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On Saturday morning, a collection of government officials, journalists, university students, scouts and families gathered on the platform of Karachi’s historic Cantt Station for the departure of the Thar Desert Safari Train. I was also part of this group on a special invitation from the Sindh Tourism Development Corporation (STDC).
Advertised as a special tourist train running from Karachi Cantt to Zero Point/Marvi — the last station on the Pakistani side of the old Thar Express route — the initiative by the STDC promised a weekend of unique sights, sounds and adventure.
Tickets cost Rs20,000 for the two-day trip, which included food, transportation and a berth to sleep on. An additional Rs3,500 got passengers shared accommodation at a guesthouse to spend the night.
The train, which ran on its sixth trip from Karachi to Hyderabad and onwards to the border between India and Pakistan on February 14, is one of two special ‘tourist trains’ being run by the Sindh Tourism Development Corporation (STDC).
Passengers board at Karachi, Hyderabad and Mirpurkhas, after which the train runs to Chhor — a small town in the middle of the Thar desert. Upon reaching Chhor, they are moved onto buses and taken to Parchhi Ji Veri (PJV), a hilltop resort, to watch the sunset, have dinner and enjoy a musical programme.
The impressive lineup of performers included a local singer and snake charmer — a jogi — a singer from Hyderabad who serenaded attendees with ghazals, and Faqeer Wahid, son of renowned folk artist Allan Faqeer, who boarded the train at Karachi and accompanied the travelling party throughout the trip.
Activities at the PJV resort included archery, dirt biking, camel rides and even a zipline — which was not operating when we visited. The hill and the nearby town are named after a folk hero named Parchhi who dug a small sweetwater well — veri in the local Sindhi dialect — some 10 to 12 kilometres from Chhor on the advice of a local saint.
After dinner, those who paid for accommodation at the guesthouse were taken to Umerkot, while the rest of the passengers headed back to Chhor to spend the night on the train. The next morning, the party departed for Khokhrapar — the last operational Pakistani station on the ‘Dukhi Train’ line — before moving on to Marvi after being cleared by the Pakistan Rangers.
The commander of the unit charged with border security in the area greeted passengers at the platform and briefed them on the history of the area and its rail line. The Maharaja of Jodhpur had the line constructed in the 1890s to transport wheat during a famine.
Initially called Raja jo Rail or The Raja’s Rail, the train was taken over and upgraded by colonial authorities and used to transport supplies — notably water — to their troops in the area. Local legend says people began to call it the Dukhi Train (sorrowful train) because the water splashing out of rail cars made it look like the train was sobbing as it chugged through the desert.
The line, as Zahid Hussain — a Pakistan Railways employee with almost 40 years of experience — earlier told me, had been upgraded further by independent India and Pakistan. It was used to link Khokhrapar to India’s Munabao all the way till 2019, when the Thar Express service was suspended indefinitely.
Hussain recalled a time before the border had been fenced and travel between the countries restricted. He said wild deer would move freely across the desert and people would use the rail line to visit their relatives. He regretted that the border closures hurt local residents and created distances between families.
At Marvi, we were asked not to photograph any “enemy installations and buildings” out of respect for various “memoranda of understanding and agreements between the belligerent parties”. Walking out past the border fence and into the open desert, we could clearly see the Indian tricolour flying ahead. We stopped at the international border — a literal line drawn in the sand — and were told the Indians had been informed of our arrival well in advance to avoid any untoward incidents.
After the brief visit to the border, we were taken to the ‘meeting point’ — a collection of buildings on the Pakistani side that serve as neutral ground for bilateral deliberation between forces from both sides. Tea, pakoras and jalebis were brought out as we lounged in rooms usually reserved for high stakes negotiations. Outside, Faqir Wahid and his troupe treated us to a medley of national songs and his iconic dance moves.
After that, it was back onto the train for the seven-hour journey to Karachi, stopping at Chhor, Mirpurkhas and Hyderabad along the way. Breakfast and lunch were served on the train for both the outbound and inbound journeys and snacks were provided to passengers on the return leg after we crossed Hyderabad.
The experience was definitely a unique insight into both the culture of far-flung desert communities and the security arrangements along one of the most tense international borders in the world. It was also a welcome escape from the chaos of city life, with cellphone coverage dipping drastically after we crossed Mirpurkhas.
The entertainment programme at PJV was fun, with children and adults alike staring wide-eyed as venomous cobras followed the movement of Sattar Jogi’s flute. The second singer of the night, Farah Lashari, took requests and everyone enjoyed singing along to classics like ‘Kali kali zulfon’ and various Sufi kalams. The train’s own travelling musicians received uproarious applause everywhere they performed.
Meals on the train were also decent, with breakfast comprising an omelette with two slices of bread and lunch and a dinner of chicken curries with sides of rice and roti. Lunch on the first day had a gulab jamun for dessert which was replaced by a second entree of daal on day two. Meals were served to passengers at their seats, but they could also choose to eat in the attached dining car.
Many had positive things to say on the way back, including Railway Scouts leader Mehboob Hussain, who was accompanying a group of boy scouts and girl guides on the trip. He said the trip aligned well with the scouts’ ethos of exploration. He appreciated the initiative as a bridge between city-dwellers and the inhabitants of the desert, especially praising the visit to Zero Point as an educational experience.
Professor Saima Akhtar, a senior academic at the University of Karachi, said the trip was an “adventure” and she didn’t recall being uncomfortable at any point in the trip. She was accompanied by her family and students from her department of Public Administration, for whom she said the trip was one of “experiential learning”.
Dr Akhtar said she had been looking to take this trip ever since it first ran and was glad to have finally gotten the opportunity. She also remarked that the drop in ticket prices, which earlier stood at Rs30,000 for the initial journeys, was representative of the country’s “economic decline”. She was especially appreciative of the guesthouse her group stayed at in Umerkot, telling me they got to pick fruit and vegetables from a nearby field as a bonus experience.
For a journey that has already run five trips, some aspects certainly needed improvement, especially when it came to passenger comfort and accommodation on the train. The cars and cabins, which housed many people for over 24 hours of the journey, were — and excuse the pun — a train wreck.
Worn out seats, missing footholds that made climbing onto the upper berths an ordeal and broken light fixtures and switches dampened the otherwise pleasant experience. The non-availability of blankets on a train for the chilly desert night, with the air-conditioning running on full blast, made sure the sound of shivering reverberated through the two passenger bogeys.
Hussain, a retiree with a lifelong wanderlust, told me he wouldn’t bring his family on this trip despite having travelled on trains with them throughout his life. He said the cleanliness on the train was “very, very pathetic, from the washrooms to the cabins themselves”. His point was only reinforced as a cockroach scurried past us as we talked over nuggets and tea.
He said the musical programme at PJV and the visit to the border were “excellent” and appreciated the exclusive access to experiences that was only available on this specially organised trip. Outside of that, he said he wouldn’t take another such journey, choosing instead to drive himself and explore at his leisure.
The Thar Desert Safari was definitely a unique experience, one that most people in Karachi and other urban areas don’t usually have the opportunity to enjoy. The initiative would have been worth far more appreciation had this been its inaugural run.
However, the many kinks that the STDC failed to work out on its sixth journey left a bit of a bad taste in one’s mouth. If the goal is to attract tourists — especially foreign tourists — the experience falls short in many ways and needs to improve.
While the price tag gives the impression of some element of luxury — at least to the Pakistani mind — that luxury, sadly, is nearly non-existent.
That isn’t to say that I regret taking the trip, just that I wouldn’t do it again unless a serious effort is made to make the journey — not the destinations, those were great — more comfortable.