Pakistan prime minister Raja Pervez Ashraf visited Ajmer Sharif with family on Saturday after a quiet lunch with external affairs minister Salman Khurshid in Jaipur, where talk between the two stayed strictly unofficial. Just a day after the Sufi shrine’s spiritual head decided to boycott the visit to protest the recent killing of Indian soldiers on the LoC, Ashraf was given a warm welcome by the other ‘khadims (caretakers)’.

“I had the good fortune of kissing the holy shrine. I wish peace for the world, progress for Pakistan and the well-being of my family,” he wrote in the visitor’s book.

“It was a private visit… This was not the occasion... to discuss such issues,” Khurshid said when asked if bilateral issues such as terrorism came up at lunch.