Yes, a well maintained good condition 4x4 like prado etc would be best to have but finding them is like looking for a needle in haystack.
I have a 2011 civic reborn and I love it. I have been to many northern places many times on it. It's been to shogran, naran (took it to jheel road till maisonate), babusar, hunza, khujrab etc. The only place I scraped the bottom was at the parking area in Khunjrab during a trip in 2017 and even that was my fault as I was going a bit fast as opposed to be very gentle as the terrain demanded.
So the point is we can take pretty much any sedan to most places, but the problem is you have to very be careful while driving through pot holes, muddy watery and broken roads etc and that is a muft ka headache, worry and pain in the ass you carry with you the whole trip. Most places all you need is high ground clearance to reach and 4x4 isn't required. Let me share a story.
It was end of december 2017. I was staying at a place in Bhurban. I needed to buy something so I decided to drive to murree and buy it from some store. I have been to murree and surroundings many time but still some time manage to get lost etc. Anyways just to be safe I asked my wife to open google maps and let me know the directions. We were near murree and I was going the correct way that I know but my wife mentioned there is a shorter way showing here on the google map. So I decided to take that road that I had never been on before. It was a steep, very bendy narrow and dark road. After taking few turns driving down the road ahead was broken, it had big pot holes. I continued driving very slowly and carefully but still managed to hit bottom. I decided it's not worth taking the risk and turned around. Turning around was a task itself but that was the easy part. I had no clue what we were going to experience after that.
Road was broken so it had no asphalt but it was still a very hard solid mitti type road as much as I remember. It was full of tiny leaves and branches from the kind of trees you have in murree. So the traction was low, climb was very steep and the tyres would just keep on spinning. I tried few techniques but it was of no use. Instead of going forward I was slipping and going back slowly and later eventually rear ended a tree on the side of the road. Now the car was resting against the tree and next to the tree was a ditch. I found some big rocks and put them behind on all tires.
Now in this situation if I had a Brv, I would have just continued driving down without a worry. If I had an AWD like sportage etc which weren't even available in Pakistan back then, it would have been a easy climb back up. Even if I had a length of rope I could have wrapped around the front tires and easily climb back up. Also if I had few friends on board they could have just pushed a little and that might have helped (which later I learned that my assumption was wrong), but it was only me and my wife.
After trying to climb back up for 20-30 mins we decided to get help. I could walk back up the road and ask for help from someone but I didn't want to leave my wife alone in the car. Also now there were dogs running around being curious what was going on. At the time they looked like scary big wolves. So now we couldn't even get out of the car. We didn't have warm clothing on and it was so freaking cold that I had peed on the side of the road I think twice in 30-40 mins.
Anyway now I was a little worried. I called rescue 1122 and they were like we can't do anything, we can't come there. That was shocking to hear. Than I tired police at 15 and they too were very unprofessional and offered no help. They kept telling me to call this number and that person but no one offered to help. Now that itself was a big WTF like it's only murree and we were I think a kilometer or 2 from the main roads.
It was now over an hour. I decided to find a stick to take on the dogs and hike back up and look for help but my wife would not let me go. I called my hotel and the very nice manager immediately called few taxi drivers he knew to come down and help us. But that wasn't an easy task either because the manager wasn't getting our location even though I told him the exact name of the road. Later the taxi drivers called and even they weren't sure how to get there. It took another hour on the phones going back forth about our location.
Out of no where I heard a loud motor bike slowly climbing up from behind us. It went past us and then stopped at about 50 ft away. It was a yellow CG 125. In this kind of situation a lot weird things come in your mind like why did he stop, has he noticed us stranded in the middle of the road, will he come back to offer help or rob us or god knows what.
He got off the bike and immediately squatted on the road and started fixing some thing on the bike. Probably a minute later he noticed us and drove down back to us. I got out of the car. He asked if we were alright and what's going on. Thank god it's a local, I told myself. He lived few meters down the road. He told me there is no way you could have continued down that road, it's broken and had big pot holes everywhere. Add to that it was steep and very dark. He called his friends to help. yeeeeeesss, I said to my self. Finally we have some help. I got him to talk to the taxi drivers to help pin point our location. The drivers instead of driving down and get stuck here along side me decided to hike up the road from the bottom end on foot and drive my car down that road. I was like hmmmmmmm OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOk I guess.
Anyway it was gonna take while. In the mean time my new local friend's friends arrived. They tried pushing the car as I tried to drive back up, it wouldn't move, tires kept spinning out. They all sat on the bonnet to put weight on it but that too didn't help. So now they decided to call their boss. The guys or one of them was working and living with someone who had a vacation house there down the road. They told me that their boss also has the same car (civic reborn) and only he manages to get this car here and out of here so he would be a great help. I was again like yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah. But they jokingly said it might take a while because the boss is from Lahore and is not used to hiking up quickly, only we the locals can do it. lol
About 10 mins later the boss showed up, out of his breath from hiking all the way up, the guys were laughing cracking jokes at him and stuff just having fun. He was a young lad like me. We chatted about my situation. I asked him where he is from in Lahore, he was from model town. He was a really nice guy I mean who would wanna hike all the way up in this cold while he was vacationing.
We again tried to make the car climb back up but nothing worked. The tires of the car at the time were about 25000 kms driven so worn out tread also helped make the situation worse. We decided to turn the car back around and try to drive down the road carefully. It seemed like an easy task and there were about 5-6 of us there now but it still took a lot tries and great effort to turn the car around.
By the time we managed to turn the car around safely the taxi drivers showed up. One of them immediately got in the car and started driving down. I told them stop k bhai kidher bhaggy ja rahe ho, rukko zara, btao to sahy kya plan hai etc. Their plan was the same, try to drive it down the road without hitting bottom. He again started driving and I was like hum kya padel ayeen ge, ruk jao do min.
I discussed with the boss guy (I am sorry about using the term boss guy because he was such nice man and I don't remember his name, it was crazy situation) and he agreed that this seems to be the best option. I thanked him from the bottom of my heart, took his phone number and told him that I will call him and have dinner some time on me as a thanks for the help. Then I got on the passenger seat, had my wife sit in the back and we started driving down. The other driver started walking ahead of the car guiding where to drive to avoid hitting the car. It was a short 5-10 min drive.
As soon as we got down I thanked the drivers and asked them what can I do for them. They were like we brought 2 cars (a mehran and an FX parked on the side of the road) from all the way don't know where this and that and I heard the figure 2-3 thousand and jo ap ki khushi. Before they even finished their statement I took out my wallet and handed them a 5000 note and told them is this enough. Immediately there was a big smile on their face. They thanked me and I thanked them and we went on our ways.
By the time I got back to the hotel in bhurban it was 2 am. We had left the hotel around 8 pm.
Next day the hotel manager asked me if I had given the driver any money etc. I told him I gave them 5000 rupees and he was like what, kamine ne loot liya hai ap ko, main ne kaha bhy tha un ko k app mere mehman hain, 500 yar 1000 se zeyada nahy dene they un ko. I told him I gave them that money as a token of appreciation for what that they did for us. He insisted they shouldn't have asked me for the money. He sent them, I was guest and he could have taken care of them in the morning etc.
Truth is I was so relieved that if there was 10000 note that came out of my wallet at that moment. I would have given it to them.
When I got back to Lahore I wanted to contact the model town guy but I couldn't. Things were crazy and I think I didn't type in the number correctly. On top of that I did a small miss call on his number but didn't save it thinking I will do it later when I get back to the hotel etc. But later I couldn't make out which number was his as I had made so many calls to so many random people that the police, the 1122 people and the hotel manager had given me. So I regret not to be able to contact the model town guy. But just in case by any freak coincidence you my model town friend reading this, PM me. I would really like to meet you and thank you again personally.
OK, now most of you would be wondering where I managed to get myself stuck in murre out of all the bad roads in the whole north.
The road is called "Woodberry rd". It connects "kuldana rd" to "kashmir rd". We wanted to go to Sunny bank area and this appeared like a short cut and what a great fucking shortcut it was. lol
We laugh about it now when ever we recall the event but it was a little frustrating at the time, but now it feels like it was an adventure. After all adventures are suspenseful, scary, fun and hilarious at the time. I have left out the hilarious bit for now. It was our honey moon trip. We had got married just 3 weeks earlier. The whole trip was a funny adventure. Who knows I might write a book about it or convince someone to make a make movie some day. 
Anyway, now you know part of why I want a high ground clearance vehicle. I can just buy a fortuner but that car is uncomfortable, huge, not so fun to drive on narrow winding roads. It's 4x4 is a good feature that might come handy rarely, but compared to BRV it costs too much and not even available soon enough.
So the BRV or a good old 4x4 seems like the way to go.
