Tag: quetta

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BBC She series in Pakistan

In winter 2018, I produced a month-long series under the title of “BBC She”. This campaign was introduced to increase the outreach of women’s voices from the grassroots of Pakistan. In the first phase of the campaign, our team went to four different cities in each province of Pakistan to talk to young university students.

This series ran simultaneously on BBC Urdu and BBC Hindi.

During these hour-long townhall style discussions, we got to hear some very smart, confident and fierce women. Here are the condensed version of discussions from each city.

Episode 1: Quetta, Balochistan

 

Episode 2: Larkana, Sindh

 

Episode 3: Abbotabad, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa

 

Episode 4: Lahore, Punjab

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Basant in Quetta

In most parts of Pakistan, people are banned from celebrating the spring festival of Basant. It is mostly due to the kite strings strangling the necks of people who are walking in narrow streets or going past in motorcycles.

I was in Quetta earlier this year, and saw so many kids celebrating basant, because there are no laws against it in the city!

 

Also published in Mangobaaz.

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Ziarat’s Depleting Juniper Forests

This is a nursery of the forest department of Baluchistan, where they are trying to grow Juniper plants.
The forest department has had very little success in growing the plants.
It is very hard to grow juniper plants in Ziarat. The yield of the seeds is very low!
These trees are being cut down for fuel and construction by the locals.
Some of these trees can only survive here because of the cold climate.
Some of these trees are the oldest living creatures on this planet. That is why they are sometimes called “living fossils” and can be used to study changes on earth over time.
Some of these trees are as old as 3000-4000 years

 

These photographs are a part of a photo-essay published on BBC World.