Serendib Travel

People got all excited about the sword chair in GoT, but this peacock / freaky animal chair is also pretty fabulous. Lahore Museum, Pakistan. 8

Kind of adorable baby portrait. Oil painting of Shahzada Pratab Singh Bahadar, son of Maharaja Sher Singh. Lahore Museum, Pakistan.

One of the workshop students — they were all so adorable — took pictures of me taking pictures. Lahore, Pakistan.

Okay, I did a little cleaning and unpacking. This is just part of my textile haul from Pakistan — dupattas, fabric for making up into shalwar kameez, embroidered shawls. Kind of wish I’d bought twice as much, but I ran out of suitcase space.

Kashmiri shawl from the Sikh period. Lahore Museum, Pakistan.

Whew. After all my conflicted feelings about the military history, it was such a relief to come over to the textiles section, which I could just purely love. Pakistan has ASTONISHING textile art. Lahore Museum.

A maharajah and his council in Lahore Fort. Plus a bunch of beautiful weapons that were meant for efficiently killing people. (Or, I suppose, if I’m being charitable, some of them might have been for trying to keep yourself from being killed. Hm….maybe I shouldn’t be posting these when I’m jet-lagged and a little cranky.)

I always feel a little conflicted viewing this sort of map. On the one hand, it’s definitely good to document what existed before colonization. On other hand, this is also empire, and I wonder how many villages got rolled over by Ranjit Singh’s troops as he claimed so much territory. How many people just trying

I like what the museum did here, posting sketches of the decorations on this ancient pottery, to help make the designs more visible to visitors. Lahore Museum, Pakistan.

Lahore Museum, Pakistan.