25/11/2013
The sleeping beauty of the east "Kalam".
Winter tour to SWAT was a fun and adventure. Our journey started from Rawalpindi when we left our home at around 5:15am on Thursday, most of us didn't slept due to the excitement of the tour and as a precaution to catch the team in time.
Our first milestone was to reach Mingora and as planned we reached there at around 11am, there were 2 stops during our branch of travelling. Mingora is a crowded city at day time, the bus stop and vacinity resembles "Raja Bazar of Rawalpindi". The only differnce that one feels is the absence of women on roads, you rarely see any women in the streets and there are very few banners that use women models.
After an hour and half stay iin Mingora for lunch, tea and to arrange for van we resumed our journey further towards Kalam. The 1st half of the road for Kalam is normal and a van can easily go as fast as maximum 90 km/hr but the condition of 2nd half is really poor and and average speed of 25 or 30km/hr is the best you can achieve while going uphill.
We took 3 or 4 stops for namaz, tea and etc and the major cities/towns that we crossed were "Khoaza khaila", "Madin" & "Bahrain" and finally around 7:30pm reached Kalam.
My first point of view about Kalam in the dark was "is this Kalam? oh no" but the next morning I was happy to see the view of Kalam and it's surroundings.
It took us another hour to arrange for the hotel and after our dinner meals we moved into hotel "Marco polo". You will be surprised to know that the hotel cost was only Rs. 1,000 per night whereas I was ready to pay 2,500 for such a nice place.
The next morning we hired a 4x4 jeep to for "Mahodand Lake", it was around 70% jeep trek and 30% hiking trek due to a a glacier blocking the road. We left our jeep at the glacier and started to move towards the lake. After around 1 hour we reached "Aab-e-Shifa" and then it took another 1 and half hours to reach the Lake. By the time we reached lake it was already 4:00pm and we only had 1 hours before sunset. It was still enough for us to enjoy the views of the beautiful frozen lake and it's surroundings.
After taking snaps we moved back to our jeep-stop and then back to Kalam.
THe next day we planned to visit Malam Jabba and then back to Mingora. Malam jabba is not that beautiful in this season as it is during March when the skeing event takes place here. The views for the top of Malam Jabba were cool, chair lift was open but it was not that reliable but still we took the risk and used the lifts.
We reached Mingora at around 7pm and then after dinner we came back to Rawalpindi at around 1:30am.
Over all it was a great tour, security situation was excellent in all the areas, one needs to keep its original Identity Card through out the tour as the army officials keep track of the visitors (as precaution). Drugs, weapons and other illegal stuff are strictly prohibited in the area.
