The Seven ride again

Pakistan is alive & well, peopled with busy men & women making lives for themselves even after the worst of adversity

The 7 Samurai? Nope. The Magnificent 7? Probably not. The Quite Interesting 7? That’s more like it. An events planner/manager, a man who put Pakistan together after nature broke it, the president of the Asian Study Group and her companion, a woman who has lived mostly in Bahrain and another woman who I know nothing at all about. And Imran who is our guide, fixer and all-around fount of knowledge and wisdom. And we seven, we happy seven, and our remarkably compact luggage are all on a Coaster headed for the hills. We are also headed for an internet and phone blackout in some parts of our crowded itinerary, and this column might not make the Wednesday deadline as a result. (Success… it did!)



Domestic tourism in Pakistan is on the up and up, and I decided to buy into it for a long-overdue break. Ten days bumping around Baltistan, overnighting in some rather finely restored heritage sites and catching some of the finest scenery the country has to offer. And getting to know six complete strangers.

It is the ‘getting to know’ bit that can be a bit tricky, and the chemistry and dynamics of a group of people randomly thrown together can be a difficult balancing act — but so far so good. And very good in at least one part.

The last time I was in Balakot was in 2007 when there were still wrangles about the land that ‘New Balakot’ was to be built on post to the 2005 ‘quake. The first time I was in Balakot was about a week after the ‘quake when the reek of the unburied — or buried by nature rather than their relatives — was thick in the air. The place was wrecked. Completely flattened. And yet there were tourists, a group of Japanese who I was both amazed and not a little horrified to discover were ‘disaster tourists’. People struggled to cross the river on a jury-rigged sort-of rope bridge. Other people stood around looking dazed.

Nobody looked at all out of sorts as we passed through yesterday after taking tea by the river on the outskirts. There were newly built hotels by the wayside, a return of the industry that had sustained Balakot before the mountains shrugged. And there was a battered sign off to the left near the town centre that said ‘New Balakot City’. But there isn’t.

New Balakot city has not happened beyond the designation of the land where it is — was — supposed to be built. The project is mired in political swamps, much as was predicted at its inception, and there is little sign of that changing in the near future. So Balakot has been rebuilt on the same deadly fault lines that wreaked havoc a decade ago and will do so again.

There is among us a man who knows much of what happened after the ‘quake because he was one of those who put it back together again. The kind of man who actually makes one proud of Pakistan. And it was he who filled in the blanks.

Arriving after sunset at a hotel in the Kaghan valley the Quite Interesting 7 debouched and gathered for dinner, a jolly affair that bodes well for our future time together. And then to an exhausted bed to wake refreshed to a sparkling morning, roses still blooming up the walls of the hotel, a rushy river as an eternal background and the smell of wood smoke in the air. The leaves are beginning to turn on the trees and there will be a brief bright autumn before a gripping winter. A winter cold enough to crack your bones as I well remember having lived north of Gilgit for most of the 1990s.

Contrary to received wisdom in some quarters Pakistan is alive and well, peopled with busy men and women making lives for themselves even after the worst of adversity. Brief inquiries tell me that the local economy of the region is robust and memories of the quake fading though it is possible to spot a scattering of the blue tents into which thousands were decanted back in 2005. Pakistan… a quite remarkably good place to come and visit. Tootle-pip!

Published in The Express Tribune, September 10^th,  2015.

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