I was still awake at 6 am when when we were officially woken up. After hastily packing and saying farewell to the room, we rushed downstairs to find the car waiting for us, along with Fayeem and Mr Salman (the early risers of the group). We said our final farewells, and got in the car for what would be the longest ride of my life. The first leg of the journey ended at Gilgit City, where we changed drivers and cars, had breakfast at a motel, and were informed that there was a landslide a little ahead so we would have to walk across and change cars. It took about half an hour to reach the landslide, where about 3 km of highway was blocked. What ensued was one of the less pleasant parts of the trip, a 45 minute walk to the waiting car. It was very hot, our luggage was heavy, and the worst part was that the road was full of wet mud which we had to dodge, sometimes not successfully. I even lost my shoe for a minute at some point. At the end, we embraced the air conditioned car waiting for us and thankfully downed a bottle of water each. We stopped at Babusar Top once more, which was refreshing, and went on our way, enduring torturous old Hindi songs that the driver played in full volume! After about six hours, we stopped at Abottabad, where we were supposed to take a Daewoo from. However, upon learning that the next bus to Lahore was 4 hours away, we requested the driver to take us to Rawalpindi. Another 3 hours saw us at the Daewoo station in Pindi, waiting about an hour for the bus. We were pleasantly surprised when we learnt that we had gotten into gold class, despite having paid half the price for a normal bus. Gold was so nice, complete with reclining seats and ACs, that I slept like a log all the way to Lahore. We reached the station at exactly 5 am, almost a full 24 hours after leaving the Eagles Nest. After hailing an Uber, we finally reached home. It had been a truly exhausting journey, and I collapsed in bed soon after reaching.
Our trip to the North was many things: scenic, exciting, informative, eye opening. Most of all it was simply memorable. I will never forget my first experience of the north of Pakistan, although I plan to add many more memories of the spell binding place throughout my life. “Gr8 tym with gr8 ppl”, as I would say.
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