I've been an frequent reader of Travel posts at Pakwheels and have found them to be very informative. Therefore, i thought to contribute to this rich collection of travel guides by sharing some details of our own little trip. So here it goes...
Day 1:
Two members of our group of four traveled from Lahore. We started the journey at 5 am from Islamabad and traveled to Kiwai via Hasanabdal-Abbottabad-Manshera Road in my Suzuki Swift VXR 2015. We reached Kiwai at 9:30 am after breakfast stop at Manshera, We parked our car at a restaurants parking in Kiwai, in exchange for a nominal parking fee, as the condition of the road upto Shugran were said to be not ideal. We hired a jeep for travel to shugran, siri and paya meadows.
Jeep took us to our hotel at Shugran where we had lunch and then went up to Siri and Paya meadows of some sight seeing and photography. We returned back to our hotel in Shugran as we didn't plan on camping at Paya meadows.
Day 2:
Day 2 started early for us as we left Shugran for Paya meadows at 6 am. Reached Paya meadows via jeep at 06:45 am, had breakfast at one of the Dhabas and set out toward our objective of climbing the Makra Peak. The view from Paya Meadows was exceptional and we took our time taking photographs on the route. After the first hour or so, all of the trek was covered in snow, which was not particularly easy to negotiate considering we did not have the equipment for such conditions. Anyways, we pushed forward towards the base of the steep hill. There was no visible option of descending from the peak except sliding on the snow, so couple of our team members opted to stay back. Two of us started climbing the hill to reach the summit. It was tough job making way in the snow but soon the weather took turn for the worst making it many times harder. At last, we decided to turn back as hailstorm had started and there were no indications of weather turning in our favor. We reached paya meadows at 02:00 pm where we took the jeep ride back to our hotel at Shugran.
Day 3:
Early morning, we took jeep back to Kiwai and took our car back to islamabad.
Some pics of the trip...
