At the start of the year no one could imagine a pandemic of such magnitude could unfold on us. The spread of the virus at the time was very limited, and my friend and I decided to make a quick trip to Jhelum. Well it wasn’t a sort of touring the place or sight seeing but instead a spiritual trip in some ways. I was really depressed due to the passing of my father hence we went to Jhelum which is a city near the capital of Pakistan, Islamabad. The trip from Karachi is almost 23 hours by train I know the railway is too slow in Pakistan. It was a short three-day trip from Karachi and we got our essential stuff, I only carried my university bag and filled it up with two or three clothes to last the trip. We were on a sleeper cabin in which 6 people share a particular cabin, fortunately the other 4 were friendly individuals and we had a good time on our way to Jhelum. I had downloaded some movies for the trip and someone had a laptop and hence I gave the movies to him and we watched Joker and Shazam together. It’s always a good experience travelling with strangers you get to know what other people are doing in life their goals and mindset. Another thing is that each individual had food with them and so we all pitched in and shared the food amongst each other.
We reached Jhelum in the morning, it is a small city located just beside the Jhelum river one of the five rivers flowing through the state of Punjab in Pakistan. The total radius of the city is around 3.5 kilometers, that is way small as compared to Karachi which is now a metropolitan city. The railway station was also kind of small I guess it was alright considering the population there. We walked out of the station and asked for any hotels near by and got a hotel after a few minutes of walking the name was Greenview Hotel. A not too shabby place good enough to spend a couple of nights for 12$ a night not bad indeed. The market was nearby and the food was quite similar in taste we had BBQ the first day along with a glass of traditional lassi.
Now the main reason for coming to this small city was to meet a scholar Engineer Mohammad Ali Mirza, he is also a mechanical engineering which my friend and I will be after this pandemic. He is a very learned person and we have watched his lectures on youtube for over 3 years now, unfortunately he gives them in Urdu so if you don’t know the language you won’t understand what he is saying. He has knowledge of many books of Hadith and the Quran of Islam so listening to him really makes us realize what the religion is meant and the obligations we have as Muslims. It was a great session with him and his companions to spend the day.
We reached their place in the morning again it was on walking distance, there we met with other people who had also come from different places in Pakistan. We were the only ones from Karachi and people at the place really gave us admiration on our journey, they greeted us quite pleasantly. There were two lectures one in the morning and one in the afternoon we attended both of them in between there were snacks given to us, when the sessions were over it was 9 pm already. We ha dinner together at a nearby restaurant Engineer Mirza greeted us and said we have a safe journey back home, we hugged and left.
The next morning, we had our train departing from Jhelum towards Karachi, the way back home felt a little more tiresome. Yet it was a very pleasant trip for our souls I felt quite relaxed after the meeting and I’m glad to make the journey to Jhelum. We had told them of our return one day and they were glad to receive us once more.
