Sawat valley. More beautiful than your dreams. And yes, It is that one poor country

Review by: Yahya durrani

They say the journey of a  1000 miles begins with a single step, well to be honest I think this should be modded into something more umh let’s say close-to-reality thing, like journey of a  1000 miles begins with packing your food or filling up your car’s tank with fuel or something. Well and that’s how my journey began too. Filled up my car with fuel and off we go on a journey of 211.7 miles.

Prologue:

Well the distance to kalam from Islamabad is exactly 211.7 miles or 340.8 kilometers and that is a long distance considering the fact there is a good chunk of mountainous road involved and you can’t speed up beyond 60 km/h or 40mph, ughh just do the conversions yourself okay? So anyways it is a long and tiring journey and as you can imagine it took a lot of time to get there and for those of my friends with a weak imagination, we started off 5am in the morning and reached behrain(still 20 kms (not doing conversions anymore) from Kalam) at around 3pm.

The journey of 211.7 miles:

It all began with, you guessed it, getting in the car, and driving to M1 motorway which takes us to Peshawar but our destination was Rashakai interchange. You have to take Rashakai interchange exit which is located near Mardan. We took the exit at around 7. After a half an hour drive from the exit, we stopped for breakfast since my car wasn’t the only one needing a fuel refill. The place was called D3 and after breakfast done, we were off our next stop was Dargai. At around 9 we were at dargai army check post and boy was that an obstacle to clear. 

Approximately after 20 long minutes(which felt like a frickin lifetime) of waiting in line we cleared that obstacle successfully (TING DING bonus points, level cleared) we got a well-earned reward. Yes people, we were welcomed by the beautiful curvy road of Malakand mountains. We drove through tunnels and blind curves at around 1500 feet above sea level. The road was dangerous and I guess that’s why it was so appealing. As quickly the elevation went from 0 to 1500 it came back equally fast to 0 and in a matter of 40 minutes we were back on the flat ground. Fortunately the view was not the same as before. No more boring city settlement to be seen. There were vast open fields on each side of the road, trees on the shoulder of the road formed a canopy and driving a car through that was an absolute delight. At around 11:30 we had reached a place called “batkhela”. Still pretty far away from destination. 

When the view started to change:

The GPS showed that there was a river coming ahead and river of the sawat valley are exquisite. I personally had some kinda emotional attachment to this river (Will come up to that in a bit). So anyhow after a 15 minute drive and an absolute blind curve, we saw the river for the first time, And OH MY GOD what a beauty it was. It all came back to me now. It had been 12 years since I was here last time. I used to come every year here and that is why I was in love with this place. But then the terrorists took over the place and Pakistan army started a cleanup operation there. Ever since that, the conditions were in grey over there. But now for a few years here, peace has been restored thanks to Pakistan armed forces. Coming back to the point, the river was like a reward to us. There were green meadows on each side of the river and in the reflection of the sun, since it was soon, looked like a stream of molten silver. The place where we stopped was wondrous. The river had split into two branches leaving a grassy meadow in between. On the other side of the river, there was a hill. And on the foot of the hill was a field of onions. There was no land access to the field so the harvest was brought on the backs of donkeys. Strangely enough, the donkeys were not annoyed by the fact that they have to cross the river with FREAKIN onions on their back!! So anyway we continued onto the road and instead of taking the main road we took the back road intentionally for various reasons (one of them was we were lost). So anyway the back road was worth driving on. For a while, the river was flowing very close to the road and then after a while, it began playing hide and seek with us. Appearing and disappearing before completely vanishing from the scene.

It was mid noon when we came across our first fruit farm and before I knew it, there were farms of either side of the road. Peaches, apricots, apples and pears. All of these, just hanging from their trees ripe and ready to be eaten. Since we had stopped a lot already, we did not want to waste any more time. But the peaches, GOD! They were just there. Hanging, showing off, literally saying EAT US EAT US!! And soon they overpowered us and the car stopped. Stepped out, I walked towards them like a mindless zombie. Ok one more thing here, the people of this place are so much hospitable. They didn’t treat us as customers, they treated us like guests. First off the owner of the fruit farm gave us some for free. As soon as i dug my teeth into that fruit, it exploded with juice. I had never tasted anything like that before. Oh and did I mention I plucked the peach from the tree myself? So anyway we continued on the road, and after an hour of driving with company of beautiful farms, we reached ‘saidu sharif’, the only airport of the area. From there we turned to the main road which leads to Mingora. After 40 minutes of fighting with traffic, we entered Mingora city. To avoid city traffic we took bypass and continued onto behrain road. Soon enough, we had a short reunion with the Sawat River. It had gotten narrower and faster flowing than before. We parted our ways once again near ‘charbagh’ soon after the place known as ‘fiza ghat’ which is famous for its park and fish lunch very close to river bank. Soon enough we were encountered with hilly areas once again. At around 2pm we had a quick lunch and continued our journey. 

At around 3 o clock we reached khwazakhela, the entrance to Madyan valley. Now the river joined us once more and this time, permanently. Now imagine the scene, river flowing on one side, a beautiful road leading to a valley alongside a narrow fast flowing river. The mountains on either side, lush green. I was stunned, absolutely amazed. For people like me who lack imaginative skills. I did the courtesy of attaching a picture. Thank me later.

To be continued…

Part 2, coming soon. Stay connected.