Mohenjo Daro : Sidetrip to Larkhana

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My trip to Mohenjo Daro was an experience in itself. We left Lahore around 11 pm on a flight to Karachi. At Karachi we waited until morning in the mosquito-ridden airport. Sleep-deprived, we landed at the airport by Mohenjo Daro around 8 in the morning.

The ruins were fantastic, the heat was incredible. I spent the day moving from neighborhood to neighborhood in the city, exploring the nooks and crannies of the site. In the late afternoon we left to go back to the airport.

The plane was supposed to show up around 7, but nothing happened. This is common in Pakistani airports - the announcements fail to give the perfectly reasonable truth. At around 8:30, a severe storm came through with wind blown sheets of rain flying horizontally. For twenty minutes it just stormed like mad, then it stopped though the sky looked ominous. Around 9:30 there was an announcement that there would be no flight to Karachi tonight, that rides were coming to hotels.

Around 10:30, 23 people [us included] packed into a minivan for the ride to the hotel. This happened to be in Larkhana, a good hour of cramped riding. Larkhana was not a pretty sight, with water running everywhere on the street. Most passengers with us came from Larkhana, so they had somewhere to stay.

We took refuge in the hotel we were set up in, which lost power the instant we entered. We got a room, with open [screenless] windows and a few candles. I never looked underneath that bed, I feared it. We went and got a little food on the main street, and tried to sleep. I may have slept 2 hours before the power came on at 5 am, waking us up.

We walked around town, getting chai, fruit, bread, and breakfast as the vendors came out and shops opened. Larkhana is the seat of the Bhutto family, though you would never guess that from the town. It seemed run-down and somewhat sketchy for foreigners to spend much time in. We got back on the cramped minivan, went to the airport, and got the plane.

We got to Karachi at 11am, I had two hours to wait until the next plane to Lahore. My traveling companion was supposed to have caught his plane back to the states at 9am that morning. This proved to be a huge hassle for him, he had to rebook for the next day and find a place to sleep until then. We both had roughly 5 hours of sleep in two days, with dehydration during that period.

I slept on my plane ride back to Lahore, where I went to a friend's house and slept. The next day I traveled on, changed by the whole experience of visiting Mohenjo Daro, on top of the actual experience of Mohenjo Daro [which was incredible in the first place].