Tourist Group and Visit of Northern Areas of Pakistan (Part 1)

After a long break I am back on read.cash, community of amazing people, great ideas and wonderful experiences. Humans being social Animals are part of different communities and circles depending upon their areas of interest. We meet hundreds of people in school, college, university, work place and neighborhood but we remain in contact to very few of them depending upon our mutual interests.

I am member of similar sort of circle where we friends from school, college, University and neighborhood arrange an annual tour to explore the beauty of Nature in our Beautiful Country Pakistan. We have named this group "Tourist Panel". We have a variety of members from different education background and ethnic culture present in the group and enjoy a lot during our tours.
It is worth mention here that we not any Tour operator but we as a group divide the duties of all the tour arrangements including vehicle management, Residence management, Food and our Master plan of Tour. This approach not only makes every member an active part of the group but also cuts down cost of tour.

Before Sharing detail of 2021 Tour, I would like to share shortly the activities of Tourist Panel from previous couple of years.

In 2017 Tourist Panel arranged tour to the Northern Areas of Pakistan in the Province of GB (Gilgit Baltistan). In this tour we visited a number of Places I will share prominent one here only. Shugran, Siri-Paye, Naran, Lake Safi ul Mallok, Baboo Sar, Chillas, Astor, Hunza, Passu, Khunjrab (Pakistan - China Border). We covered all the above mentioned places along the famous Silk route i.e. ancient trade route between south asia and China. We enjoyed Live BBQ, rafting in the river and lot more stuff in a week trip. It was one of very wonderful experience of my life.

In the following year we arranged a trip to Kashmir Valley and during that tour we almost half of our time travelled along the LoC( Line of Control) Border between Azad Kashmir and Indian Occupied Kashmir. Prominent places of this tour were, Muzaffarabad(Capital of Kashmir), Keran, Dawarian, Keil, Arang Keil, Tau-bat, Ratti-Gali Lake. Our tour included a night as paying guest, a camping night with BBQ along the Neelam River bank and a night stay a lavish hotel in the Capital of Kashmir.

Where COVID halted the activities around the globe, Tourist Panel was no different from the rest of the World, Consequently we could not make out anywhere due to COVID restrictions. In 2021 we planned to visit and explored a newly explored Kumrat valley in the famous HINDU KASH mountain range near Swat Valley.

This year as we were planning after a break and due to strict schedule of most of the members only 3 days tour could be arranged. We hired a vehicle for our highway trip from Islamabad to Thal in the Uper Dir district and from there all the commute in the Valley was supposed to be either on the Jeeps or the Feet.

As per plan we had to leave from Islamabad on the midnight of Thursday and Friday, So all the tour participants from different parts of the country managed to reach Islamabad by Thursday Evening. As our most of the tour included step hiking on the mountains and so trekking gear along necessary food and medicines were arranged before we set of from Islamabad.

(Continued . . . )