| Punjab, its name meaning 'Land of Five Rivers', is the richest, most fertile and most heavily populated province of Pakistan. (Originally the five rivers referred to the Jhelum, Chenab, Ravi, Sutlej and Beas - but the last is now in Indian Punjab only, so the Indus is now included as Pakistan's fifth river). In Punjab live over 70 million people - more than half the population of the entire country. Geographically, it is a land of contrasts, from the alluvial plain of the Indus River and its tributaries to the sand-dunes of the Cholistan Desert, from the verdant beauty of the pine-covered foothills of the Himalaya to the strangely convoluted lunar landscape of the Potohar Plateau and the Salt Range. |
