Aslam o Alikum!
"Kindly ignore English mistakes"
My name is Zaeem Yousaf and I am a Chemical engineer. As you all know quarantine is going on, most of the people have nothing to do these days and I am one of them 😅. I was thinking what shall I do with this spare time and last night this came into my mind that I shall share the story of my memorable tour to Neelum Valley Azad Kashmir with all of you. I am not very good in English but lets give it a try. Around four years back in August 2015, I used to work at Gourmet Beverages Pakistan. I was not so happy with my professional life and that was my first job. I wanted a break. I took my salary of July and went home. A friend of mine Hassan (The adventure specialist famous as saudi) called and asked me to come to Umer`s house. Let me first introduce you to my group. We are four best friends (Zaeem, Noman, Umer and Hassan). Zaeem is me an Engineer, Umer is an architect and a Trader by profession, Hassan is a programmer or game developer you can say Noman is a Govt. Teacher. We have nick names like Zaeem is Molvi, Hassan is Saudi, Noman is Nomi and Umer is Sheikh.
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Somewhere near Rati Gali Lake |
Let`s come back to the story, where was I? Yeah, I went to Umer`s house. We called Nomi and asked him to come as well. While sitting at Umer`s vintage room we decided to have a tour as there was a holiday of 14th August. Hassan had a Honda Civic with him which he had to return to Gujrat.
Gujrat
I had never went to Murree so I suggested I am interested in visiting Murree. Everyone agreed to this. Nomi told his family that he is going to a study tour. My family wasn`t home so I did not tell anything. We packed some of our clothes you can say summer collection and started the journey. We had our first stay at Chenab river near Gujrat. People were out because of 14th auguest
Independence day of Pakistan. We had our first stay at Gujrat. I am not telling anything about the stay dear
Saudi Sb. 😆. But we decided never to come back again to Gujrat ever in life. During the stay there, Umer said Murree is not very much attractive place to visit, let`s go to Neelum Valley. In early morning around 4 a.m we started looking for the bus to go to Neelum Valley. None of us ever went there.
Neelum Valley
We got something to go to Faizabad Rawalpindi. We had our breakfast their and got a van to Muzaffarabad. Muzaffarabad was pretty hot but we could see Mountains there. We got a bus to
Dowarian. The bus was moving very slow and it took hell of a time to reach us to the destination. But the journey was amazing. When we entered
Neelum Valley, the scenes refreshed all of us. For the first time in our life we saw such beauty of nature. Neelum river was very noisy. Mountains were on our heads. I went to the roof of the bus to enjoy weather and scenes of Neelum valley and we took some pictures also. The conductor was taking fares while sitting on windscreens of the bus. Kashmiri songs were playing on the tape/radio. We stayed at a Chashma during our journey.
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Chashma in Neelum Valley |
Finally we reached Dowarian. It was around 11 or 12 at night. We were alone standing on road, knew nothing what to do. Suddenly we saw a Lanthorn coming toward us in the dark. It looked like a horror scene and we were terrified. When it came closer, we saw a boy was holding it. He asked us if we are looking for an apartment to live. He took us to a very tiny room it was so tiny that if we lay down our heads and feet would touch the walls. We disagreed to stay there but we did not had any other options. After sometime a boy came to us and offered us a tent to live. Everything was new in there so we decided to stay in there. It was a small tent but we could fit in there. There are some
secrets about what happened in there but I am not gonna tell, SORRY😅. We had a tight sleep because of tiredness. I woke up in the morning early and heard clear sound of the neelum river that was right in front of us. It gave me so much peace that I sat there and started looking constantly in front forgetting everything about what I am doing? where am I. After that we took a selfie there.
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Faceapp edited picture taken at Dowarian |
Rati Gali Lake
Now decided to take bath. The water we got to take bath was very cold. It was placed in a metal container a night before. Temperature of water was about its freezing point. The only way to take bath with this water was scream while you put it on you. So we did scream a lot while taking bath. The bathroom was in the air. It was attached to the road through something but was right about the neelum river. What you poo will directly go to the river. Knowing this, we could not********.
Finally we got ready and started looking for the jeep to go to the lake. We found a jeep which was "Dhakka" start and had plenty of space in it. We and another group shared this jeep. Almost 10 people were there in that jeep and sitting on each other. The road was wet and slippery. Actually there was no road only free stones you can say bajri was there only. During the move, we took some pictures. Route was blocked at one place so we enjoyed some green scenes there. Let me share these with you.
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Somewhere at route to Rati Gali Lake |
Finally we reach at base camp of
Rati Gali Lake. The picture shared below is base camp.
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Base Camp of Rati Gali Lake |
We started tracking from there. Native people of that area could easily go back and forth but that was difficult for us. Track was very green and easy as you can see in the pictures. But we had some breathing problems may be because of the height and cold. When we covered half of the distance we saw a very small lake there. We have heard most of the people go back after watching this lake considering it the real lake. We also thought that but we saw some people going further. We followed them and felt like we have entered to another world. The picture I am sharing below is taken on the tracking way to the lake. Those were some different kind of flowers there.
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Track of Rati Gali Lake |
Finally we reached to the lake. The lake was very beautiful. I can rate it as 10/10. We took pictures there.
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Rati Gali Lake |
There was a block of ice in lake. I decided to go nearer to get a picture with it. I asked Nomi to please take the picture and went through very cold water near the ice block but all in vain. There was no nicer picture taken. I am sharing what I got.
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With ice block at the Lake |
We could not spend much time there because it took a lot of time. It started raining, we had nothing for the cold and nothing to stay at night there. So we decided to go back. We sat on our jeep and started our journey back to Dowarian. It got dark on the way and surprisingly we got to know there was no headlights with jeep. We were praying Ya Allah! ek baar zinda waps pahuncha ainda kbhi is lake prr nahi ayengy. Suddenly jeep bnd ho gy. We all got out of jeep except Nomi. As I already told, the jeep was dhakka start, so driver used the steep of route to start it. The jeep did not start but kept on slipping near the edge. There was hundreds of feet depth in front. Only Nomi and driver was in the jeep. We all started screaming and jeep kept on slipping to fall down and get destroyed in that chasm (کھائی).
To Be Continued.........
Great effort man 👌it is a great thing to convert a best tour into blog.
ReplyDelete
Delete👍👍
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Deletewell done bro to👍
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DeleteMain copyright ka case karun ga. 😆😆😆
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ReplyDeleteThat Water Thing happened to us at Muree ..... It was cool enough
ReplyDeleteSir ap to Great hen.i always like you
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ReplyDeleteAbsolutely fantastic
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