Non-availability of tickets from Multan led one to undertake a two hour journey to Bahawalpur before boarding a Karachi bound flight. The Bahawalpur airport is so non descript that it could easily be a bus terminus.

Flights to Karachi ply on just two days of the week and the airport is the only oasis of activity in an idyllic countryside. When asked if we will get anything to eat, the man behind the counter jocularly responds, “Be happy you’ve got a ticket.”

I associated Bahawalpur with two factoids - India played a Test here in 1955 in a curiously named Dring Stadium, and Hanif Mohammad scored his mammoth 499 for Karachi against their state side.

My colleague, observing the charming setting, joked that a donkey cart might take us from the terminal to the aircraft; another wondered what Tom Hanks’ plight might have been had he been stuck here for nine months. It was all too unreal and the sight of a modern PIA flight in the most quaint environment was the most paradoxical sight of them all.