Assalaamaulaikum folks
Been a member of the site for almost 9 years and a lurker all this while. Although this is my first post, but I've already greatly benefited from some of the threads (especially the ones in the road trips section).
I'll be visiting Pakistan for a couple of weeks either side of Eid al-Adha (Bakra Eid!) and plan to take my wife and 2 kids (6 and 2 years old) for a short 3/4 days trip to Naran/Shogran. I've had my fare share of excursions and road trips in the middle east region (Syria, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Oman and of course Qatar) with some 40 odd thousand Km logged in these trips alone, but I have never really driven out of the city in Pakistan.
We were planning to get a tour operator to arrange a trip for us from and back to Islamabad. However, having read about some of these amazing trips (must mention spitfire's trip in his camper LC, as well as aesiege's), the novice explorer inside me is itching to get his own hands behind the wheel for the trip (as I'd be renting a car in ISB for a couple of days anyway). At the same time, I'm well aware of the fact that the circumstances are vastly different from any of my previous trips including roads, cars, traffic, etc.
Hence, this little (too long) first post on PW. I'd appreciate if you nice folks could answer / advise me on the following queries:
- Recommended car rentals in ISB: the multi-national operators (AVIS, Hertz, Europcar etc) or the local rental agencies (appreciate if you could name a few for me).
- Do they allow / approve driving the car out of city (e.g. to Naran)? Pretty much all other queries depend on the answer to this one.
- What sort of insurance cover is included (or can be added, e.g. CDW Collision Damage Waiver)?
- Due to the vast choice and affordable cost of buying and running a big engined car here, our cars for our trips have mostly been 3-4 litre V6s with 250+ HP (and I really don't mean to brag about it - my 5 year old GMC Acadia (Google it) with about 95000 Km which is nothing more than a glorified minivan would fetch little over PKR 12 lakh if sold now, which I believe is what a new Cultus would cost back home). I understand that the (affordable) choice of cars in Pakistan is limited from 1L to 1.8L (from Cultus/Swift, to Corolla/Civic). I gather people have done trips even in Mehran (people here would be blown away if you told someone about it - 1500 Km roundtrip on an 800cc compact!), so I would assume driving a 1.8L Civic should pose no real challenges. Please comment.
- Any other info that could be relevant.
Thank you all for a great forum.