As the sun sets across the city, on every rooftop we can see families and friends, laughing, shouting, watching as kites zig zag, circle, and soar through the city's skies. "It's really difficult!" 25-year-old Abu Bakar Ahmad tells me. "All our generations here are very excited; the elders know how to fly a kite, but we Gen-Zers don't know."
In a bid to try to make the festival safer, it's now been limited to only three days. Motorcyclists have been given metal rods, sticking up between their handlebars, to stop any threads they drive into from becoming tied around their necks. To prevent anyone flying before the festival officially began, any kites sold before February 1 were seized. Faisal Kamran, Deputy Inspector General of Lahore Police, shows us some of more than 100,000 kites and 2,100 rolls of string he says his team seized. |