AoA, With the grace of Almighty Allah and guidence of kind members here and after a long planning of almost about 1 month i ll be leaving for Naran tonight at around 11 pm from lahore IA i formaly thank all the members who helped me plan this visit and answered my sometimes irritating questions..thank u so much guys i will keep u guys posted and please pray for a safe journey ahead Allah hafiz
Have a safe journey janab!
best of luck bro, I came back from trip yesterday, although I couldn't goto Saifulmalook and sri/paye due to snow on roads but still it was a refreshing trip.
Fi amaan allah!
Aoa, hope this finds you all in the bestest of health...with the grace of God i completed my naran tour from 14 may to 17th may with utmost ease and great thrill and adventure heres the time line
May 14 thursdayDeparture from lahore at around 11pmPicked up a friend from faisal town and after fuelling from areeb CNG we were on our way to Burhan interchange as compared to my last trip the motorway at most places was getting repaired and it took us almost 4 hours to reach burhan interchange with a 15 min stop at bhera station
We reached abbotabad at around 5pm and just before entering abbotabad we had some delicious breakfast at Abdul rasheed hotel when sun was just breaking through the lush green mountains
May 15, Friday- stop at mansera at a friends place
We reached mansera at around 630am and stopped at township society mansera at an old friends place who entertained us with some delicious parathas and qaurma though we were full but ate again and then slept for around two hours at his place and refreshed our soul and body with green tea and started our journey towards balakot at around 9 30am the roads were still deserted and the views from mansera really made a beautiful impression here are some clicks
Stop at Balakot 11am refuelling We reachedBalakot at around at 11am and stopped at a refuelling station and tyres checked as well , the weather was turning a bit cloudy and pleasent and the heat index had significantly gone down ...we started our journey again and through lush green mountains and curvy roads, passing through small springs and had a brief stopover at somewhere near kewai and had some click freezingly cold kunhar river and made our way through kaghan and behold we had infront the first glacier here are some clicks
15th May, Friday reached naran at around 1 30pm
After a beautiful journey through kewai, kaghan we reached ptdc, naran and were tired to hell but lush views of the naran refreshed our soul and body in no time and after checkin we went to naran bazar and ate to our fill ..chicken jalferzi and mutton karaye never tasted that better..we bought gloves a carry bag and some mufflers and came back to our cottage...though ptdc naran presents a beautiful and secluded enviornment but as it is off season so it was a bit deserted and it was almost 15 mins walk to our cottage from reception...we slept for 4 hours straight as our cottage was quite far from entrance and had absolutely no sound at all except the rushing sound of River kunhar which was passing through near our cottage here are some clicks
Friday may 15th, dinner at Moon restaurant,naran bazarWe woke up at around 8 30pm and were feeling quite refreshed, we decided to visit Naran bazar..to our surprise it was quite crowded and despite our expectations that it would be deserted but it was n t as there were many college/ private tour parties in naran and almost every hotel/ restaurant was full to capacity...we roamed in the bazar for a while ...the weather was quite pleasent when we went to sleep but now the mercury had dropped to quite low and it was around 6 degrees celcius...we had our jackets on and had to buy warm peshawari caps to keep our heads warm as the breeze was too chilly to handle...after roaming around for a while we had dinner at moon restaurant which was presented like any desi hotel in lahore and was packed to capacity with college/ university students we ordered balochi sajji and daal mash..here are some clicks
Good going. Great narration and pics. Keep rolling.
thanks bro...i ll try my best to finish it up in one go !!
Saturday 16th May Early Rise and Warm Water debacle a real cold night (much beyond our expectations) when we literally had to cover our heads with blanket in order to escape the chill if it was just cold it would have been fine but it turned a lil scary at around midnight when lights went out at around 12am and they did n t turn on the standby generators...now here we were two guys in a 400 canals ptdc motel on a chill naran night in a cottage with no lights and only darkness and solitude around us in the vicinity of around atleast 200 meters (approximately as no other cottage near ours was rented) my friend slept early but cold night and scary imaginations kept me awake for quite a while but finally i fell asleep around 2 ...anyways won t bore u guys with my scary encounters and would come straight to the business in the next post when the real journey starts ...OUR QUEST TO REACH FROZEN LAKE SAIFUL MALOOK
As mentioned earlier, when we woke at around 8 in the morning the water in the washrooms was all muddy and cold as ice,..we called our only saviour Zahoor (service man/ helper) to fix it but he could n t ...now it was a completely new experience for both of us as we were used to hotels in murre nathiya gali where everything was pretty much like home but here there was a completely different scanario..so somehow we washed our face and brushed with the mineral water that we had bought from lahore and somehow got ready for the breakfast which pleasently turned out to be pretty good .... As we left on foot to jheel Road we soon found a nice jeep driver who offered us to take to the lake as closer as possible as he was saying that a glacier has been cut open and the he can take us upto 7km near to lake and there would only be 3 km hike from there..we discussed the fare and agreed ( lator it turned out to be a big mistake as we did n t negotiate the back ride as well we only hired him for one side)...as our jouney started through snowy water and narrrow track with boggling jerks which literally shook us to the bone...it was still pretty cold at that time and we reached that part in around 20 mins...we said him good bye and changed our shoes and rented those big cowboy types ..and rented a stick as well for both of us which lator proved to be a worthy decicion..
Dangerous Hiking and scary horse Ride : hiking turned out to be seriously scary for a guy like me who never even hiked in margalla hills...passing through those narrow cuts and slippery sharp turns with heaps of pointed stones scattered in thousands but the views around us kept going but soon we realised that we need to hire a porter so we did that believe u me it turned out to be more scary as those horses sharply changed directions and walked on 3 feet trails thats why coud n t take pictures of that part but made quite a few vidoes but don t exactly know how to post them here so if any brother can guide me that would be really nice :)...somehow that ended and here it was our first view the great Jheel Saiful malook aLLL FROZEN AND MAGESTIC..HERE ARE SOME CLICKS
The Best day of my Life ...At Lake saiful malook ..(aprt from the day of my Nikaah ) so where do i start ...well we had tones of fun..we slided at frozen slops...we had the traditional story teller .....we made the snowman (or something like him )..we inhaled the cold fresh lake air....we ran across the wild snowy mountains....we did everything we had imagined and trust me the outcome was far more exciting and thrilling than we expect in our wildest imaginations...we stayed there till 3pm and stored the beauty of the lake in our minds to cherish in years to come here are some unforgetable memories :
The idea to hike down The lake to reach Naran which turned out to be a nightmare we thought we would easily find the jeep to go back to our hotel but alas it was n t as it was a weekend so all the jeeps were already prebooked by the tourists who were at the lake and they were demanding something like 2000 to get us back for just 7kms down the lake...we thought it was too much and decided to hike down ourselves (all those shows i had watched of MAn vs wild by bear grylls were running through my mind and i thought we can easily do this but but )..as we started the hike down it turned out to be far more dangerous and tiring as we fell numerous times while sliding through ice and mud ( i made a special 3 part video of that fiasco but again i don t know how to post it )...and soon we realised that we had acsended at the wrong peak and now there was just steep downfall so we had to go atleast 1km all the way up to the main road and the weather had changed its color and thankfully we had brought our mufflurs and that peshawari caps with us ...we kept on walking atleast 1 hour and soon we realised that we can t do this anymore..our shoes had become all wet and muddy along with our socks and our thighs had become numb with continous slides on ice..we even has small unpleasent argument along the way but thanks to Almight Allah just when we had given up all hope a jeep driver decided to take us down for 1500 and we reached our hotel at around 8 in the evening it was dark with no water in our cottage washrom..we were bruised tired with flowing noses...somwhow we changed and went to ptdc restaurant ate and slept like we never had before
very engaging narrative. the trouble you guys go through to see snow! Thanks for sharing...
MAY 17th ...Back to Lahore our returing day started off very pleasently as there was now hot water as well and clean as well ...we took showers ate our breakfast and left Naran at around 9am ...and reached LAhore at around 11 30 ...but it was undoubtedly the best 3 days of my life full of adventure thrill and excitement here is the farewell picture of me with service guy Zahoor of PTDC and one thing i forgot to mention we even got sun burned as well lol ...Allah Hafiz guys
thanks brother....it was worth all the trouble