Churches, cemeteries, and & memorials are a significant part of the region’s complex colonial heritage and form a historical record of faith, service and sacrifice. Cities like Peshawar, Rawalpindi, Jhelum, Sialkot, Lahore, and Multan featured prominently in the history of the Raj post-1857. The tour takes you through these garrison towns and administrative capitals of British Northwest India, with selective visits to churches and cemeteries. As you travel along the Grand Trunk Road, you will stop by the memorials that commemorate battles, generals, and regiments as well as those erected in villages after the Great War in recognition of their contribution. All told, the tour offers you a wholesome experience of colonial military and cultural history, set against the architectural and emotional landscapes left behind by the British Empire in the Indian subcontinent.

The tour commences from Rawalpindi which developed as the largest garrison town in northwest India. Its sizeable Christian population attended six prominent churches, and were buried in 3 main and many smaller cemeteries. From ‘Pindi we head to Sialkot on the Grand Trunk Road stopping to view two Great War Memorials erected in villages and the memorial at Chillianwala. At Sialkot the next morning we will visit the Cathedral of the Holy Trinity and then head for Lahore on the motorway. At one time Lahore was the British capital of the Greater Punjab as well as the HQs of the Railways and by the end of the Raj it had at least 10 established churches, which were spread across the civil lines, cantonment, and inner-city areas. After a tour of two days of selective churches and cemeteries we will catch an express train to Multan to visit the cathedral, a very large cemetery and the memorial of Vans Agnew Monument, whose assassination precipitated the 2nd Anglo-Sikh War. Back to Lahore by train for the night and then travel up the Motorway to Rawalpindi branching off en route to visit the village sites of six WW1 Memorials. The last three days of the tour are probably the most intersting. The first day is largely memorials – Gen Nicolson’s at Margalla, the 40th Pathans on the bank of the River Indus, the Relief of Chitral Memorial near Nowshera and the Guides Memorial at Mardan.  The last stop is the war cemetery of 1895 on the Malakand Pass. As the forward base for Frontier Campaigns, Peshawar had a sizable concentration of British troops and families with a corresponding number of Churches and memorials and its cemeteries are a record of military operations on the Frontier. We then head into cooler reaches of Abbottabad to see the Piffer’s Memorial and then swing through the hill stations of Nathia Gali and Murree where troops and families migrated to in the hot weather. Unfortunately, the cemeteries have not been maintained but the churches and chapels have been cared for.