My Summer Trip~ Part 1

Hey, just cause the title might seem lousy, doesn't mean the post is lousy. Anyhow, Happy Ramadan to you all. Hope you get the best of the blessings of this Holy Month.

I'm going to start by telling you about MY SUMMER VACATION.

TO THE NORTHERN AREAS.

~See, look! The Northern Areas have lots and lots of cold water!!!~



It all began with my dad's 'trust' or NGO type thing. He had gone to Chitral in May, earlier this year, to a school. There, he arranged for the children to get tution and then be tested. Those who made it where sponsored to go to the Cadet College in the area.

Anyhow, after that, my dad said he was going to go in July too and that all of us were coming too! Of coarse, I originally wasn't going because I wanted to go to Karachi, but then my Nani Jan died (Inna Lillahi wa Inna Ilaihi Rajiun) and so I couldn't go obviously. (I mean, Karachi without my Nani???) So then we all decided to go to the Northern Areas.

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(^.^)/)
DAY ONE
14th July, 2012
Saturday
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We all got up around 5 o'clock in the morning and had a quick breakfast of tea and bread, finished all the packing and bundled into our metal gray Corolla Altis. By then, it was 6 in the morning when we officially set out!

~No, that Alto is not mine. No, we are not going to Rawalpindi or Itwar Bazaar. We're going to the Motorway!!~

And yes, I fell asleep the whole time we were on the motorway and woke up when we entered the Swat District.  There, we stopped around 10 to have the rest of our breakfast at a little place near the Swat River (I like saying Daryay Swat. Sounds cooler). The water looked kinda muddy but there sure was lots of it.

~See? There's lots of water! And that's half of my family :P  ~



From there, we got back into the car to continue the long journey. It's really hard sitting in the car all day. But then there's always something to see. Anyhow, next stop was Dir! Here we stopped at another hotel to eat lunch and change cars. The hotel was kind of cool and had lots of old-ish fancy decorations like a peacock rug that they hung on the wall. (Which doesn't really make sense. A rug for a wall???)

~Tada! Obviously the owner of the hotel adores peacocks!! And birds~

I find hotels in Pakistan very interesting. They aren't like the hotels in usa which are all nice and proper. See, my brother got this game where you're a detective in a hotel. Ever since that game, I have looked at hotels in a new light. Perhaps even this peacock loving hotel has a history of mystery..... XD

Oh yes, so we had to change cars. This was the place where we had to part with our Corolla Altis and rent another car along with a driver. At first, the idea was very... not likeable because we were originally three adults, two teens and two kids in a Corolla and NOW it would be FOUR adults, two teens and two kids in the rented car which was kind of a station wagon type thing. But it worked out in the end because my younger siblings were sent to sit at the back with the luggage, haha.

Next stop was Darosh but before you get there you have to make a choice. Will you go over the mountain or under it? With the approximate 9 mile long tunnel, the journey could be cut short by an hour or two, and so that's the route we took.

~Can't really tell what this is but that light is the end of the tunnel and you can sort of make out the dashboard and steering wheel. Sort of....Sorry, the car was moving alot so.... ~

Let's just say, I found the tunnel bit very interesting. It was rather cold in the tunnel and there were lots of potholes filled with water so all you could hear was the tires sloshing and then the bumps and ups and downs and the utter darkness. It was all very cool, alot like this ride I went to in America. It's called Rhino Rally. Since the ride only operated in the day, you can't really get the real feel of driving in this tunnel, which is one of a kind in it's own way. Besides that, I have to say it ALSO reminded me of Bionicle. You know, dark caves and those crabs the matoran people travelled on. Very mysterious stuff. Cool nevertheless. (^.^)

We reached Darosh at around 6 pm at an army headquarter, which was approximately 40 kilometers from Chitral, our original destination. Here we had to stay for the night.

The army headquarters wasn't so bad. There were lots and lots of fruit trees and my mother loves the idea of just walking by, picking a fruit and eating it. Plus there was this nice cook Babaji who was happy to entertain guests. He showed us some the stuff the British had built there and that were still standing from colonial times.

~See, this is where the big dudes from the Army eat. I meanwhile, was busy observing the poor stuffed peacock and that deer right at the back. Are they from colonial times too??~



The Babaji even showed us a 'refrigerater' from colonial times, which my mother called a 'cellar', not a refrigerater. It was a door on the floor leading to a drop down to something like a basement but we couldn't go down because the ladder was broken.



~I guess you can call this the backyard. If you go at the edge and look down, you can see the rest of the area, Darosh~

At night, we went outside to this backyard thing when the power was out. Obviously then, it was pretty pitch dark and we had to use mobile flashlights to get around but the sky was certainly something to comment on.

Stars. Lots and lots of stars. I would have put up a picture if only the stars came up on the camera. But there were ALOT of stars. It looked like somebody sprinkled them out on the sky. SubhanAllah~!

This place was overall pretty nice. If only signals came in my room. The problem was that as soon as I stepped into my room, my phone told me it was getting zero signals. And that's hard to believe when your mother is talking on her cellphone right beside you. Then we found out the fan stopped working but that was something okay because in Darosh, the temperature is much lower than in Islamabad. It fine sleeping without a fan there.

What was kind of freaky was that I woke up in the middle of the night and there was this creepy squeaking sound. I was totally freaked, I sat up and just tryed to figure what course of action to take with this mouse. I mean, the squeaks were soo regular.  In the end, I was so creeped that I woke my mother (like a little girl) and was like, "Amee! Yeh kia he!!??"

Amee just yawned and said "Koi chota sa keera makora hoga"

I decided to blindly trust her judgement and hope the creature was indeed an insect and not some sort of wounded little mouse.

~My reaction to the invisible creature that squeaks like a mouse~

~Stay Tuned to this Blog for DAY TWO of "MY SUMMER TRIP!"~

~Your Ever Awesome Blog Post-er~

~Rikudo Uchiha~