Natural splendour, real musics, wines, wordpower
The featured image’s young boys were zipping along a typically-narrow, lively street.
I was standing just-inside the “Royal Baths” – a meticulously restored building which is one of the walled city’s greatest treasures. (eventually, this series will “explore” the Shahi Hammam)
Presumably, “minimum legal driving age” rules are not rigorously enforced in Lahore!
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Above, you are looking at the meticulously restored/refreshed Gali Surjan Singh, which is now one of the most “upmarket” streets in the Walled City of Lahore.
This is a street where dining and shopping options are abundant.
For obvious reasons, the same is not true of nearby Patli Gali, pictured below.
Nonetheless, precisely because it is allegedly the narrowest “visitor-friendly” street in Lahore’s entire megacity, Patli Gali is a “must see” for visitors to Lahore’s walled city.
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As we enjoyed our drum-driven welcome, we visitors/tourists had a little “forest” of our phone-cameras, blazing. (& yours truly’s camera-as-such)
Also blazing were at least as many phone-cameras in local residents’ hands.
Mutual curiosity and bonhomie were abundantly evident.
This little “event” proved enjoyable to all persons present, including those who were not photographing it.
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(The musical bonus features a man who was very possibly the greatest tabla player in recorded history. It is hard to imagine that there has ever been a more prodigiously gifted player of any drum. I am around 99% certain that you have never heard of him, let alone heard him. For the final 49 of his 66 years he lived in Lahore)
Immediately after our more “formal” welcome, we were made even more welcome, more personally, in a courtyard adjacent to Delhi Gate.
Drums and garlands were involved.
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Over the course of seven fascinating hours, we saw a great many people in Lahore’s “walled city”.
Fellow members of our own group aside, not one of them was another “Western” tourist.
For the foreseeable future, I imagine, very few Westerners are likely to walk through Delhi Gate, and then experience one of the world’s most interesting urban precincts.
Presumably, that explains why our arrival was treated as one deserving of a “formal”, official welcoming ceremony!
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“Old Delhi” is renowned worldwide; arguably, it is the most “happening” urban place on “our” planet.
My beloved and I are among many millions of Westerners who have experienced Old Delhi, directly. (more than once)
Very few 21st century Westerners have visited the Walled City of Lahore.
Also known as “old Lahore”, or as the “old city”, it is rather less frenetic than Old Delhi.
It is, however, very much richer in architectural/artistic splendour than is Old Delhi.
We begin this series at Lahore’s Delhi Gate. (not coincidentally, Old Delhi has a Lahore Gate)
An old Punjabi saying about Lahore is akin to a declaration made by at least two proud Italian cities: that one should see Naples/Venice, then die.
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As highlighted in this series, Flnders Island’s shorelines are both beautiful and very demanding – especially for plants.
I imagine that not a few visitors perceive a place such as the one pictured above as “unspoilt”, “wild”, “pristine”.
The above adjectives are “wildly” inaccurate!
(I took the photo on the southern half of Flinders Island’s west coast at 10.08 am on March 2025. I love such places, where things “hard” and “soft”, “massive” and “petite”, “inanimate” and “living” all coexist, near terra firma’s edge)
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You are looking at what the strength/weakness, relative abundance/scarcity, or presence/absence of various substances/qualities has delivered.
Likely-major players in the pictured instance: long-extinct volcanoes, erosion, chemical reactions, gravity, wind, rain, salt (windblown, from the nearby sea) and fire, sunlight, shade, shelter, temperature variation, “exhausted” soils, sheep.
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Australia is remarkably rich in exposed rock, including some of “our” planet’s loveliest and longest-exposed rock.
Even by Australian standards, Flinders Island is particularly well-endowed.
Its “rock stars” are often gloriously “decorated” by the wondrous-strange organisms that live on them.
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This post’s photos were taken about half an hour after the previous post’s, and circa one kilometre further north.
The featured image involved a telephoto lens; its 400mm focal made Flinders’ highest peaks look very much closer than they actually were.
It also emphasised the ruffled water and the rocks, immediately off the shore on which I stood.
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