Pakistan In Pictures

KARACHI: Country’s largest Catholic church opens (November 16, 2011  ) in Karachi’s Akhtar Colony. Saint Peter’s Church has a capaci­ty for 5,000 and will cater to 3,800 famili­es. By Samia Saleem. The Express Tribune

Hindu devotees climb towards the crater of a mud volcano to perform a ritual offering of coconuts during a pilgrimage to the Shri Hinglaj Mata Temple in Pakistan's Balochistan province, on April 24, 2011. Thousands from Pakistan and India take part in the annual four-day pilgrimage to the temple, which is a revered site for Hindus. (Reuters/Akhtar Soomro)

KARACHI: Spring blooms at the Mohatta Palace gives it a colorful look.

In 1927, Shiv Rattan Mohatta, a successfull Marwari entrepreneur, commissioned a palatial house in the affluent seaside neighbourhood of Clifton. Mohatta had made his fortune as a ship chandler and trader. The architect commissioned for his palace, Agha Ahmed Hussain, was one of the first Muslim architects of India and had come from Jaipur to take up an assignment as chief surveyor for the Karachi Muncipality. Agha Hussain Ahmed designed a number of buildings in Karachi but Mohatta Palace was to prove the coup de maitre of his professional career. Working in a Mughal revival style with a combination of locally available yellow Gizri and pink stone from Jodhpur, he sought to recreate the Anglo Moghal palaces of the Rajput princes.

  A Sikh devotee from India prays during the 542nd birth anniversary of Guru Nanak Dev at Nankana Sahib, some 75 kms west of Lahore, on November 10, 2011. Sikh pilgrims from different parts of the world attended the religious rituals at the shrine at Nankana Sahib, where the founder of the Sikh faith was born in 1469. PHOTO: AFP

A child rests on a pile of oranges at a fruit market in Peshawar, on March 10, 2011. (Reuters/Fayaz Aziz)