A ride to a Historical place in Amb Sharif: Tombs of Amb Sharif

So its like I am getting more and more interested in riding, and especially riding to the historical places around my city. This time the destination was a place called Amb Sharif in District Khushab, about 65km away from my city.
These pics are not copyrighted, you are welcome to download them. However, I would appreciate if you posted a comment about any pic you downloaded.

We were two of us on my 125 for the ride and enjoyed every moment of it. The off-road part, the water was salty, very bitter. Salt mines of Warcha are quite near from here:

We started at about 8 in the morning, toward West of Joharabad is the city Quaidabad, from there we had to go toward North for Amb Sharif, part of jounrney from Quaidabad to Am Sharif is off-road, but great fun.

About to reach our destination. A pic from some destroyed building:
And finally the historical place. As the situation is, no one is very sure about the history of this place. It is uncertain whether the remains are from the Buddhist era or those of the Hinduism. Anyways, if anyone has any information, you are more than welcome to share it.
There were only these two buildings remaining there. The rest has been destroyed. This is the bigger one:

And the smaller one that is in its original condition, a beautiful description of the brilliant architecture of that time:


Some more pics we took there:




Notice the detail of the artistic work:






People have dug gold made stuff from here and sold it illegally, here is a proof from many of the pits we saw there:


The bigger temple:


The stairs leading to the temple, typical of the times of antiquity..




The bigger temple is not in 100% original condition. Notice the two big pillars in front. They have been made to protect the already destroyed building. The good thing is that the stone has been used that matches the original stone as used in its construction:




The bigger temple has stairs in that that take you to the first and second floor. Of course we were going up now. It was pretty dark in there:








The stairs leading to the top:


A view from the top:




Amazing craftsmanship:


Thats when I took some nice pics of the Kid






Next we explored a bit more and found some more ruins, a pic from there:




From this place we noticed some more stairs, partly destroyed:

Some of the walls still remain here and a look at them gives the reason why. Every piece of rock is placed with small individual pieces of flat rocks and some cement like material was filled to build it:




A view from this height, see if you can find my bike in this pic..


Going down from here I saw this outer skin of a snake, hardly saved myself from falling as the path was very difficult.


The journey back was equally exciting.


Notice the mountain in the background. This is the doing of the salt, it was like the salt was eating it up:










This is the look of my table after this particular ride. From left to right. The first rock is the one of which is used in the construction of the temple, the second one a small piece of the red rock as in the pics above where the salt has played its magic. The third one is Gipsum. The fourth one is salt.

Tolajjah: Ride to a place unseen..

THERE are historical places in our country that few people have seen or heard of. It is for the tourism department to develop these places and attract the public toward it. A few weeks back I heard of this place called Talojah situated in the famous Soun valley. On the top of a mountain there are relics of what might be a fort once. No one knows the history of Tolajjah. It is strange that even though the place is only about 50km from my city I ha never even heard if this place. 

No proper road leads to Talojah. There is an off-road (jeep track) of about 8km from Sakaisar road to Darbar Baba Kachi Wala that is for the trucks to approach the mines in that area. From the shrine you have to climb two hills to get to Tolajah. With some stops and some detours we reached there after a walk of about an hour and fifteen minutes.

The Tolajah ruins was an amazing site. The location completely reveals that it was been built keeping in mind the defence point of view. The approach to the hill top is only from one side and on the other sides end up several feet down the hill. Some of our excitement was marred by the fact that because of heavy Monsoon rains many wild bushes had grown there which didn’t allow us to see the whole place. The ruins are scattered at an area of about one and a half square mile. From the very looks of the place it becomes clear that the ruins are of some fort that might be populated several hundred years B.C. Today, there is no roof top here and because of earthquakes many walls have also been demolished but the traces of a fort remain till day.

It was a ride to a place seen by few humans. Pure adventure, Nat Geo hasn't got here yet. Surprisingly, the place is only 50km away from my town but I had never even heard of it. Two weeks back when a friend mentioned about it, I got so curious and decided to visit the place soon enough.

There is no proper approach to this place. No one knows the history of this place. As people say, the place might have population several years B.C. I have also heard that people have made their fortunes by digging gold objects from here.

Were were four together on two bikes. I was on my 125 for the ride as part of the journey was off-road. It was my first time for a ride on the mountains and also for off-road. Here are some of the pics.

I did almost a distance of 10km off-road, I really wished I had a dirt bike for this journey as the off-road track was a real test of your riding skill and of course he bike. I am glad we made it together.

This is a bit better part of the off road section. The whole journey was done in first gear and some heights were so steep that I had to tell me brother to get off the bike. A little throttle would mean the front end in the air.

There was this cold spring of water

We parked our bikes in the valley and our next journey was to be done on feet.

Some more pics.

Notice the cutting and arrangement of the rocks.

There were these bones of some animal. No, these are not from the B.C. times. Though I wonder how an animal this big should be able o get here.

The place must have been built keeping in mind the defence point of view. There was only one place to approach the hill top and the rest of the sides were like this:

Perhaps a good place for the base jumpers:

Some of the rocks on the boundary wall had this bowl like shape dug in them:

Some of the rocks had been separated because of earth quakes, someone had placed this rock for a bridge:

Many rocks had these strange holes in them:

This is the second highest mountain in the Soun valley, we were right on the top of it: