Home » Pakistan » July 12th: Village Life

Everyone is in search nowadays for an 'authentic' experience while travelling. I think, in a small village in the eastern Punjab in Pakistan, one was handed to me. Staying with a family for two days in Gujranwala, north of Lahore, I was informed I would see village life and meet the people living there. As always, it's the people who make the difference.

July 12th: Village Life

Esilbert
2006-01-19 13:32:31

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Everyone is in search nowadays for an 'authentic' experience while travelling. I think, in a small village in the eastern Punjab in Pakistan, one was handed to me. Staying with a family for two days in Gujranwala, north of Lahore, I was informed I would see village life and meet the people living there. As always, it's the people who make the difference.

The Pakistanis I met and stayed with in Lahore prided themselves on their generosity, giving me salwar suits and buying excessive amounts of mangos since the first Urdu phrase I learned was 'Mujhe aam bohot achay lagay' (i.e. – I like mangos A LOT). In the village, the generosity of the people seemed so spontaneous, inherent. Perhaps the language barrier meant the only thing they could share was their hospitality. The tradition of hosting a guest, it was told to me later, extends even to one's enemies. If an enemy has committed some kind of crime and seeks refuge as a guest in the north of Pakistan, the hosts will not turn the person into the police as long as they are their guest.

Off one road to another bumpy road, to another and yet another, our car, seemingly without shock absorbers, made its way farther into the green lands being farmed by the villagers. For a country with a population of 132 million, a village of 2000 people is quite small. As we entered the area most heavily dense with houses, which took two minutes to drive through, our car tenuously made its way through a puddle a foot deep and 20 feet long and over potholes the size of small sedans. My host pointed out the freely growing marijuana plants that villagers use for medications.

We parked our car at the 'restaurant' – a two walled shack with a ledge, a goat and a buffalo – and walked to our first family. I was introduced and immediately given a Pepsi (Pepsi has a presence even in rural Pakistan) and my hostess began to sit and fan me with a large ...