It was a 4D/3N family trip. My family consists of myself, my wife and one little daughter age 2.5 years. We left on Friday morning from Islamabad to Kalam and return on Monday evening. I will first give my itinerary day by day and then compile all the expenses in the summary that I will include in last of this thread.
Day 1 (Departure from Islamabad and arrival to Kalam): As I own a Suzuki Alto model 2003, I was reluctant to take my car to Kalam with family and that’s why I initially plan to utilize Daewoo Bus service from Rawalpindi to Mingora and then hire a car from Mingora to Swat. But after discussing with several friends who had been to Kalam recently I decided to take the risk of travelling on my own car which later proved worthy. We left Islamabad at 4:30 am in the morning to utilize the coolest hours of the day and reach Mingora at about 9:30 am. The road till Mingora was perfect to drive and we had no issues in driving so far. CNG was also available till Mingora so the whole trip was economized due to the availability of CNG. Just before we left Mingora, one of the tyre got punctured. It took about 45 minutes, looking for a service shop and getting the tyre repaired. Then it took another 5 hours from Mingora to Behrain as it was a single road and peak hours of the day and there were several towns in between therefore it was not possible to drive at a speed above 60-70. Also from Madyan to Behrain the road was severely damaged with several bad patches of 1-2 km spans on the road. At around 2:30, we had reached Behrain. Now at this stage we were so tired that for some instance we thought to either left our car in some hotel and rent a car from Behrain till Kalam or just had a stay at Behrain for night and depart for Kalam early in the morning the next day. But after having some light snacks and drinks at Behrain we had gathered enough stamina and courage to continue our journey toward Kalam in one go. There is virtually no road from Behrain to Kalam just a very harsh and rough track with lots of dirt, gravel, stones, bumps and any other hazards that you can think of. This is a 35 km stretch which our car covers on just 1[SUP]st[/SUP] gear in around 2.5 hours. At last at 5:15 pm we were in Kalam which gives a look of some ghostly town due to off season. The weather in Kalam was hot but bearable during day time however the nights are usually cool. We surveyed several hotels to ask their rents. Most of the hotels even good ones were offering rooms in the range of 1,000-1,500. We decided to stay in Hilton Moon Hotel that we negotiated at 1,200 per night due to the reasons that it was on main road, near to the market and restaurants, had very good rooms and had a nice garden with swings and rides for our little daughter. After settling in the room, we left for dinner. There were many restaurants on the street but all offered a limited variety of menu to choose from. The menu was almost common in every restaurant and mainly consist of Karhai, chapli kabab, daal, sabzi, kabli pulao. A few of them were offering Tikka, bar b que and biryani. We had our dinner with biryani and tikka at a lahori restaurant which was quiet good. The total bill was around 600 including drinks and service charges. The day ends.
