Golf in Pakistan

If there ever was a place on the planet where you could play golf like a lord and pay like a knave, it would be Pakistan.

(Royal Palm Golf Club, Lahore, Pakistan)
Pakistan is the most well kept secret golfing destination as it has some of the most spectacular courses that are open year round. The alluvial soil of the Punjab plains coupled with the Himalayan backdrop provides a natural ecosystem for an interesting golf course layout. Pakistanis are also naturally talented as golfers as they on the average tend to have very good fine motor control and an Asian mindset that marries competitiveness with a balanced inner calm. The fine motor control and good hand eye coordination has been shown by Pakistani athletes in the fields of squash, field hockey, cricket(yikes) and badminton.
Golf came to Pakistan generally as a result of foreign presence. My first experience on a golf course was at the Peshawar golf course that was built on a dried lake bed. The first nine holes are one of the greenest in Pakistan. Pakistan Air Force Commanders got the golf bug and provided the support to make golf one of the sports they adopted along with squash. My parents got into the game at Risalpur Air Force Base in the early 60s. An old World War II base was converted into a the golf course. The runway became the fairway for a couple of holes. The old air traffic control tower was converted into the club house.
Pakistani golf courses tend to have indigenous grass that is is quite hardy and can withstand hot temperatures. The blades tend to grow horizontally and don’t need much of watering. Most of the courses are only sparsely watered, and as a result have a harder surface when compared to those in the US. As a result of grass type and limited watering, the golf swing that works is a shallower one that does not require a divot. Picking the ball clean and letting it run after it drops is the typical way most Pakistanis learn to play.
Trapping the ball is a challenge due to the harder surface and therefore difficult to spin the ball. The greens tend to be well maintained but are generally slower than those in the US. Most Pakistani golf courses are private and tend to fall into three categories.
First category are the old golf courses like Rawal Pindi, Lahore Gymkhana, Peshawar Golf Course, Islamabad Golf Course etc. They are generally well maintained and have old trees and a lot of character. The Rawal Pindi Golf course is the oldest golf course. It was completed in 1926. The facility was initially developed as a nine-hole course. After several phases of development, it is now a 27-hole course. The clubhouse is perched on a hill, from where there is a panoramic view of the twin cities of Islamabad and Rawalpindi. The foothills of Himalayas provide the backdrop.
The second category are courses maintained by Pakistani Armed Forces and government entities like Railways etc. They tend to be relatively new and not open to general membership. Their quality varies from place to place. If you can get in , the cost of playing is minimal. The third category are the premier golf courses like Royal Palm in Lahore and Arabian Sea Country Club in Karachi. They are world class courses that have manicured fairways and greens; and are from a Pakistani perspective quite costly to join and play. Pakistan Open joined the Asian PGA tour at Arabian Sea Course in 2006.
Then there are some golf courses in exotic places like Bhurban in the Himalayas. It is a nine hole course adjacent to a luxury hotel situated in and around a saddle hill between to mountains. One par three hole that requires extreme focus as the there is a deep ravine between the tee and the green with swirling winds.
On the average Pakistanis tend to play regularly. The caddies are common, as they are inexpensive to get. Not many courses have golf carts. This actually results in less wear and tear of the fairways given the heavy use they get, even though most are private courses. Many of the caddies are scratch players and can guide visitors like me about the local conditions. In many courses there are even “agay walaas”. They are the ball boys walking ahead to keep an eye on an errant ball.
There are many reasons inhibiting Pakistani players fromreaching the top in world golf:
There are no structured and quality golf schools.
Because most courses are private, the cost of joining is prohibitive from the Pakistani perspective.
Those who can overcome these hurdles are mostly constrained to playing in conditions that are relatively tame from the world standard.
The length of the courses tend to be on the shorter side.
The Himalayas create such barrier to winds that the South Asian sub continent does not have windy playing conditions that are common elsewhere.
The golf courses tend not to have elevation changes of contoured fairways with sloping lies, as that would be difficult to irrigate and maintain in the hot season.
These relatively tame conditions don’t challenge Pakistani players to prepare for much tougher conditions when they go abroad.
To get a feel for what comparable golf outings would cost in Pakistan and US, let us compare Rawal Pindi Golf Club and Royal Palm of Lahore with Stow Acres North Course in Massachusetts USA:
At the semi-private Rawalpindi Golf Club the Green Fees are the equivalent of US$4 and the Caddy Fee is US$3.
At the private Royal Palm in Lahore, the Green Fees are US$25 (as guest) and Caddy Fee is US$3.
At the public Stow Acres in USA the Green Fees are US$60 and the Cart Fee is US$18.
As it turns out Pakistani industry produces many golf supplies leveraging their textile and leather base. Pakistani T-shirts, caps, towels, trousers, gloves, bags and head covers are sold world wide under different brand names.
The number of golf courses are on the increase with the increasing middle class. Most of the new golf courses are being built with the higher end housing developments. There needs to be a concerted effort to create public courses, as this would allow the public to play golf. This would provide a healthy outlet where not many currently exist. Golf has now also been included in Olympics and offers amateurs a chance for fame and fortune.

Greatest Animal Ever found on Earth

World’s largest mammal that ever walked the face of the earth used to live in Pakistan’s Baluchistan province. Yes it is true.

This mammal is calledBaluchitherium (The Beast of Balochistan). So far the fossils of this mammal have only been found in Baluchistan and Central Asia.

In 1999, a team of FrenchPalaentologists discovered the complete skeleton of this giant mammal in Dera Bugti Hills of Pakistan. The find came as the result of a 5 month long expedition by the French Team in the Balochistan desert.

All in all it was a 5 year long on-and-off study. The French team was led by Professor Jean-Loup Welcomme of the Natural History Museum in Paris. While the first complete skeleton of Baluchitherium was dicscovered in 1999, it was as early as 1846 when first pieces of fossilized Baluchitherium were accidentally stumbled upon in Dera Bugti by a British Army officer who went by the name of Vickary.

Following photo is a replica of Baluchitherium created for a museum in western hemisphere.

According to a BBC news report of May 10, 1999:

Baluchitherium is an extinct rhinoceros that lived during the Tertiary Period about 20 to 30 million years ago. With its long neck and legs, it was thought to feed high up in the trees. However, unlike the modern rhinoceros, the animal had no horn.

It had an estimated shoulder height of nearly 18 ft (5.5 m), a length of upto 28 feet (from nose to rump) and a weight of about 10 to 15 tons. The head was four feet long, sitting on top of a six feet long neck. This beast had poor eyesight, but made up for this with keen hearing and smell. Baluchitherium is classified in the phylum Chordata, subphylum Vertebrata, class Mammalia, order Perissodactyla, family Rhinocerotidae.

Following photo shows the French team and their Pakistani helpers recreating the skeleton of a Baluchitherium

BBC News report further says that:

Although fossil remains of Baluchitherium have been discovered before, a near-complete skeleton has always evaded palaeontologists. The fact that the Baluchitherium was able to live in Baluchistan is giving scientists clues about the climate in the area millions of years ago.

Eventhough Balochistan is now mostly a desert but since Baluchitherium would have needed as much astwo tonnes of fodder every day, the French team believes this area of Pakistan must have been heavily forested.

It is said that the Baluchitherium was a very defensive animal, and attacked any animal that was nearby. This beast tried to charge and trample foes with its front feet.

In an article written few years ago at www.thehotspotline.com blogger Ali Khan writes:

At a recent function organised by thePakistan Embassy in Paris which saw the launch of the Pak-France cultural forum,professor Welcomme delivered a lecture on his recent find. He also thanked the Nawab of bugti,the Bugti peopleand the University of Balochistan for extending all assistance to the French team. The Nawab of Bugti convinced other tribes to allow the team to work in the area and also provided material and technical assistance to Professor Welcomme’s team.

The latest news about Baluchitherium came last week when in early March 2008, more pieces of Baluchitherium have been excavated in Dera Bugti area. I read this update in Jang’s latest news feed but didn’t see the detailed news on it in the regular paper.

Is There A Baluchitherium Museum in Pakistan?

The short answer in NO.

But then I am not familiar either with what has been done at Government level to help finding and preserving Baluchitherium fossils. A National museum displaying some fossils of this mammal who roamed the land of Pakistan before us is the need of the hour. Does any of our readers know about any effort in this regard? If we come to know of any effort, we’ll update this paragraph here with the new information.

Baluchitherium Trivia:

1. Baluchitherium is a Van Halen instrumental from their 10th studio album, Balance (album).
2. Baluchitherium is also the name of a monster appearing in the computer game NetHack.

Islamabad: The Beautiful

I returned to Islamabad recently, after a long absence, and was able to look at the city, once again, with a tourist’s eye. Before I get used to it and start taking everything as given, I thought, I should put down my impressions about the city: the good, the bad and the ugly.

First, the good. (The bad and the ugly will come in subsequent posts).

For those not familiar with Islamabad, when the city was built, in the early 60s, its various localities, or sectors as they are called, were given meaningful and interesting names like Mehran, Shalimar, Ramna etc., each name from a different province of Pakistan. For some inexplicable reasons, these names went out of use and were replaced by impersonal, and rather bureaucratic, names like E, F, G, H and I, which are further divided into 1, 2, 3 and so on. That is why you hear of E -7, F-6, F-7 or G-6, G7, G8, etc. I think it was Khalid Hasan who once said that theaddresses in Islamabad sounded like computer commands. How true!

E and F sectors are closest to the Margalla hills and therefore considered more “prestigious” while I sector is farthest from the hills and closer to Rawalpindi. There is a running joke in Islamabad according to which E sector is for the Elite, F is for First class citizens, G for General public, and I for Idiots who think they live in Islamabad but, in fact, they live in Rawalpindi. Obviously, it is one of those classist jokes that are found in most cities all over the world.

I have also heard the comment that Islamabad is a city without soul (whatever that means). Also, that it does not have history, architecture, and culture like Lahore and does not have the quick pulse and energy like Karachi. Probably all this is true. ButIslamabad has something that more than makes up for all such deficiencies. It has geography! Geography that is difficult to match by any other city of Pakistan or, for that matter, by most capitals of the world.

By geography I don’t mean elevation above the sea level, which in Islamabad’s case, incidentally, is a healthy 1700 feet. Nor am I talking of its latitude, which is 330 something - same as Atlanta, Georgia or Long Beach, California. It is Islamabad’s proximity to the Margalla hills that makes it a unique and a beautiful city. The city is so close to the hills that, on clear days, it seems as if you could touch them. They provide such a spectacular backdrop! Not only that, the hills also provide the numerous wooded trails for trekking and picnic spots. Plus, and this is a big plus, because of the hills, its elevation and latitude, the city has a cool, crisp and comfortable climate for 6 months of the year, and guaranteed clear blue skies for 5 days a week - on average, that is.

And, as if for embellishment, the Margalla hills occasionally wear a light coat of snow, some say every 7 years. The last time it snowed on the hills was in 2004. It looked spectacular and lasted long enough for me to drive to Pir Sohawa (25 minutes) and take a few pictures. And yes, unlike Karachi or Lahore, the city never gets swamped after rain even though it rains pretty heavily at times (45 inches annually).

The hills are also a haunt for wildlife. It’s not uncommon to see monkeys coming out of the woods in the morning, crossing the Hillside Street in sector E-7, and sometime even jumping over the boundary walls of the houses in search of food. At night wild boars and jackals freely roam the wooded areas of the city scavenging for food. It makes Islamabad one of the few capitals of the world, if not the only one, where humans and wildlife coexist peacefully.

By Pakistani standards, Islamabad has excellent infrastructure - good roads, dependable electricity and telephone service. Above all, it is green, clean and free of the chaos seen in many of the Pakistani cities.

Talking of chaos, Islamabad has got itself new traffic police, which looks good - and is good. Unlike its sleazy and sloppy predecessors, the new police are serious, professional and polite. And they seem to manage the traffic pretty well. (I hope it stays that way).

Islamabad does not have shopping malls or large department stores — (yet!). It has interesting markets or bazaars in each sector, which resemble more like the old Middle Eastern souks. They are convenient and can be fun to visit, particularly in winters in the evening. The young Afghan boys frying potato chips (French fries), roasting peanuts or popcorns or preparing tikka kebabs in their tiny stalls or selling beads and trinkets on pushcarts in front of IT stores and video shops present a delightful mixture of old and new. The bookstores sell an amazing variety of books, ranging from Barack Obama’s new book The Audacity of Hope to Reading Lolita in Tehran to Behishti Zewar by Maulana Ashraf Thanvi.

The purpose-built flower markets in sectors F-6 and F-7 are not only convenient but delightful places to visit. And they are not expensive. A stem of gladiolas costs only 10-12 rupees as opposed to 2 to 3 dollars in New York. But if you betray an “Amreeka-palutt” demeanor you might have to pay more.

One of the greatest pleasures of living in Islamabad, that is, if you love outdoors and nature, is being able to go trekking in the Margallas. There are numerous trails leading to different peaks. Walking through the woods, especially in spring or early summer, and listening to the silence of the forest, broken only by bird sounds or an occasional rustle in the bushes caused by a surprised fox, can be an intoxicating experience. Wildfragrance of acacia, pine trees and sanatha shrubs pervades the air. I tell my friends that you could get a “high” on forest fragrance. Some jokingly suggest that the “high” I am talking about probably comes from the marijuana that grows wild and in abundance in the woods of Islamabad.

There is even a purpose-built and dedicated biking track going through a wooded area. But I have not seen many people biking on it. I guess there are certain things “self-respecting” Pakistanis won’t do. Biking is one of them. (Carrying anything heavier or larger than a briefcase is another.) It’s a cultural thing, I guess.

Another fun place to visit is Daman-e-Koh, a picnic spot at a height of 2,400 feet above sea level, but only 10 to 15 minutes drive from the city. Daman-e-Koh was always there with its white dome visible from everywhere in the city. The dome belonged to, and still does, a restaurant that served indifferent food. But recently the place has been transformed, thanks to the Capital Development Authority (CDA), into a delightful picnic spot, with a nicely landscaped park furnished with plenty of benches, paved paths, and decent and fairly clean public toilets (something uncommon in Pakistan) and a generous car park.

For amusement, you have golf carts that take picnickers for a short ride around the park. You also have the usual Bandar walla, his monkey in a cap greeting the visitors. Also, there is (this is unusual) a Pathan musician in his flamboyant kulla serenading the visitors with his rubab (a string instrument). People seemed to be more attracted by his presence than by his music.

Instead of one restaurant, Daman-e-Koh now has three: an upscale restaurant named Café Lazeez, the old domed restaurant now improved and moderately priced, and a fast-food restaurant. Cafe Lazeez is built as a thatched hut with a large open terrace that has a fabulous view of Islamabad, the Rawal Lake and the surrounding mountains. Eating here, at this height, is somewhat like eating in the restaurant on Eiffel tower, in Paris. The difference is that tikkas and sheesh kebabs (reshmi kebabs, as they call them) at Cafe Lazeez are out of this world. Not being a great meat eater myself, I ordered the only two vegetarian dishes on the menu that day: paneer palik and masoor ki daal, served with fresh rotis from a tandoor. I cannot wait to go back there again. The bill for two persons? Rupees 600 including tips! Only US 10 dollars! The lack of a glass of wine that you would get on Eiffel Tower is made up by the incomparable desi food and, as I said before, the forest fragrance!