Islamabad in the Rain

Khalil with the girls in Marghalla Hills,
with Faisal Mosque in background

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OUR TRIP TO ISLAMABAD

By Randall Ball

We left after school Wednesday, and six hours later, we were at the hotel in Islamabad; it usually takes around 4 hours or so, but we had some traffic, some construction, a few stops for potty breaks and for dinner and gas, etc, plus Khalil (our driver) had some difficulty finding the hotel, which was tucked away in a residential neighborhood and unidentified from the outside.  Khalil is used to Lahore;  he knows it, but Islamabad is unfamiliar, relatively speaking.  He's been up there a few times, but he really only knows his way around the major landmarks.

Thursday, we went to the US Embassy.  You have to park outside the diplomatic enclave and take shuttle buses into the enclave.  The bus then drops off passengers at the various embassies.  It's a long, drawn-out process, but it also means that no one will be attacking any of the embassies directly.  Not that we ever felt threatened up there...Security is tight.

Islamabad is nice.  It's mostly residential, with wide tree-lined avenues and lots of green space.  It doesn't quite feel like Pakistan.  Auto rickshaws (or tuktuks, or chingchings or whatever you want to call them) are banned in the city, so that's different too.

It rained all day Thursday (and it was a COLD rain), but we still tried to see things.  There's a famous and absolutely huge mosque there, fourth-largest in the world (we’ve been to three of the four now!) called Faisal Mosque.  It's different from most mosques—an attempt at something modern that looks rather hideous.

Then we went up into the Margalla Hills north of the city, but the fog was settling in and the rain was getting heavier.  We couldn't see any of the famous views of the city while up in the "hills" (these hills are more like mountains, but they are the foothills of the Himalayas, so of course the Himalayan foothills are rather large).

We had a really good lunch up there, anyway.  (Food was good each place...we had some wonderful Italian food at Jinnah Market in Islamabad the next day).

We spent Thursday afternoon poking around some shops in Islamabad, around the markets.  We poked around bookstores and clothing stores, etc...but all we got were a few books for the girls and some coloring supplies (we needed rainy day supplies for the girls).

Friday, the sun came out.  It was a beautiful day.  We went to the zoo (it cost the same as the one in Lahore, but Lahore is much, much better...still, when an adult ticket to the zoo costs 20 rupees...well, that's twenty cents.  And the girls got in free, so we spent 40 cents at the zoo).

Then we headed back up into the hills, spending time at a few different viewpoint spots (great views of the city—when it’s not too cloudy or foggy) as well as Daman-e-Koh, part of the national park in the Margalla Hills.  Lots and lots of monkeys all over the hills, so the girls got a kick out of that.

We also spent quite a bit of time Friday afternoon in the Japanese children's garden, which seemed a bit strange that they were planting Japanese children, but whatever. Actually, it started off as a Japanese garden (lots of bamboo and a couple of pagodas), but then the children's playground equipment took over.  It's a huge park at the base of the hills.

Saturday, we headed back home.  It was raining again, so we opted against stopping at Rohtas Fort.  Instead, we went to the Khewra Salt Mine.  The girls enjoyed the train ride into the mine...and it's an interesting spot.  I remember the salt mine in Poland--and it's much like that.  Poland even had a little church inside the mine, made of salt...this one of course had a mosque inside, made of salt.

The road around the mountains outside Khewra was adventurous...rain pouring down, muddy roads, hairpin curves and tight squeezes...it reminded us of various videos and pics of the Khyber pass and other points north and northwest.

We were home again Saturday night, after a pretty tasty dinner at a stop along the motorway.  Definitely better than the fast food that we had coming up.  We were also treated to a very pretty double rainbow over the green fields of central Punjab.  It was our welcome home.  Most welcome.