Page 305 - The Tigris Expedition

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The Tigris Expedition
Slavsk we feared a tow more than any storm. What we had planned
was to stay at anchor in west Ormara bay until the weather had
stabilised and then sail to Karachi. We wanted to travel over­
land from there to see the inland ruins of Mohenjo-Daro. The
barometric pressure was still very low and we intended to wait for a
wind that would neither wreck us on Ras Ormara nor send us away
across the Indian Ocean before we had seen the prehistoric city in
the Indus Valley. We could also take the camel road to Pasni and
travel inland from the old fort of Sotka-Koh, but this would mean
leaving Tigris unguarded for a long time. We would have more time
•i to see the ruins if we accepted Captain Hansen’s offer to tow us for
one day along the coast to the harbour of Karachi, and we agreed.
So as the musicians picked up their drums and followed the large
i crowd back to the village the two vessels in west Ormara bay
weighed anchor. The broad and powerful Jason took the lead and
i Tigris followed like a toy on a string, and before we rounded Ras
i Ormara we were already swallowed up by the darkness.
:
••
The colourful life of timeless Ormara village was still vivid in our
memories a week later when we entered the prehistoric ghost city
of Mohenjo-Daro, deep within the Indus Valley. We had left Tigris
tied to a buoy in the busy modern port of Karachi, where the
Pakistani harbour authorities had given us a hearty welcome and
the Navy Command had offered to guard our vessel in front of the
Naval Academy while we went off on our inland excursion. Sani, a
young guide from the National Museum, took us by minibus on
good roads through various Pakistani towns to the ruins of
Mohenjo-Daro, 350 miles from Karachi.
Mohenjo-Daro means simply ‘Mound of the Dead’, and no one
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knows what the real name of the city might have been during the
thousand years it was full of life, from about 2500 to about 1500 bc.
In the beginning of the third century ad Buddhists arrived and built
a tiny temple on top of the ruins. The site was still nothing but a
huge mound of sand and debris in 1922 when archaeologists were
attracted to the place and began digging. Until then the mere
existence of the underlying civilisation was unknown. Scholars had
barely begun to suspect that the Indus Valley had housed a very
early civilisation. The work which was begun after the First World
War by R. D. Bancrji and other members of Sir John Marshall s
expedition was followed up by many others and has so far un­
covered 240 acres of an urban settlement some three miles in
circumference. Nevertheless, large sections of what was once a
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