The Empress' Market

CCXVII

Amelia and Fred arrived in Karachi, British India, on the night of June 15^th to unexpected excitement. Their thirty-hour “disappearance” had made headlines, putting the Worldflight back on page one. It was almost incidental that Fred and she were the first people to fly from the Horn of Africa through to Karachi. 

Fred Noonan, Amelia, and Viscount Sibour in front of the Electra in Karachi

After Amelia had made a call to George and assured him of her well-being he encouraged her to make the most of her stay in Karachi. She immediately bathed, called for room service in her hotel, and slept for several restorative hours. Her British hosts saw that she wanted for nothing.

After flying 1,900 miles over some of the most inhospitable terrain on earth, Earhart told Noonan that they would be taking a very welcome day off. It would be their first real day off since Caripito, Venezuela --- not so long ago, but now very far away.

A British soldier guarding the Electra in Karachi as Fred and Amelia smile for the camera. Note the soldier’s pith helmet

They stayed in the public eye. Amelia took a very public camel ride on the beach at Karachi. She wrote:

On my first morning in India I had a small adventure riding a camel. I saw one with particularly gay trappings . . . obviously for hire. His master's costume was in keeping . . . The owner explained that his camel was a naughty one. I wanted to tell him I should be naughty, too, if I had two leather plugs in my nose to which guiding reins were attached, but I could not get that idea across. Apparently [horse] bits are never used.

Whatever his disposition, my hired steed knelt down and I climbed into the saddle swung between his two humps [a Bactrian camel]. It was a startling take-off as we rose. A camel unhinges himself in most extraordinary fashion. As his hind legs unfold you are threatened with a nose-dive forward. Then with a lurch that can unhorse (I mean uncamel) the unwary, the animal's center section, so to speak, hoists into the air. It is reminiscent of the first symptoms of a flat spin. Camels should have shock absorbers.

'Better wear your parachute,' Fred shouted."

Refueling at Karachi

As far as went the parachutes, Amelia decided that they were no longer needed. She packed them away, along with her notes and charts of Africa, and shipped them home. It was an odd decision; the Electra still had two-thirds of the world to fly.

Bundar Road in Karachi, India 1937 (today called Mohammed Ali Jinnah Road in Karachi, Pakistan). India and Pakistan underwent a violent partition in 1947 when the Muslim areas of the British Raj demanded independence from Hindu India; ironically, today, more Muslims live in India than in Pakistan

Most of the afternoon of the 16^th was taken up with a full forty hour maintenance routine (yet another one!) on the Electra. The plane needed it after the battering it had taken in the air over Arabia. She was particularly concerned about a fuel regulator gauge whose indicator kept sticking.

She was jaunty while she was being interviewed by the Press: “Why are you undertaking this dangerous journey?” one reporter asked.

“Strictly for the fun of it,” she explained.

The Empress Market in Karachi, probably in the late 1800s. Much of the major construction in Karachi was undertaken by the British Raj, which also made the city into a rail, air, and sea hub

Diverse and cosmopolitan, Karachi was a surprise in many ways. In 1937, this city of then 300,000 was home to Muslims of every sect, to an almost equal number of Hindus, to Roman Catholics, to Protestants, and to Jews, all of whom brought their beliefs, customs, and subcultures to the city. As the commercial center for the Empire and an administrative center for British India, English was widely spoken. Amelia, with her love of poetry, was pleased to discover that Karachi was also a major center of Sufism.

Amelia’s relief at being close to civilization was very evident when she wrote,

Karachi airdrome is, I think, the largest that I know. It is the main intermediate point on all the traffic from Europe to India and the east. Imperial Airways flies frequent schedules all the way to Australia, and K.L.M. to the Dutch East Indies . . . In military aviation it is, I suppose, the most important headquarters in India, strategically located in relation to the mountain country of the Northwest Frontier, with its troublesome tribes.

Pushtun tribesmen of the North-West Frontier Province battled Great Britain for years over control of the hinterland. These people, who live by warring, today make up a fair percentage of the population of Afghanistan and northern Pakistan (the name “Pakistan” is an anagram meaning “Punjabi, Afghani, Kashmiri, Sindhi, and Baluchi” the main tribes of the country. By no coincidence, the name means “Land of The Pure” in Urdu

She kept busy readying the plane for another long hop, this time to Calcutta, some 1,300 miles distant. On the work she reflected:

In our hurried scheme of things, with the problems of our own special transport uppermost, most of our time ‘ashore’ was spent in and around hangars. More important far than sightseeing was seeing to it that our faithful sky steed was well groomed and fed, its minute mechanical wants cared for. So the geography of our journey likely will remain most clearly memorized in terms of landing-field environments, of odors of baking metal, gasoline and perspiring ground crews; of the roar of warming motors and the clatter of metal-working tools.

The Electra in the hangar at Karachi. Amelia has tucked herself into the open nose compartment

Still, her natural curiosity dominated her thinking. Amelia couldn’t help but garner all the information about the exotic land she had reached. Her British hosts were charmed to inform her. She wrote:

Such impressions [of the airfield and hangars] competed, perforce, with the lovely sights of the new worlds we glimpsed; the delectable perfumes of flowers, spices and fragrant country side the sounds and songs and music of diverse peoples. . . . Of all those things, external to the task at hand, we clutched what we could . . .

Sumbul flowers

She recorded these thoughts about the region itself:

The city’s [Karachi’s] population is close to 300,000, its seaport serving a huge hinterland which embraces the whole of Sind, Baluchistan, Afghanistan, the Punjab, and beyond. Landward from Karachi there is desert. To the north is the thirsty hilly landscape of Kohistan, the limestone spurs of the Kirthir range, breaking down southwards into sandy wastes. Southerly is a monotonous expanse riddled by creeks and mangrove swamps reaching to the coast, and further south the great Indus River, born one thousand miles north in Afghanistan, flows into the Arabian Sea. 

Mountain Leopards, once numerous, are now extremely endangered

After just a few hours away from the Electra, and perhaps too soon, Amelia made the decision to press on. She and Fred would next touch down in Calcutta on the other side of the Indian Subcontinent.

Sindhi-style Biryani