Day 00 (Aug 18 2017) -Lahore to Taxila - 312Km
** Bus yeh hamara Akhri tour hai, pleeeeeease… **
Minut, samajat, sifarish, wastay, bahanay_ and some sorts of blackmailing, all weapons used to kill
doubts, convince them and get permission for this tour from parents, other family members and Offices.
We four are from one family, Imtiaz is my younger brother, Junaid and Fawad are my fist cousins. Even though this tour was not a piece of cake for us, we all were facing problems at offices or disagreement at home in form of fear, workload, leaves etc. etc. I had already availed leaves of two weeks, few days ago so grant of more leaves was not possible. Junaid being younger most among us was not getting permission from home as they had heard about Landslides and road blockage etc. Similarly Imtiaz had no replacement at Office and at his part time business to troubleshoot the technicalities of work in his absence. Fawad had not availed any leave throughout the year just for this tour but to meet projects deadlines it was not possible for him to be away from plenty of workload for more than a week
As we were dying to visit Khunjerab, so “marta kia na karta”, we played all cards and finally was in position to chalk-out the plan. Yes we had not planned yet,,,hahha….We have done some tours earlier so we were confident enough. We called a meeting to final the route, schedule and items etc. In short Deosai, Minimarg, Skardu, Shigar dropped as already visited places and added Noshehra, Lawari Top, Chirtal, Kailash, Shandur, Phunder valley as attractions. Sleeping bags, mattress and unnecessary tools also dropped to enjoy the trip with less luggage. Shared our intention with Guru Rizwan Mir and asked his help. He vet it and sent 03 detailed routes and schedules. He shared his experience on this route and gave some guidelines. We floated the final plan to some other friends but they all had strict commitments at offices, so were unable to join us in these dates.
As per plan we had to leave at 4:00pm but poor planning, coordination and negligence resulted as crossing Shahdra around 8:00 pm. Replacement of tyre, eleventh hour shopping and above all bikes documents left at home all costed us 04 hours delayed departure.
To compensate the loss of hours we kept moving nonstop till Gujranwala and after 10 minutes break resumed our journey. “Kalliyan aggay toay” Due to Friday night we faced extra traffic on the route so were unable to move fast. We set Lalamusa as next stop to have dinner at our favorite Restaurant. With the help of short breaks we were able to reach Lalamusa at 10:30pm. Ordered the dinner soon but “Jab Kismat mai hi fault ho tau kia karain”, waiter forgot our order and after long wait, reordered the dinner. Finally after 45 minutes we had dinner and kicked the beasts at 11:50pm. Tummy full of delicious Karachi, cold night and no traffic on road we were enjoying the ride at a good speed. We stopped at a roadside hotel well decorated with lights to have tea. As per original plan we had to spent night at hotel in Rawalpindi but we were having tea at Dina at 01:00am. No one among us was ashamed on his acts causing this delay rather were enjoying the journey and cracking jokes. After tea we again moved and covering long distance we crossed
Rawalpindi and reached Taxila at 03:30am. We stopped at a “Manji wala Hotel” to take some rest with tea. But tea was not available as the staff was busy to have dinner so we decided to take rest on Manjis till morning then will move further.
That was our first day started with challenges and ended with “Chummies of Machar” 
