Holidaying in Pakistan for a westerner

[Toony™®]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/7090632.stm

Suicide bombs, battles in tribal areas, and states of emergency tend to put off casual tourists. But the impression such events convey can often be misleading and unrepresentative of a country as a whole.

A few days ago I was sitting in a cafe sipping best Italian espresso and reading a news magazine.

The front page was full of furious faces and clenched fists under the headline, The Most Dangerous Nation in the World isn't Iraq, it's Pakistan.

A view over the isolated Chitral Valley in north west Pakistan
Hugh Sykes journey took him to the Chitral Valley in north west Pakistan

The cafe was in a smart bookshop in Pakistan's capital, Islamabad.

I sighed and turned to the article inside.

It was a revealing analysis of some penetration of a few places in Pakistan by the Taleban and al-Qaeda.

I pondered the magnifying-glass effect of dramatic news coverage.

The suicide bomb attack on Benazir Bhutto's homecoming parade in Karachi in October, which killed an estimated 140 people, and the assault on a Taleban pocket in the Swat valley, a tourist destination, took place while I was in Pakistan.

But neither event had a noticeable effect on the general sense of security and stability where I was in Islamabad or on the road.

The notion that Pakistan is more dangerous than Iraq is absurd.

Until recently suicide bombs, murder, and kidnapping were routine in Iraq.

And there is no way I would do there what I have just done in Pakistan: take a holiday.

Never alone

I hired a car in Islamabad and headed out onto the partially completed M2 motorway that will eventually connect Lahore (near the Indian border) with Peshawar (the last city on the road to the Khyber Pass and Afghanistan).

But motorways are boring, so I left the M2 and re-joined the ancient Grand Trunk Road, which links most of the main towns of northern Pakistan.

For much of the route it is lined with eucalyptus trees, their almost-autumn leaves and silvery bark shining in the clear October sun as I drove along.

Driving in Pakistan is fast and sometimes chaotic, but not competitive.

They even hoot politely. And one great danger at home you hardly ever have to contend with in Pakistan is drunk drivers and people with concentration blurred by hangovers.

My destinations were Chitral, an isolated valley in the far-north-west on the Afghan border and Gilgit, close to China and Tajikistan.

The round-trip was more than 1,200 miles (nearly 2,000km) and included mountain passes almost half as high as Everest.

And although I was driving alone, I was hardly ever on my own.

There is public transport but not a lot. So, people walk long distances along these high stony roads and if a car passes, they hold out a hand hoping for a lift.

One morning, 12-year-old Kashif sat with me for a while.

He had been expecting to walk for more than an hour to the nearest town, to buy a new pair of shoes.

He showed me the pair he was wearing. The right shoe's upper was half split away from the sole.

Kashif spoke almost perfect English, good enough to warn me as we turned a tight bend, "Be careful, uncle, road badly damaged round next corner from earthquake."

Earthquake damage from 2005, still unrepaired.

I spent the night at a hotel next to the old fort at Mastuj, near the snowy Hindu Kush peak Tirich Mir which is 7,690m high (25,200 feet).

The hotel consists of small timber and stone cabins set in a wood of walnut trees and poplars and a plane tree reputed to be 200 years old.

I woke to autumn colours every bit as wondrous as anything I have seen in Kew Gardens or New England.

My next hitch-hiking companion was Mohammed, an English Literature student at Peshawar University.

"So you study Shakespeare?" I asked.

"Yes, and Wordsworth."

And John Donne, I wondered?

"Ah, John Donne," he raptured.

"John Donne... the poetry of love."

I do not know any Donne by heart but when I attempted Shakespeare's Seven Ages of Man from As You Like It, Mohammed completed every line as we bumped along the dusty road.

Parts of Pakistan are deeply conservative, devoutly Muslim places, and I was not signalled for lifts by many women.

But there were some.

A mother and grandmother, sitting in the back, their heads covered but not their faces and one-year-old Anis and his father Samir in the front with me.

He protested when I took a photograph of the two women but they did not object and posed happily as they waited for the flash.

When I delivered them to the Gilgit hospital where the little boy had an appointment with a heart specialist, his father was so pleased and grateful he gave me a bear hug, and a massive smile that erased his earlier stern objections to taking a picture.

I gave lifts to more than 20 people, learned how to say "no problem" in Urdu (Koi Batnahi), and had to hold back tears when two children said thank you for their lift and offered me money to help pay for the petrol.

nice read. Just proves the way Pakistan are portrayed is to narrowed minded by the media.

 

[waquas_uk]

nice read

 

[the Great Khan]

dont worry, theyll make sure we become like Iraq so they can say I told you so!!

 

[Muzy]

aww that was so touching (the bit about the little kids)

i know, the media has portrayed pakistan in such a negative way that people outside of pakistan think that there is no sense of life there, no real nature,no happiness no busy lives, how wrong they are!! i had one man on the phone recently asked me where i went on holiday and when i told him he said 'oh u must have had trouble with the taliban and stuff, some holiday that was' i was like excuse me sir you have no right to say stuff like that you haven't even seen with your own eyes and i had so much fun there you could hardly imagine with you sitting on your chair answering phone calls all day, plain git

 

[redgreen]

How to take a holiday in Pakistan

A SLIGHTLY different view

 

[ahsan17]

aww that was so touching (the bit about the little kids)

i know, the media has portrayed pakistan in such a negative way that people outside of pakistan think that there is no sense of life there, no real nature,no happiness no busy lives, how wrong they are!! i had one man on the phone recently asked me where i went on holiday and when i told him he said 'oh u must have had trouble with the taliban and stuff, some holiday that was' i was like excuse me sir you have no right to say stuff like that you haven't even seen with your own eyes and i had so much fun there you could hardly imagine with you sitting on your chair answering phone calls all day, plain git

Not surprisingly so, as the only sources that these people get their information on Pakistan are the likes of BBC (yes they published this article but they're still largely anti-Pak), CNN, Fox news, Sky news, etc.

 

[Gonzo]

Not surprisingly so, as the only sources that these people get their information on Pakistan are the likes of BBC (yes they published this article but they're still largely anti-Pak), CNN, Fox news, Sky news, etc.

How are they anti-Pakistan? The media has one aim, which is to sell newspapers or get people to watch their news channels. "Bombing in Place X" gets a lot more viewers than "Peace and Love in Place X". It's not some kind of political agenda, but more the way the media works.

 

[ahsan17]

How are they anti-Pakistan? The media has one aim, which is to sell newspapers or get people to watch their news channels. "Bombing in Place X" gets a lot more viewers than "Peace and Love in Place X". It's not some kind of political agenda, but more the way the media works.

Please check BBC more often. Articles on bombings are all right, but they invite columnists like Ahmed Rashid to write for them, and their South Asian correspondents write for them, with only political agenda and Pakistan bashing on their mind.

 

[Toony™®]

Not surprisingly so, as the only sources that these people get their information on Pakistan are the likes of BBC (yes they published this article but they're still largely anti-Pak), CNN, Fox news, Sky news, etc.

oh please bbc... are nothing like fox, cnn or sky.

being anti-pak isn't necessary a bad thing neither is it being anti - any other country.

 

[Hash]

oh please bbc... are nothing like fox, cnn or sky.

being anti-pak isn't necessary a bad thing neither is it being anti - any other country.

BBC have always been anti Pak

 

[Big Harvey]

BBC have always been anti Pak

Nice to read something positive from the BBC for a change. If more journalists were to put their prejudices aside and venture outside their hotels like the author of that article did, I'm sure there would be many more positive things written about Pakistan.

I'm not sure that the BBC has an anti-Pakistan agenda, it's just that it's only the bad things that happen there that ever make the news in Britain.

Of course that means people develop prejudices about the place. Then, when cricket teams tour, and journalists go there to cover it, they stay banged up in their hotel rooms, many thinking (mistakenly) that they can't buy their beloved alcohol in Pakistan. They only see the parts of town between airport and hotel, hotel and cricket ground, and that only from an air-conditioned bus. What they see probably looks a bit scary, and they write unflattering things, which further adds to peoples' prejudices back home. Of the English cricket journalists who went last time, only Andrew Miller seems to have got out and about, and of course his articles are only published in specialist cricket publications and Cricinfo.

Non-cricket journalists who go to Pakistan are of course only there to write about the aforementioned bad things that happen. All of this results in Pakistan being a country with a serious image problem. Pakistan is not unique in having an image problem despite being a great place to visit. A couple of other places that immediately spring to mind are Bangladesh (associated with flooding and other natural and man-made disasters), and Albania (associated with crime, poverty, and general eccentricity). The problem is that once a country has an image problem, it's incredibly difficult to shake it off. Even Michael Palin's recent series about the New Europe painted a less than flattering picture of Albania, for example. It's as if we need a supply of countries to make jokes about, and to see our prejudices confirmed.

Once things settle down, the Pakistan government needs to launch a major initiative to encourage tourism. Pakistan may not have a Taj Mahal, but it does have plenty worth seeing. Select 100 or so of the best-selling Western newspapers and/or popular TV stations, and invite their journos over on an expenses paid trip around the nicest and most interesting bits of the country. Yes, I know they don't deserve it, but you will find that most will be pleasantly surprised, will say so in the Western media, and Pakistan will not only get some positive coverage for once, but develop a fledgeling tourist industry. This will more than pay back the investment made, both in terms of revenue and improved reputation.

 

[Asim2Good]

Once things settle down, the Pakistan government needs to launch a major initiative to encourage tourism. Pakistan may not have a Taj Mahal, but it does have plenty worth seeing. Select 100 or so of the best-selling Western newspapers and/or popular TV stations, and invite their journos over on an expenses paid trip around the nicest and most interesting bits of the country. Yes, I know they don't deserve it, but you will find that most will be pleasantly surprised, will say so in the Western media, and Pakistan will not only get some positive coverage for once, but develop a fledgeling tourist industry. This will more than pay back the investment made, both in terms of revenue and improved reputation.

Good post and suggestion.

But just for your information, this year was declared "year of Tourism" by Pak Govt. but instead they gave us incidents like "Red Mosque", "clashes in Swat" and "emergency Rule"

but on positive note, some western & ppl from USA are setting up tourism business in northern areas of Pakistan.

 

[KingKhanWC]

Why did this chap need police protection in Multan? Very strange.