The picturesque Manshera valley, whose historical significance dates back to Ashoka and Alexander the Great, has been relegated by a single stroke of nature’s fury to the list of heritage sites that perished, when the massive temblor struck this region.Balakot, where Ashoka is believed to have interned as governor in 270 BC, was the crown of Pakistan’s Manshera valley, but is now reduced to a ghastly graveyard with bodies buried in tombs of twisted steel and concrete. Historians also say that Alexander provided balakot with a Kashmir link by handing it over to Abisaras, the Raja of Poonch, after conquering it. Now, a pall of gloom hangs over the town, whose famed terraced slopes have been turned into wastes of white sand, the debris of the landslides that followed the quake. —PTI
