My dear Pakwheelers, Assalaam O Alaikum! It has been some time since I started a new thread and I now have a good reason to do so. I recently returned from a 7-day road trip with my family. So, here goes…
First, a little background. The lockdown and WFH has taken a toll on everyone and my family is no exception. We were contemplating a vacation since July 2020 but obviously, we couldn’t go to places that were under lockdown…too much of a risk and hassle. The lockdown was lifted on 5 August 2020, on travel and hotels in Punjab and KP. A welcome step. The unanimous decision by the family was to spend time at our favorite destination…Nathiagali. The dates that we mutually agreed on were Sept 1 to 7, 2020. After much debate, the unanimous decision was that we would finally be making this trip by car. In our case, it had to be two cars to accommodate all 7-holiday makers. Ma sha Allah!
Road trips need planning with a longish to do list and many questions to answer. How are the cars? Can they make the journey? What would be the estimated fuel cost? How long would it take to reach our destination? How are the road conditions? Can the two drivers make this journey in two cars…one, a 1000cc, driven only 16K kms while the other an 1800cc with 113k kms on the odo? How long will the two drivers be able to drive at a stretch in a day? Moreover, since we had decided that Nathiagali is our destination, where would we stay and for how many days? How much time would we need to reach Nathiagali? Where would we stop overnight? It was now time to decide and to check all the boxes.
So the search began…for the best/most suitable accommodation in Nathiagali. Will it be; Summer Retreat, Greens Retreat, Alpine Hotel & Resort, Raees Khana or a GDA guesthouse that is now under private management? Finding accommodation for seven persons, 2 rooms with extra mattresses would need to be pre-arranged. I did not want to risk going all the way to Nathiagali from Karachi by road and then to leave it to the last minute reccee and settling for a place that was not to my liking. No way!
I started making calls…the rates were between 12k and 18k for a double room with breakfast and obviously, there would be a charge for additional mattresses. I booked 3 nights everyplace I called, and then discussed the options with the family. The unanimous decision was Raees Khana. Mainly because of the location and for being recently refurbished and upgraded as we saw from the pictures. In addition, it now seemed at par compared to the other first class accommodations in Nathiagali. Rs. 12k per room per night, inclusive of extra mattresses without breakfast seemed like a good deal. Breakfast we would manage from the bazaar. That was that.
While planning our road trip, we had decided to break our journey at a location that was closer to Nathiagali on the way up, so we picked Faisalabad. For our return, we chose Multan. I Googled and pulled up a hotel that was closest to the Faisalabad exit on the M4 Motorway and called the numbers. The name of the place is Khayyam Hotel and the response I got was very positive. Two rooms with breakfast for an overnight stay with extra mattresses would cost us a total of Rs. 9k. Not bad. For our return trip, I looked at almost all the options available in Multan but was not able to make a decision.
Stay tuned…
