Day 7
I ideally wanted to spend another couple of days in neelum valley but my
son on wife were missing me a lot and kept calling me and asking me to come back so i decided to put in a long day and start my journey back to Karachi ,
i woke up and after breakfast asked for directions to reach the jagran waterfall , a local guy told me to go to the other side of the bazaar and i can catch a Suzuki from there till the water fall , and then catch a jeep from the road there for jagran power plant so i started walking towards the suzuki stand, the weather was so good that once i started walking i said to hell with it i have all day to kill i'll just walk to the water fall ...
so i walked past the Suzuki stand and just kept walking ,, i walked for like an and hour and soon reach jagran ... i asked a guy for directions to the waterfall and he was nice enough to walk with me to the water fall , once there he snapped
some pix for me , the water fall was pretty but the water flow was not as ferocious as it is in the summer time..the bridge there of course collapsed a few months after my visit killing some poor students ,
next up i continued walking instead of hitching a ride and soon reached the famous Jagran resort which is very pretty place to stay
at a very scenic location , the guards at the entrance were nice enough to let me in and roam around the place , it was very well kept very neat clean... after that i kept walking at a leisurely pace as soon reached the jagran bazaar , there i had lunch and waited for a jeep to come ..
.i got on a jeep and started the journey towards the jagran power plant...at that time work was about to start on jagran two as a suitable site was being selected and a road was being built for that project...there was a lot of heavy machinery and dust and the going was slow .... the jeep driver told me that i am going at the wrong time i.e after 2:00 pm and it is highly likely that i might not find a ride back .. i that case he told me to go further ahead of the power plant there is a small settlement .. request to any local they will let me stay at their place..as the next city is a long way away...
this got me a little worried but i was half way there so i couldn't turn back...the jeep driver instead of dropping me off on the main road took me right down to the entrance point of the power plant and told the solider at the check post that mehmaan hai plant dekhney is ko jaaney do andar ...by that time it is 3:30 and i was thinking that i am effed i will have to spend the night on the road or something
....anyways the guard greeted me and pointed me towards a small guard room offered me water and apples and very politely asked me to leave my camera and phone with him and to make sure that i dont try to make a video or snap photos inside by sneaking any cameras with me as this is a sensitive installation at a sensitive location ... i obliged and he pointed me towards the large entrance...the river flows right with the plant since it is a hydral power plant...the guard told me that a few years ago there was heavy flooding and the entire entrance of the plant was submerged in water ..
.i went inside and after about half a KM the main room came into view ...there are total of 5 turbines in the plant which supply cheap electricity to the entire surrounding area and to the muzaffarabad grid in the summer but in the winter only 1 turbine was working generation enough for the surrounding area ... a person on duty in there gave me a detailed tour of the plant ... as with most of the places i was the only one there and soon i left ...
since i could not take any pix i am attaching a few i found online..... back at the check post i asked the soldier about how to get back ...he told me that a t engineers are visiting the site proposed for jagran 2 plant and they will be leaving soon so i should hurry towards the road leading upwards towards the main road ....i walked quickly towards the road which is zigzag going upwards and as soon as i reached the place sure enough 10 12 army hilux trucks and jeeps came from the other side ...
the first few vehicles had foreigners in them with soldier .....i just stood there thinking if i should try waving them down or not but a hilux stopped close to me and a soldier asked me why i am standing here i told him i visited the plant and am heading back to keran ...they said they will drop me off on the way and i told me to get in...i said id rather ride in the back and enjoy the open air and soon we were on our way ,we stopped on the way as a australian and a chinese engineer climbed off their ride and went down to the river to check something (the driver of the vehicle i was in told me).. we waited there for half an hour ... there was smoke in the distance from the woods i asked one of the locals what was that from and was told that the Forrest is on fire ... some one was careless enough to cause a huge fire which will go out only when it rains ... it was well after 9 that i reached back keran...went straight to bed....
next morning got on a coaster bus which was heading straight to pindi ... from there got on a bus for Faisalabad in the night .... reached Faisalabad and got on the night coach to get back to Karachi.
..now here i must share a little incident that i went all over the country and had no trouble anywhere but as soon as i reached good ol Karachi trouble was waiting for me... i got off at Landhi junction as i live in model colony near the airport and got on a rickshaw for home...it was late at night almost 1 AM...near malir halt we were stopped by a couple of cops standing besides a mobile..they first started hassling the rickshaw driver asking for his license they clearly wanted some money ...then they turned their attention towards me ...one of them asked me kidher se aa raha hai tu itni raat while he other started touching my bag in the rickshaw i quickly took my bag away from him and said pindi se aa raha hoo malir cantt jaa raha hoo ... koi masla hai rickshaw waley ka to mai gaari bula loo apne liye? That had the right effect on them and they backed off and we continued our journey ... its a shame that the police in Karachi is the absolute worst...reached home before 2 and that was the end of my journey at the end of day 9....
.i apologize for the bad quality of pix as most of them were taken from the shitty phone i had back then and i am not a big fan of taking photos ..
I hope u guys liked my narration of the trip...until next time......
