Lahore:
Pakistan’s last surviving houseboat village at Manchhar Lake, near Sehwan in Sindh, has been significantly restored in a landmarked cultural preservation project.
A total of 44 traditional houseboats, known as Galiyo, and the smaller fishing boats known as Hurro, have been carefully restored as part of a 20-month initiative led by two academics from the Department of the University’s Department of Architecture and Planning.
Currently, about 370 members of the Mohanna community – descendants of two brothers – are on these traditional Galiyos.
Funded by the British Government’s Cultural Protection Fund and implemented in partnership with the British Council, the project has also gifted two newly built Galiyo -house boats – Sohni and Laal – to the Mohanna Society.
These houseboats are named after characters from Sindhi folklore and will support the launch of “Manchhar Lake Mohanna’s Tours”, a societal-controlled tourist initiative with bird cure, cultural games, local cuisine, heritage experiences and other community efforts.
Historically, a few decades ago, hundreds of houseboats flooded along the river Indus from southern Punjab to the inner Sindh. Today, only a few dozen remain primarily due to pollution, environmental changes and the devastating effect of the right bank exit drain (RBOD).
Rbod was designed to transport salt water, toxic and wastewater, mostly from irrigation drain, from the right bank of the Indus River safely into the Arabian Sea.
