Back in Lahore tem­per­at­ures climbed to between 40 and 45 degrees. And if that wasn’t bad enough Pakistan prac­tices elec­tri­city off­load­ing so almost every other hour we were without any juice and there­fore no fans either. The only way to deal with this was to do abso­lutely noth­ing dur­ing the day but replen­ish your lost flu­ids and get act­ive dur­ing the evenings.

One even­ing, we had just got­ten back from watch­ing the sun­set at Bad­shaahi Mosque, Niamat, our trus­ted rick­shaw driver, was wait­ing for us all excited. He was invit­ing us to a wed­ding of a friend and we had to leave right away.

When we got there we were the cen­ter of atten­tion. We were fed and offered beer and hashish, which we all refused. It some­how didn’t seem right. A couple hours later the actual cere­mony star­ted. We were led into a col­or­ful dec­or­ated court­yard and given seats right at the front. After a bit of live music the groom came in and sat in front of the audi­ence. At the same time, at the brides fam­il­ies house, there was a sim­ilar party for the bride. They are basic­ally say­ing their good­byes to their fam­il­ies seper­ately and then had another cere­mony the next day together.

While the music was still play­ing people came to the front and held money over the head of the groom for good luck. All the money was then col­lec­ted and given the groom as a present. A bit later there was a march­ing band and a little pro­ces­sion. Then dan­cing star­ted while the groom was fed with sweets.

Jan­icke, a dutch trav­el­ler, and I were then chosen to also feed the groom some sweets (every­body else had wisely swıtched to the back row…). I sat beside him and let him nibble on a bıt of very sweet dough­ball. Then I had to get up to per­form a bit of Bol­ly­wood style dan­cing. A bit later the groom then had sud­denly a pis­tol in his hand. Offi­cially, shoot­ing in the air is now for­bid­den at fest­iv­it­ies, but I guess that doesn’t deter many Pakistanis.We were in the middle of a res­id­en­tial area and I just hope the bul­lets dropped down some­where without doing any harm.

Shortly after the party star­ted to break up, so we said our good­byes and thanks and man­aged to finally get our very exhausted heads down around 4:30 in the morning.