this post I think I would like to go back to Islamabad, Rawalpindi and Murree to see how things have changed.

Road Trip From Islamabad to UK

I must have acquired my love for travel from my father who sadly passed away last month after a long and colourful life.

I was browsing through some of my Dad’s papers after the funeral and came across a battered exercise book which contained a log of a road trip he took in 1971 together with my Mum and sister. (I was in boarding school at the time.) The journey was from Islamabad in Pakistan, where Dad had been working, back to UK, a distance of 10,567 km according to his odometer readings. The trip lasted 34 days and took them through Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Turkey, Greece, Yugoslavia (as it was then), Italy, France and England. My sister, who was 18 at the time, shared in the driving, even though she had only been home-taught by Dad in Pakistan and had no driving license.

Their vehicle by the way was not a hardy Land Rover but a humble 1966 model Vauxhall Viva SL, a regular saloon in the days when cars (particularly British-made cars) were not as reliable as they are today.

Unfortunately the log is only a record of dates, distances and out-of-pocket expenses (so he could claim them back) and not a detailed diary but thanks to the log, my sister’s recollections and the many postcards they sent me en route I am able to reconstruct many of the details. Here are some of the highlights.

24th October 1971

Islamabad, the Pakistani capital, is a modern planned city and was still under construction in 1971. It adjoins the ancient city of Rawalpindi, or ‘Pindi’, where this photo of the Intercontinental Hotel was taken. This hotel used to lay on an excellent curry buffet and was where I first encountered lime pickle, a delicacy which I still don’t like after five decades of curry eating.

Dean’s Hotel was the leading hotel in Peshawar and, over the years, welcomed notable guests such as Rudyard Kipling, Winston Churchill and President Jinnah. It was situated in the green and leafy cantonment area of this North West Frontier city but it has since been demolished, along with many other historic buildings. I see from the log that my Dad stayed at Jan’s Hotel which was somewhat downmarket from Dean’s. In his postcard he noted that it was cold – ‘overcoat weather at night’.

25th October 1971

The next day they left Peshawar and crossed the Khyber Pass at Landi Kotal into Afghanistan, then reaching the Dakka tollgate with fine mountain views overlooking the Kabul River and on to Jalabad before arriving in the Afghan capital Kabul where they stayed at the Kabul Hotel. In those days the Kabul Hotel was a Soviet style building with a bleak dining room serving fried sheep’s testicles as a speciality. This hotel does not appear to have survived the subsequent decades of war.

27th October 1971

Two days later they drove to Kandahar and stayed at the Manzel Bagh Hotel, which was once a grand palace but no longer seems to be a hotel, if it is still standing. My sister noted that they couldn’t find a postcard from Kandahar.

28th October 1971

Above: The great mosque of Herat. Today’s postcard, written by my sister said ‘Seen lots of desert and camels but not many people. On the way up Mum got kicked by a donkey because she was standing behind it and stroked it. It was quite amusing really!’ Mum didn’t think so.

29th October 1971

Arrived Bakhtar Hotel, Meshed (Mashad) the second biggest city in Iran. The postcard above is of the Astane Ghods Museum. Mashad has an extreme climate with scorching summer temperatures but averages 20 snowy days in the winter.

30th October 1971

Arrived Bojnurd near Iran’s border with Turkmenistan. Their accommodation, Izadi Hotel, was one of the worst places they stayed on their trip. Didn’t get a postcard. The town does not seem to have improved. TripAdvisor only lists one B&B, rated as very poor!

31st October 1971

Arrived Sari Hotel, Sari, near the banks of the Caspian. Another crumby hotel. Wikipedia notes that a clock tower is the main point of interest. Travellers Tip: As a rule of thumb, avoid places where the sole attraction is a clock tower.

1st & 2nd November 1971

Teheran Palace Hotel. The above postcard is of Fowzieh Square, named after a beautiful Egyptian princess who was, somewhat reluctantly, married off into the Shah of Iran’s family. Following the Iranian revolution, the square was renamed Imam Hossein roundabout. My Mum seemed impressed with Teheran. She wrote ‘ Signs of civilisation seen – Leyland double decker buses, real shops, in fact reminds me of London’s Oxford Street.’

3rd November 1971

Arrived Qazvin, famous for calligraphy, baklava, carpets, historical mosques and athletics. No postcard though.

4th November 1971

Arrived Tabriz, another Persian carpet centre and quite a pretty looking town. The postcard is of the Shah Kuli Tabriz.

5th November 1971

Stayed at the Maku Inn at Maku close to the border crossing into Turkey. Amazingly it still exists and is the Number 1 B&B in Maku (out of one). No postcard.

6th November 1971

Reached Turkey and stayed in Erzurum at the Polat Otel. Eastern Turkey was the only place where they encountered any hostility on their journey with local kids throwing stones at the car.

7th November 1971

Arrived Ordu after a journey over some rough roads from Erzurum via Trabzon. Dad wrote ‘The Black Sea coast is pretty and quite civilised after the wilds of Eastern Turkey.’ Stayed at the Galestan Hotel. It appears to have gone out of business which is not surprising – the leg broke on Dad’s bed as soon as he got in it.

8th November 1971

Arrived in Samsun, also on the Black Sea coast. This town was mentioned in Homer’s Illiad so it is appropriate that my parents should have visited it on their own Odyssey.

9th – 11th November 1971

Reached Ankara, the Turkish capital and stayed at the Hotel Bulvar Palas which still exists and is rated 4 stars. Mum wrote that Ankara looked very modern but was expensive. They stayed in Ankara longer than planned after the car developed a fault. The postcard is a picture of Mount Ararat, thought by many to have been the place where Noah’s Ark ran aground after the flood.

12th November 1971

Arrived in Istanbul and stayed at the Pera Palace which nowadays is owned by Dubai’s Jumeirah Group and is very upmarket. My sister remembers lots of ancient plumbing in the bathroom. I mentioned this hotel in an earlier blog post.

13th November – 23rd November 1971

The remainder of the journey was through Europe which I’ll skip over since this is familiar territory for most readers, but here are the remaining postcards I received.

Kavala, Greece

Mestre, Venice

Venezia

Torino, the main drag.

La Cote d’Azur – Villefranche-Sur-Mer. Vue sur les quais, la Forteresse et la Darse.

Avallon, France

Their last entry in the log, on arrival back in England was ‘Dartford Tunnel Toll – 12.5p’. (The toll is now £2.50, twenty times higher).

Dad’s trip was quite an adventure which would be tricky and dangerous to undertake in this day and age. Perhaps Jeremy Clarkson and his former Top Gear buddies would like to try to replicate the journey. Of course, to be authentic, they would have to do it in a 1966 Vauxhall Viva!

Vauxhall Viva similar to Mum & Dad’s.

The exercise book contains the logs of two other road trips made by Mum and Dad in the Seventies, from UK to Tripoli, Libya and back again. The subject of a future blog post perhaps.