A right royal pain in the butt: the grave of Princess Bamba in Lahore.

One of the first things I did as soon as I arrived in Lahore, after being treated to a simple but delicious lunch of chick pea curry accompanied by amazing crispy naan at the legendary establishment, Tooba, was to visit the "Gora" (white) graveyard where Europeans were buried. I had been keen to visit the resting place of Princess Bamba, daughter of Duleep Singh, the last Maharaja of Punjab and granddaughter of Ranjit Singh, founder of the dynasty. Bamba, born in England, chafed at the injustices she and her sister Sophia, who became a prominent Suffragette of her day, decided to come back and settle in her ancestral homeland and the city that was the capital of her grandfather's fabled empire. Really till her death in 1957 she remained a trenchant critic of the Raj and right royal pain in the butt. For that alone she gets my respect.

I cleaned up and tended the grave, rooting out weeds. My friend and host Wajid asked some of the gardeners who were watering the area if they could clean up Bamba's grave. I made a small payment to him and asked if he could please do a good job of washing it.