Holiday in Pakistan (10): the worst journey of my life
The antepenultimate day of our holiday (Friday) should have been nothing special. The plan was to take a one hour flight from Gilgit back to Islamabad and visit some tourist sights in the Pakistani capital. What could possibly go wrong? In short: everything.
The morning flight from Gilgit was cancelled for some reason that was never revealed. So we had to return to Islamabad by road. The summer road was not available because there was still snow in parts. The road we took would always have been challenging, but it was more problematic because of the exceptionally heavy rain that has hit Pakistan this April.
So most of the journey was on a constantly winding road hugging the mountain side with high rock mountains on one side and precipitous rock falls down to the Indus River on the other side. The road was basically single lane so that, whenever we overtook a vehicle or an oncoming vehicle passed us, one vehicle had to move against the mountain or the edge. At regular intervals, there would be the usual potholes and then, because of the recent rain, rocks would have fallen on the road or streams would wash over the road.
I lost count of the number of police checkpoints. On two occasions during the hours of darkness, they insisted on providing us with an armed escort for a section of the road.
The opportunity for toilet stops were rare and the toilet facilities were miserable: no opportunity to sit, no toilet paper, no water to wash. The last toilet stop was about three hours before we finally reached our hotel. Lunch was from a box packed by the hotel – it left a lot to be desired – in a remote village called Sunbar Nala situated by a roaring river. Dinner was the usual meat, rice and dal during a quick stop in a town called Besham.
Even when we reached the vicinity of our hotel, our troubles were not quite over. All the usual access roads were blocked for security reasons because the hotel was hosting the New Zealand cricket team, so we had to go round and round to find an access point.
We left our hotel in Gilgit at 7.20 am and finally arrived at our hotel in Islamabad at 1.05 am next morning after an exhausting and bottom-numbing journey of almost 18 hours. The last third of the journey was in darkness and cold because we had dressed lightly, expecting to be in warm Islamabad. We only changed driver after about 12 hours.
Could any journey be worse? Well, yes.
The night before, I was struck down with a severe case of diarrhoea during which I almost passed out. In the morning, as well as diarrhoea, I had vomiting. I was so weak that, for the first third of the journey, I lay on fold-out sears arranged by helpful members of the group and just slept and slept. During the whole day, I took every opportunity to relieve myself and took one Imodium tablet after another. I ate absolutely nothing all day and drank only one cup of green tea.
It was the worst journey of my life.
And it means that, having lost two days of our holiday because of the 40-hour delay in the outward flight, we have now lost a third day.