Footloose, NOS, The News International
What does Pakistan have to lure intrepid travellers with?
By Zahrah Nasir
“Coffee please”
“No coffee this morning.”
“Okay bring tea with toast and an egg.”
“No egg. Jam?”
The scene a brand spanking new, middle of the budget guest house in Lahore, and coming right on the heels of having flushed the toilet only to flood the bath with sewage, not a pretty sight by candlelight as the power, inevitably off, was enough to make anyone scream and even the most diehard of tourists run away as far and as fast humanly possibly. But, outside was just as bad with taxi drivers ready to fleece you, grubby children to pull on your clothes demanding cash, others waiting to pick your pocket if possible and everywhere, if you happen to be female, thousands of male eyes undressing your every move.
From the Arabian Sea in the south to the Khunjerab Pass in the north Pakistan, is not what certain governmental departments would have the world believe. It is definitely not for general tourists, and the ludicrous idea which circulates from time to time of advertising ‘The Land of the Pure’ as an international tourist haven, is nothing but pie in the sky hogwash.
Yes. This gloriously diverse country of approximately 888,000 square kilometres has everything a tourist could dream of in the form of scenery: a southern coastline of almost 1,000 kilometres long, vast deserts, luxuriant plains, spectacular mountains and upland valleys, and one of the four riverine cradles of early civilisation — the Indus, along with numberless sites of historical interest which are mostly in exceedingly bad repair. What we don’t have though are the types of either a suitable — make that reliable — infrastructure on which tourists following tight schedules inevitably depend on; taking in the sights unmolested, walking where they will, dressing as they are comfortable with and, even more problematic, the ability to communicate on the level they are ultimately paying for let alone the forms of nightlife some of them expect. This is not to say we should ape the money-minting tourist destinations of the Mediterranean region for example. Far from it, as Pakistan does have its own mystique to offer if we can ever get our heads together to package this on a commercially viable plate without everything sliding off into oblivion at the first hurdle.
Catering for adventure tourists, those wanting to head off to mountaineer, hike, track wildlife, survey wild flowers or even go fishing has in the past been undertaken on a very small scale as have historical tours. But there is not much filthy lucre to be extracted from the class of tourist who either has generally paid well in advance for transport, accommodation and food, with just enough spare cash left over to purchase a few tawdry souvenirs or backpack travellers with no fixed destination or agenda, who risk life and limb leaping on and off public transport hauling their worldly goods along in backpacks. They are highly unlikely to inject any visible amount of cash in to the local, let alone national economy.
With Pakistan being the subject of those infamous ‘travel advisories’ almost the entire world over, with the once upon a time popular tourist destinations of Swat, the entire North Western Frontier plus Balochistan well and truly off the agenda for indigenous let alone foreign tourists, what on earth does the country have to lure intrepid travellers with? It’s no use flying of the handle to say, “What about India? How can they attract tourists by the score?” Our neighbour apparently knows the rules and plays the game far better than us.
Despite all of the above though, some of the foreign tourists who do reach Pakistan and survive to tell the tale, actually relish the experience — it is certainly very different from the countries they call home and are keen to return to further expand their horizons. So, if the monetary grail of tourism is ever to have a chance of getting off the ground here, surely we should ask those who have been and gone to help us locate the invisible key.
caption
Our own mystique.