بسم اللہ الرحمٰن الرحیم
By the grace of Allah, completed a 4 day family trip to Swat from 1st June to 4th June 2016. As we were a bit early from season, so there were quite less tourist in the whole area.
Details of this trip are as following:
Total Passengers: 04 (me and wife plus 2 children (10 & 8 year old)
Mode of Transport: Nissan AD uptill Kalam. Hired a jeep for trip to Mahodand
Day 1 (1st June 2016): Started from Pindi at around 8am. Reached Mingora by 1:30pm. visited Fizaghat and then went ahead to Matta for night stay. It was extremely hot uptill this point.
Day 2 (2nd June 2016): Visited Miandam before noon. then went ahead to kalam. Road uptil Bahrain is excellent. But road ahead of Bahrain is one of the most pathetic road. From Bahrain to Kalam, it is just 34 km but it took me 2hr 45min. To add to it, roads in town of kalam are also in same condition. Kalam of year 2000 was much better than this. As per locals, kalam town and its roads were devastated in flood of 2010.
Day 3 (3rd June 2016): Full day excursion to Mahodand and back. It was the most enjoyful day of the trip. There were still 4,5 glaciers on trek to Mahodand but 4x4 vehicles were managing to cross them. Still very less tourist in Mahodand (only few hundred).
Day 4 (4th Jun 2016): Kalam to Khwazkhela. From Khwazkhela to Besham via Shangla Pass. Back to pindi at 1 am in the night. It proved to be a very long and tiring day (almost 14 hours drive including rests), but Shangla pass route is very very beautiful. The road is also in very good condition except very few point affected by flood erosion.
Expenditures
Fuel: almost 6k
Jeep for Mahodand: 4.5k
Food: almost 4k
accomodation: almost mufta (around 2k only)
Camera used: Nikon D5200 with 18-55 lens
Road near Madyan
Going to Mahodand Lake
Mahodand
Shangla Pass
