RAWALPINDI: The Gandharan city of Taxila, with its 25 square miles of archeological sites, is widely known as one of Pakistan’s top tourist destinations. 
The vestiges of Buddhist monasteries, Greek settlements and spectacular pieces of Gandhara statuary that blend Buddhist imagery with Hellenistic styles have been found by archeologists working in the area since the mid-nineteenth century when the ruins were first discovered in Pakistan.
But the area is also home to another distinctly Pakistani treasure: the disco leopard. 
Not far from the ruins of Taxila off the historic Grand Trunk Road, pottery decorated with tiny mirrors, giving it the look of gaudy 70s disco balls, is sold in open air shops. Glass-encased leopards that have come to be called "disco leopards" are the top selling item here, shopkeepers said, especially among expats and diplomats. 
Indeed, it was “the tradition of the gora (foreigner),” development specialist Chris Minch from Ireland said, to buy the leopards while in Pakistan and take them back to their home countries or to new stations where life and work took them.
“It was in every home of every foreigner living in Islamabad and it felt like this quintessential Pakistani item to buy,” Minch told Arab News in a telephone interview. “Everyone I know, literally everyone, has this leopard.”
Minch, who lived in Pakistan between 2017 and 2019, owns two of the pieces. 
The disco leopard is believed to have debuted in Taxila about 20 years ago when an artisan, Malik Ashfaq, turned a lifelong hobby into a profession. 
“I always enjoyed doing this and one day decided to buy locally made sculptures to decorate them for business purposes,” he told Arab News at his shop in Taxila as he pasted tiny mirrors onto a three-foot-tall leopard. “The artistic creation became popular with foreigners who drove down this road, making other shopkeepers in the market order them as well.”
“Now these leopards are everywhere in the world – from the United Arab Emirates to the United States – and it gives me great pride,” he added, saying it could take him up to three days to work on a large sized leopard, which required a ten-foot-long piece of mirror.  
Asked why the leopards were so popular among foreigners, Ashfaq beamed and said: “Because this is Taxila and this is what we make with our own hands. They cannot get it anywhere else in the world and they understand the value of that.”
Aryan Malik, who has been selling decoration items in Taxila for three years, said it was “impossible” to put a number on how many disco leopards he had sold at his shop.
“Majority of our orders come from foreigners,” he said. “Even when tourism slowed down after the [coronavirus] pandemic, we continued to receive these requests. We even shipped the leopards to our customers, many of whom live abroad.”
Much like Ashfaq, Malik agreed that the magic of the disco leopards was that they were exclusively produced in Taxila.
But Ella Sakes, a World Health Organization official who lived in Pakistan from 2016 to 2018, told Arab News she bought the product because it reminded her of the "softer side" of Pakistan.
“I bought it because it’s beautiful but also the work we [expats] were doing out there [in Pakistan] can be so sad,” she said. “This happy little leopard reminds me a lot of the joy and silliness that is in Pakistan that people do not talk about enough.”
Sakes now lives in Amman, Jordan, where her disco leopard is displayed on the mantle in the living room:
“It really does take me back to some of the best times I have had on a country assignment.”
“They’re fabulous, they also remind me of all my friends in Pakistan,” John Montgomery, a development special, said in a video message emailed to Arab News. 
“Some of my favourite days are from spending time in Taxila,” said Jocelyn Murphy, a development specialist, who lived in Pakistan for three years.
“Every time I look at him [disco leopard], I do see and remember all of the amazing experiences I had in Pakistan,” said consultant Thomas Chapman as he held up his leopard, lovingly named Howard. 
The trend has also caught on among locals. 
Music director Aisha Linea purchased disco leopards for a recent video shoot and decided to keep one at her home.
“The sun rises and the light hits it every day and it’s a disco morning, every morning,” she said, laughing. “These leopards are criminally underrated.”
Others said they had bought the leopards to support the local industry. 
“It is an amazing and unique part of our local sculpture scene, and we should be supporting it,” said consultant Ghulam Hussain Soomro, who works in Islamabad. “I also like how in mythology cats are depicted as guardians, and so I also wanted the disco leopards keeping me safe.”