I tried to visit Kaghan in June 2006 but only got as far as Balakot only to be told that due to the heavy rain which had caused landslides no buses willbe going to Shogran.
I hope ot be able to visit Shogran this summer insha allah!
Kaghan Valley recovered
Footloose, NOS, The News International
Going up North before the tourist season set in
By Najam U Din
Visiting a tourist destination prior to the travelling season has many advantages – the tranquility before travellers descend in their droves, affordable hotel accommodations and availability of local transport and tourist guides. It was partly with those thoughts that we set off for Galiyat in mid-April.
We left and were about to reach Nathiagali, a city destroyed by the October 2005 earthquake. Among other things my wife and I wanted to learn about the fate of the friends we had made on previous trips and whom we had not heard from since. A tragedy of such an enormous scale understandably leaves its mark on memory. Yet in planning to visit the Kaghan valley we assumed the infrastructure would have recovered sufficiently, with the passage of almost three years and generous help from the world, including billions of dollars pledged at donors’ conference.
Reaching Balakot at 2 pm I thought we should make a dash for Naran. We skipped lunch and did just that. The quake’s effects were instantly visible as soon as we left Balakot’s destroyed houses and massive landslides that had obliterated the road along with the precipitous mountainsides that nestled it. The 93-km road from Balakot to Naran is the most obvious giveaway. For as long as I remember, sections of that road have been in some stage of repair or reconstruction, frequent landslides being a regular feature of the terrain. But this time it was different. The earthquake wiped out around one-third of the familiar asphalt strip, which was also under construction.
The road to Naran was dotted with reminders of the destruction that befell the valley in 2005. Collapsed houses and scores of streams, including one close to Paras village, simply ceased to exist when tremors shook the earth, opening up chasms that swallowed the water. In their stead streams appeared in places where there were previously none. The under-construction bit of the road was open to traffic but was really nothing more than a path of unpaved stones and mud, ideal perhaps for an all-terrain vehicle but a real trial for cars. The snowfall had been unusually high last winter, we were told, evidenced also by the mass of glaciers along the road, at times blocking it.
Throw in a nasty rain and hailstorm, as we encountered that day, and the car driver should frankly find a spot to park safe from landslides and go to sleep. It was tempting to stop for the night at a hotel along the way but we drove on. Before the earthquake, the journey to Naran usually took a little over two hours. The road’s condition, weather, landslides and my keenness for photography turned it into an almost five hours journey.
But nothing could prepare us for what awaited upon our arrival. Never in our lives have we felt so ‘cheated’ and ‘plotted against’ as we did on reaching Naran that day not finding it quite as we had imagined. Twenty-two buses (I counted) full of students from a private university in Lahore had shattered the tranquility of Naran still struggling out of its winter slumber. The students, all boys, had also taken up every available room in every hotel that was open. Their buses were parked on the entire length of the town’s only road and one could hardly drive without running over one or two students. They were going to stay for three nights, hardly an ideal prospect for someone looking for solitude. We left for Shogran the next morning which turned out to be the hardest bit of drive on a steep and perpetually winding road occasionally blocked by boulders.
But once we got there we found a deserted and peaceful Shogran. We discovered that many of the people we had befriended on previous visits including drivers, guides, restaurant owners had perished in the earthquake. Almost everyone we came across in Balakot and the Kaghan Valley had lost family to the calamity. A teenager working for the NWFP Forests Department in Shogran has been employed instead of his father who died in the earthquake. A store owner there had buried eight members of his family after they managed to retrieve the bodies from his collapsed house. Locals told us the wooded areas had escaped the worst landslides caused by tremors and many had learned the lesson of trees’ usefulness the hard way. Yet the Forest Department officials we came across did not expect wood theft to end anytime soon.
There has been resurgence in a region where tourism is the principal source of earning. Hotels and restaurants have been the quickest to rebuild and resume work and most owners pride themselves at earning amounts in three months of last year that were to sustain them until the tourism season opened again.
The downside to being the early bird is that the locals aren’t ready for you yet. You find the town has run out of bread and last year’s last tourist gorged on Shogran’s last chicken. “The road would be ready as soon as the season opens, Inshallah,” was what we heard at roadblocks as we waited patiently for the heavy earth-moving equipment to clear the path of heaps of construction debris or landslides. It’s either the altitude or the clean air, but Shogran always seems to have a different sky, showcasing the entire Milky Way in all its luster and glory. As with the Saiful Maluk Lake in Naran, Sarri and Paya in Shogran were only accessible on foot, jeeps and mules being of little use until the thick snow relented. The forest was as fresh, serene and brimming with life as ever. A thick coat of snow hides the huge heaps of garbage the local hotels conveniently dump in the forest on the edge of Shogran, to the excitement of rummaging armies of monkeys.
On our way back we were marvelling about the things that earthquake could not change. My wife said she wouldn’t expect human habits to miraculously disappear after an earthquake. Traits like constant ogling at women by tourists and natives alike were alive and well, she said. A woman still cannot travel in safety anywhere in Pakistan without a male chaperon. We stopped looking for constants.