Karachi: from twenty-five huts to twenty million people
A fishing village in 1729, the British Empire's largest wheat port by 1914, and now the city that pays a third of Pakistan's tax.
Read itSindh
Sukkur: the barrage that waters ten million acres
A colonial engineering project that turned a desert province into farmland, and two bridges over the Indus worth crossing slowly.
Sukkur: the barrage that waters ten million acres
Sukkur is a working river city in upper Sindh, built on limestone ridges where the Indus narrows. It is hot — it was described as the hottest city in British India, and summer still regularly passes 50°C.
It is also the site of one of the largest irrigation works in the world, which is a more interesting thing to look at than it sounds.
A short history
The city was founded by the Rai dynasty; the modern town grew under the British, with a garrison from 1839 and a municipality from 1862.
The Sukkur Barrage was built between 1923 and 1932. It runs 1,524 metres across the Indus in yellow stone and steel, and feeds seven major canals that between them water close to ten million acres. It is the reason upper Sindh grows anything.
The Lansdowne Bridge, finished in 1889, was one of the first crossings of the Indus here and an unusual piece of cantilever engineering for its date. The Ayub Bridge went up alongside it in 1962.
Places worth your time
- Sukkur Barrage
- Best seen from the bank in the late afternoon, when the light is off the water and the gates are open.
- Lansdowne and Ayub bridges
- Two very different answers to the same problem, seventy years apart, standing side by side.
- Sadh Belo
- A Hindu temple complex on an island in the middle of the Indus, reached by boat, and still in use.
- Masoom Shah Minaret
- An 86-foot brick tower from 1607. You can climb it, and the view over the river is the best in the city.
- Bukkur island
- The old fortified island between the banks, called the Gate of Sindh.
Before you go
December and January only, realistically. Reachable by air from Karachi or by road up the Indus Highway. Half a day.
Also in Sindh
Nearby
Hyderabad: the city that built itself wind towers
Sindh's old capital, a bazaar several kilometres long, and rooftops designed to catch a breeze that arrives every afternoon.
Read itThatta: a capital, a mosque and the largest necropolis on earth
Makli holds hundreds of thousands of graves across several centuries, and the mosque next door has acoustics that carry a voice to the back without help.
Read itTimeless beauty · Serene waters · Living culture
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