In Search of My Childhood Fantasy - Wooden Top

I am very fond of traveling and as my hobby is birding so I travel a lot around Pakistan. Because of the covid19 situation, I have not traveled for the last 7 months. I hardly go out and explore any new place. Today after seven months' absence I planned to continue my activities and visited different places and met some new friends. I always like to explore some new topics for my upcoming posts. As I came to know that there are some dying arts in Pakistan and only a few people are left who are still attached to these arts. One of these dying arts is lattoo making. A handmade spinning top, lattoo a wooden toy. Thanks to China they have introduced many types of tops made with a machine. So our children are not familiar with these wooden handmade Lattoos.

I came to know that in old Rawalpindi there is a Lattoo Mahala (town). Where in past only Lattoo making shops existed and everywhere Lattoo spinning tournaments had been organized but now only one shop is left. As this old city is a very congested place and has small streets so I got some help from my friend. I parked my car outside and traveled on a motorcycle with my friend to reach that shop. I was very happy to see these wooden tops. Lattoo is my childhood fantasy. We always had these tops in our pockets and we were always ready to play some matches with our friends. At that time we used to spend hours searching for good tops from different shops.

The owner of the shop showed some different shapes of lattoos. Some were heavy and some were light. Lattoo was available in different sizes. One lattoo with a long slope is Karachi style Latto which was new for me. We spun some Lattoos and I bought two tops one big Latto for me and another small one for Shahan, my 7 years old son. I am very happy to get this Latto and today I spent much of my time spinning Lattoo and also teaching Shahan how do this old-style handmade wooden top works? I think modernism and adopting technology is a good thing but we must secure our old art and must value the craftsman who is trying to keep alive this old tradition.

Thank you for visiting my blog. If you like posts about nature, animals, birds, food, traveling, photography, wildlife, and discovering the beauties of the world, feel free to follow me as these are the topics I mostly write about. Have a wonderful day! :)

ZAGHAM TRAVEL @lifeskills-tv