Pakistan – Geological Museum

Hello from Pakistan!

My brother Hasan and I still have so many places we want to see, and this time we were surprised by how beautiful Pakistan is. Ancient cities, beautiful trees, buildings and gardens, and lots of very friendly people made this trip interesting and fun. Before 1947, Pakistan was part of British India.

I did not expect to visit a geological museum in Pakistan, and I was surprised by how many kinds of museums the country has. There are two main geological museums. Geology is the study of the earth and its rocks, and Pakistan is an important country for geology. The biggest museum of earth sciences is in Quetta, in the north-west. It has all kinds of cool things, including fossils, shiny gemstones and very old rocks. My favorites were the meteorites. Quetta was hit by a huge earthquake in 1935, and the museum has many photos and records from when the city was almost destroyed, plus rocks found after the earthquake. The city has been completely rebuilt since then.

Karachi is farther south, on the Arabian Sea. Its geological museum is only a few years old. The scientist who built the collection spent 32 years finding all of its stones, and some are very valuable. He is one of the people who showed that Pakistan's land holds many minerals that could be sold to support the country. Today Pakistan exports a lot of soapstone to Europe, along with many other minerals.

I wanted to see the black tantalum ore. Nobody is allowed to touch it, because some of this ore is radioactive.

Talk to you again soon,

Hussain

Travel

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