A Salty Experience
The author takes us into the second largest salt mine in the world
Having written well over a score of travelogues about my overseas escapades I had thought I would start writing about my own sweet homeland and its tourist sites. The first trip to a tourist site in Pakistan in the recent days was to the Salt mines in Khewra, Dist. Jehlum. The mines at Khewra, the second largest in the world after the ones in Poland and the largest in operation after the closure of the same in 1996, are situated at the foothills of Salt Range which extends up to Kalabagh in Dist. Mianwali. Starting at Baganwala near River Jehlum Salt Range has a length of about 300 km and the breadth varies from eight to thirty km. Elevation from the sea level ranges from 2200 ft at it lowest point to 4990 ft in Sakesar mountain. Khewra Gorge is known as ‘Museum of Geology’ where rocks from Cambrian to recent period are exposed.
As the story goes these salt reserves were accidentally discovered by the forces of Alexander the Great when his forces were pitched against those of Raja Porus near Jehlum in 326 BC. Alexander’s soldiers saw their horses licking some out crop salt while grazing and the soldiers tasted the same for the first time. The history of salt extraction in the subcontinent dates back to those times when it was extracted from the out crops of the salt seams exposed to the surface. After annexation of the salt range from local Rajas by the British it were the later who first extracted salt from these reserves on scientific lines in 1849. Dr. Warth, a renowned British mining engineer, laid out the main tunnel for an easy access to salt deposits in 1872. This very tunnel now works as a tourist walkway for the visitors for a round of the mines.
Salt, a dietary mineral and a primary electrolyte in the body, though toxic to most plants, is essential for animal life. It is a popular food seasoning and preservative, especially for meat in the olden days. In the days of the Roman Empire the Roman soldiers were paid in salt and that is where the term ‘salary’ comes from. Salad also literally means salted because of the ancient Roman practice of salting leaf vegetables. It was a mark of rich patron in ancient Rome.
Once a rare and uncommon commodity like common sense, common salt has become so common that the Polish authorities decided to close down their mines at Wieliczka and Bochinia, the largest in the world, towards the close of the twentieth century. The salt extraction was no longer deemed feasible because of its low price and flooding.
Khewra Mines have estimated rock salt reserves of two hundred and twenty million tonnes and the current annual production is 370000 tonnes for domestic and industrial uses. Mining is carried out by around one thousand workers in a leased area of 110 sq km, with a cumulative length of all tunnels being more than forty km, but the mineral is still being extracted manually which is a definite health risk. In the days gone by the work force for salt mines was chosen from the slaves and prison inmates. The purity of salt at Khewra mines is 96% which at places goes up to 99%. There are seventeen working levels in Khewra mines, five below the ground and the rest above it. Inside the mine there are beautiful alternate bands of red and white salts which at places have darkened in colour because of the steam engines that plied in the tunnels from 1916 to 1932. This process of discolouration has stopped with the advent of electric trolleys. The extracted salt is found in a wide array of colours from transparent to white, pink and reddish to beef-colour red. Very rarely it is also found in pure crystalline form but generally the white or crystalline appearance that we see in daily use table salt is artificial.
The approach to the salt mines at Khewra is via M 2 motorway where we take Lillah/Pind Daddan Khan exit, from where it is thirty two miles towards Pin Daddan Khan. The road is fairly good for thirty miles up to ICI factory but the final lap of two km to the PMDC Resort and the Mine head is nothing more than a relic. One has to drive slow and with utmost caution lest the under side of the car is damaged. The condition of the road to the ‘resort’ also gives an idea about what the visitors are likely to confront at the tourist site. Parking our vehicles at the decent parking area we purchased the tickets for the mine and also for the train that was to take us in.
The main tunnel at ground level developed by Dr. Warth has been converted into a Tourist Resort. The walkway up to the mine mouth is good but The rickety electric train that takes the visitors up to the main juncture inside the mine is a pain in the neck. It is disgraceful to allocate a train in the condition that it is in to transport the tourists up and down the tunnel. Comparing this to a miniature train of the same size that was in operation outside the National Railway Museum in York, UK, I was wondering if we were still lingering in or around the stone age. This train in York plied on the city roads and my word! what a comfortable and charming ride it was! Our Salt Mine masterpiece, on the other hand, gave us a continuous scare throughout its one km long ride as if it would fall apart any moment grounding us to the uneven rail track.
This one km long tunnel with twelve wind traps and six gates was pleasantly cool on the inside with temperature around 18 degree Celsius. This ‘boulevard’ connects different chambers where a number of brightly lit salt edifices, including a fifty year old mosque and replicas of Chaghai Mountain and Minar-e-Pakistan capture the imagination of the visitors. The salt bricks allow the light to pass through the bands of red and white coloured salt. An old gun used for blasting the rocks in the early days and an embedded piece of wood claimed to be two billion year old were also among the relics. These chambers are made by removing 50% of the salt from the working seam while the remaining 50% is left in situ to support the fifty feet thick salt roof structure. These support pillars at each of the seventeen working levels of the mine are a continuity of each other with each one resting on the other and so on. This technique of extracting salt from the mines was invented by Dr. Warth and is known as ‘Room and Pillar’ method. It is still in vogue at many excavation sites in the world. Various halls and chambers are connected with bridges over the water ponds containing brine whose transparency allows the visitors to spot even the smallest of the objects at the bottom. This heavy water is used to make Soda Ash and is supplied to many industrial units across the country. This water is accumulated through rain and seepage and is up to eighty feet deep at places.
Other things of interest in the tunnel are grape shaped stalagmites on the floor and icicle shaped stalactites hanging with the ceiling, formed by the seeping floors and roofs of the chambers respectively. Our tour guide Adalat Khan, a shift supervisor in the mines and a part time guide, was a person with a good sense of humour. He said ‘we put salt in our daily lives in our stomachs along with food but at the moment we are stationed in the stomach of the salt’. About the heavy water he parted with some information to the audience telling them that it was so heavy that any one jumping into the pond would find it difficult to drown. (The same is good for the Dead Sea). He says he gives this advice out of fun to the young visitors in case they were unhappy with their elders assuring them they would not drown but can give a scare or two to them anyway. On one such occasion some youngsters mockingly retaliated by saying that they were fed up of admonition by their elders and next time they would bring them over and push them in. Following the tradition of wishing wells in various tourist sites of the world, like Trevi fountain in Rome, this resort too has named a water pond as a wishing well and a wall is called ‘tester of fate’ meant to be licked by lovers for good luck but this is being copy cats. On inquiring, the guide told us that unlike coal the salt mines were absolutely safe for extracting the mineral as there were no gases in salt mines. In the coal mines so many lives are lost every year due to gaseous discharges and mine collapses.
A unique feature of these mines is the Allergic Asthma Clinic established recently on its seventh working level. This is the third Asthma Resort in the world after Poland and Ukraine Salt Mines. Asthma patients are scientifically treated here just by keeping them in the salt environment for a specified period of time without any medicine. A number of philanthropist organizations are sponsoring this noble cause.
Visiting the mines is a very informative experience for all and sundry.The place should be made more congenial for the tourists from inland and abroad. A cue can be taken from Wielczka Salt mines in Poland which, though closed since over a decade for extracting the mineral, are open to tourists with lot of added attractions. This mine resort in Poland is 3.5 km long as compared to one km long mine at Khewra and is bedecked with beautiful sculptures from professional sculptors and contemporary artists, crystal salt chandeliers, a salt chapel, lakes and many other items made from salt rock. The visitors walk down four hundred wooden steps to a distance of three km and come up by elevators. No wonder 1.2 million visitors go there every year as against 40000 in Khewra Mines. Another unique feature of Khewra mines is that the visitors are charged for the promotion brochures of the Resort which is not the norm elsewhere in the world. If anyone from the authorities cares to listen, the lavatories should be improved aesthetically and hygienically, the restaurant should be refurbished to international standards and food quality improved and the electric trolley taking the visitors inside the tunnel should be sent to trash and replaced altogether. It does not require rocket science to fabricate a trolley which can be easily produced locally. Only a determination and will are required to improve the place.
Written by Dr. Shahid Qayyum
The author is a dental surgeon and can be reached at dsq006@gmail.com
