Mountaineer trio bringing Quetta back on the map, one top at a time

With its temperate climate and clean mountain air, Quetta has always been a ‘Switzerland in Pakistan’ to those who live there. But thanks to a series of viral snowfall photos, the provincial capital has found itself back on the map for domestic tourism.

Even as they are enticed by them, some visitors may not realise that the photos that brought them to Quetta come from the same source. The credit for them rests with three mountaineering friends – Sadat Sabori, Murad Ali and Zeeshan Jaffry – who took up photography as a means to capture their admiration for Balochistan and its peaks.

“Anyone who grows up in Quetta grows up with an admiration for the mountains that surround it,” Murad, the more experienced of the trio, said. “Me and Sadat, being childhood friends, often visited them as kids,” he recalled. “As members of the Hazara community, it was often not safe for us as children to go out in the city a lot. The best outing we could go for revolved around these peaks and how to climb them. That is what lit the mountaineering fire in us.”

“We have, until now, climbed Chiltan Shakh and Zarghoon Range on the outskirts of Quetta along with Khilafat Peak in Ziarat,” added Sadat. “When we climbed Char Shakh in 2008 and Zarghoon Peak in 2011, I didn’t even have a DSLR camera. But as soon as I got one in 2013, I started snapping pictures from the top of Kotli Hill in Mariabad.”

According to Sadat, his first landscape photograph of Quetta went viral with a case of mistaken identity. “When people started sharing and reposting it, many of them suggested they depicted Islamabad, Lahore or Rawalpindi,” he said. “I had to intervene and inform as may people as I could that the city in the photo was actually Quetta.”

For the three friends, inspiration never was too far from home. “Living in Mariabad, we could always visit the mountains anytime we wanted, and that made it easy for us to both take up mountaineering and photography,” said Sadat. One of his favourite spots is a small peak called Koh-e-Sinai, where he took some of the viral snowfall photographs. “I capture the peak in three different seasons, and those pictures were so loved that I had many Pakistani photographers and instagrammers begging me to take them there.”

Like Sadat, Zeeshan received his first DSLR in 2013. “I would take it to mountains to take pictures of sunset and dusk, and very soon, the ambience around me turned photography into a habit,” he said. “Then when I saw the work of Sadat and Murad, as well as some other photographers from Quetta, I contacted them to add me in their group,’ he added.

Early on when they had just taken up photography, Zeeshan said the focus of their work was just the scenery and the colours associated with each season in Quetta. “Now that we are a bit famous though, we try to have some message in our photos or a story to tell about the peaks that fascinate us.”

In order to encourage others who share their love for mountains and photography to share their work, the trio has also set up a Facebook page by the name of ‘Wayfarers’, Zeeshan said. “Our hope is that the content we share there will show all Pakistanis, as well as people around the world, how beautiful Quetta and Balochistan is.”

“There is more to Quetta than terrorism. It is unfortunate that the city and the province has only been in the news for tragic reasons,” Zeeshan added. “Even though our community has borne the brunt of sectarian violence here, for a few years now the city and the province has been really safe for everyone, and we want to show that.”

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