Our initial idea was to enjoy live snowfall but unfortunately not all of us can take leaves during weekdays so we went on weekend for a change. As there was no prediction of snow on weekend; we decided to give one day to Murree & Ayubia and another one to Islamabad.
Route:
Lahore → Murree → Ayubia → Murree → Islamabad → Lahore
Dates :
24th & 25th January 2015
Places Visited:
- Mall road Murree (in morning & at night)
- Ayubia (chairlift mainly)
- Lake View Park (or Rawal Lake Park)
- Faisal Masjid
- Saidpur Village
So we left from Lahore around 00 : 30 AM using Faisal Movers and reached Murree 06 : 30 AM ( Lahore to Murree fare 900 Rs ). It was cold and the sun was about to rise … a treat to eyes … We decided to walk to GPO via shortcut to Mall road to find a good hotel. We checked Faran Hotel, Move n Pick & The Taj Mahal hotel all of them were fully booked. We decided to have breakfast first as we were feeling bit hurry after traveling all night.
After having breakfast from some random restaurant near GPO we re-started our search but unfortunately there were no good hotels left and we have make some compromises as we don't have enough time to spend in Murree. After lot of struggle; we found a room in a hotel and the owner agreed to give us warm water & heater on demand (3500 RS).
It was 10 AM and we had no time to waste so we hired ( 3000 RS) a driver (Named “Shabbir” a nice man) with pejaro who agreed to take us to Ayubia & drop us back to GPO. We stopped on our way to ayubia on few places Khaira Gali, Sucide Point etc and reached ayubia. The whole journey was very scenic as the whole areas was covered with almost fresh snow. Ayubia was already very crowed and before leaving for chairlift we ordered their famous “Tandoori Choocha” along with chicken balti so that we don't have to wait on return.
We took the tickets and sat on the chairlift and to our surprise we have to face many snow balls on way to top. We all got to see beautiful landscape of ayubia the whole valley covered with snow and it was a wonderful feeling going up on the top. On reaching the top there were lot of people already present having fun with snow. The views from the top are really great and more than a foot of fresh soft snow was there. We spend was wonderful time there; took some pictures and returned to restaurant. Even we ordered long ago still we have to wait more than one hour to get half cooked dishes. We asked them to cook again and after half an hour they were little better. The “Tandoori Choocha” was good but the other Balti dish was so so. After having much awaited lunch we left for murree again as most of us were very tired as we did not get to sleep from long time now. The driver was expert enough to find a way out in snow and before reaching Murree the driver called someone to check traffic condition and used some 4x4 route to get into Murree near kashmir point. Even he saved lot of time the whole kashmir point was very crowded. We did not stopped there but still stuck again in traffic near GPO. So we left the vehicle and walked to our room.
We rested for a while we our room and then decided to visited mall road again. And to no surprise it was full of people. After exploring some shops we finally decided to have dinner in fri-chicks. After having dinner we returned back to our room at 10 PM and arranged a heater so that we can sleep properly.
Next day we woke-up early and did our breakfast and left for Lake View Park on a Suzuki Bolan (rent 3300 RS for rest of our day). The Park is a good picnic spot for people in Islamabad. We took some pictures and left for Faisal Masjid. Did some photography there and it was already 1 PM. Our original plan was to visit Monal but we had our booking at Faisal Mover at 4 PM . So we decided to visit Saidpur village instead. As I have heard little bit about “Des Perdes” we decided to have lunch there. There ambience was really nice in foot hills. There were lot of foreigners there and also in the neighboring restaurants having lunch with their families. The food was really good and we enjoyed the wonderful lunch in a pleasant environment and soothing live music.
BTW the water stream which passes by the hotel was turned into “ganda nala” ruining the beauty of the whole area. After that the driver left us to Faizabad terminal and we reached Lahore around 9 PM. (Pindi to Lahore fare 740 RS).