Travelling to my Homeland
They say, there is no place like home. I had to agree but for both good and bad reasons. I started my journey as a resident of Canada in 2011 where I arrived here as a student. Over the last five years, Canada feels more and more like home every day. Yet, it is not home as my family is not here yet. Therefore, every year or so I visit my family in Pakistan.
This year that opportunity arose in the month of February 2016. I visited my family for around 10 days and these are some of the most memorable moments from that journey.
I normally do not share a lot of personal things on my website but this website will also serve as a little chronicle of my journey in life to some extent. Therefore, if you stumble upon this, this is more meant for me than you. But read on there is an interesting story here!
My journey started at the Edmonton International Airport where I had the last cup of Starbucks before heading out of the country….
Following that, I landed at the Pearson International airport in Toronto where I had to wait for 8 hours before boarding my next flight.
I read somewhere “Parents are the safest havens on earth” and I couldn’t have said it better. The feeling of seeing my parent after almost two years was incredible. I miss their physical presence in my daily life sorely. Seeing them smiling made me very happy so I got them to pose at a local restaurant. The same goes for both of my sibblings (my younger brother can be seen below making silly faces – it seems the entire family has a penchant for that…Read More?)
Food is possibly the only thing that made me as happy as seeing my family… I miss the delicious, spicy and possibly unhygienic food from Pakistan severely. Here are some of the cool dishes shown below:
You know its a weird feeling when you go back to your city and it looks different enough to be unrecognizable but similar enough to be your city.
Alas, my trip came to an end. I had to return to my daily life in Canada. While on the way to the airport, I came across this settlement near the nearby lands. This settlement was mostly occupied by families of local farmers or brick makers. This is where I saw the sad part about my country; the relentless poverty.
I got out of the care and started taking some photos of the settlements around. This is when these children started running towards me (you can still see one running in the background).
These children ran up to me and started pointing at me. They knew what I was doing and started laughing. The look of sheer joy on their faces was somehow captured in these photographs and I love that! Their innocence shone throguh but so did their poverty. It made me reconsider how blessed I was to be able to afford a camera to take these photographs. These children and their families barely had any money for real homes.
These are some of the fields that the families of the children photographed above worked on:
One of the famous things about Pakistan’s are the decorated trucks. They are piece of art that have engines! I choose to photograph while we drove by it.
When we reached Karachi’s airport, I sat down with my parents to have a final lunch before it was time to go:
My mom’s face expression betrays a sad smile. It was difficult for me not to break down right there.
As they say “You gotta do what you gotta do”. I picked up my bags and flew out of the country:
This concludes my journey. Wanna find out more of adventures? Follow me on Facebook