To balam pichkari, ghur-sawari and tareefain pyari pyari - Batch'16 Class Trip.

                                        By Amna Khalil and Sania Mumtaz Tahir

Sometimes life becomes a drag, no smile is happy enough, the Imlee ki chatni not tangy enough, the rain not sad enough. You stare transfixed at the cobweb on the wall while you shower, singing is out of the question.
You sit in the cafeteria under the whizzing fan, in the heat that smells of sweat and lassi and you watch the runny raita as it flows over the mound of biryani on your plate and you wonder why your life is as pathetic as it is. All it took us to break out of the morbid spell that had us gripped was racing each other across the lush green grounds of Lockwood Hotel Murree at midnight, with our arms flung wide open ; eight imaginary aeroplanes breaking out of their bubbles.

Jahaaaaaaaz.

Be it our famous Gulabo’s epic performance on the Madhuri Dikhshit hit that has become more of our batch’s official song after the colour day, “Hum pey yeh kis ney hara rang daala”  or be it the amazing trek down from Nathia Gali, Batch 2016’s trip to Murree was perfection.
   

             
Day 1 – Friday.
Things are changing fast in K.E, the places old batches went to trips to as final year, we have conquered in second year.
Of the trip that seemed impossible , a two night stay in Murree and that too in second year.
Murree.
 Ayubia.
 Nathiagali.
Patriata.
9 hours in a bus, 28 people huddled together and 46 degrees in the sun, that’s how the journey began from Lahore with people high in spirits and full of energy.
A mile out of Lahore and the fun begins.
Music, sing-along sessions and *ahem ahem* dances. ;)
The travel was amazing; we threw our heads back and looked at the swirling mountains above.
The mountains evolved into capricious women at times; their voluptuous curves making one sigh in ecstasy as they lay, bored.
At other times they evolved into a succession of Bart Simpson’s angular heads.
And then they just evolved into sad bald mountains with sad big feet and nowhere to go.

Our three buses kept racing each other tirelessly on the highway and everybody kept each other entertained as the guys put up a couple of very interesting booty shakes , leg dances and gangnams in the buses that overtook us.

booty shakes ;)

A mid journey break at Bhera on motorway was all we needed to freshen up.


A sight hard to miss was half the class running toward the mosque and the rest sweet-tooths to Tutti frutt.
 Addicts, first timers and even haters couldn’t resist the Red Apple and Peach yogurt with chocolate syrup; anything to ward off the heat.
Parched, sleep deprived and hungry, we crawled yet again ever so slowly in the city called “The Paradise Of Pakistan”.
 Finding a route via the Ghora gali, crossing the Mall Road from behind, we landed in the best hotel there is; The Lockwood Hotel and as they proudly displayed at the front door “1880”.
                           

The rooms, the scenery, the grounds and the perfect weather of Murree were the highlights of the first night. And even though the tiredness of the journey dragged infrequently into slumber, people stayed up, not wanting to lose a single moment not even to sleep. A little ground behind the rooms with small lamps that made you remember Narnia and little yellow leaves falling from the sky, was the centre of attention of many people.

Late night talks of ghosts and that too in the hilly areas can get pretty nasty especially when you hear a distant shriek rising in the air. A black shawl wrapped around a horrible face crawling in from behind you can give you the scare you can never get over. Farhan, Ubaid, Nabiha , Amber and Rida tried their best to evoke shrieks as they sneaked into everyone’s rooms one by one.

Day 2 – Saturday.

An early loud bang on the door and a line to get in the washroom yet getting ready at the speed of light, just so nothing is missed. A very heavy naashta was followed by filling of the buses that were to take us to Ayubia. Shorter the ride, the fun it is.

Ayubia was reached as the sun reached its full glory.

From doing the typical Murree paying-a-guy-to-perch-a-falcon-on your-shoulder-and-taking-apparently-fearless-photos with it ( Like a boss, yeaah! )to getting robbed by the balloon shooting guys ( Only later and 260-ruppees-short-of-cash did I realize that they WANT you to hit all but the last balloon and being able to shoot half the rack off has nothing to do with your impeccable reflexes), Ayubia was fun.

                                  

We took the chairlifts to the highest point where white Bollywood beauties awaited us ; Sheila , Munni , Paaro. Beautiful , beautiful horses.
Sheila reminded me of my old horse “Shareef” (weird name , I know but that was one decent horse) and all the horse riding I did with abbu back in 2005 when I used to live in Kashmir.
As I mounted Sheila , the pathan guy who was supposed to take us around handed me the reins and  let the horse go saying , “Baji, aap tu rider log ho”

BAAAAAAAA!

We squealed and the horses neighed as we raced each other across the small winding tracks of Ayubia.
                         

So when they tell you that you have to walk around in the mountains for 2 hrs just to get lunch, you are like WTH? Isn’t that what we were doing just now? With the buses already sent ahead of us, we reluctantly began our trek of Ayubia National Park. If there was a way to learn to love, take a walk on that rocky trek, one falls in love with everything all over again.

       

It was the kind of beauty that no sketch can capture ; pictures put it down.

The kind that breaths in you and leaves you breathless                  

Astounding. Ravishing. Unreachable.

Beauty that makes you want to leave the safe haven of your life and take risks

That makes you want more.

And when you are away from it, it is a permanent tattoo on your dreams forever and after.

     

 
 With people perching on the trees to get their new facebooks displays done, and a few running ever so fast to reach the end, I walked the trek with Vital Signs “Aitbar” playing in my head “junglon mein bhi rastay to hain, hmein bhi koi mil hi jaye ga.
                 Two amazing surprises awaited us in Donga Gali as we completed the tiring four kilometer trek across Ayubia National Park , a cosy little Coffee Shop and a sad, extremely adorable bear cub.
         

 We rushed in as soon as we saw the inviting chalked “Open” signboard outside the Coffee Shop.
We were greeted by a sunny homely interior ; wooden benches, yellow wallpaper and a very generous aunty supporting a stylish short grey haircut.
After treating ourselves to the scrumptious homemade fudge cake, we ordered cold coffee and managed to score complementary banana muffins and Quishe.
Quite a find, that little café was.
                

    
  
 Finding the sad baby bear was yet another experience as Sharoon Samuel so beautifully puts it, 

“The completion of the Pipeline walk from Ayubia to Dunga gali gave us the best surprise of the tour, a bear cub lying inside one of the bird cages. Luckily the guy let us into the cage. There it was, daintiest thing on this planet, craving for the tender touch of its mother. Tears in its eyes. Breathing heavily.

Now was the time to show our medical skills. Gave it some milk. The way it tried to nibble the feeder was just priceless. Its small harmless teeth were white as pearls. Paws enormous, half the size of its legs and its nails, fierce like those of predators.

Drank the milk to its content and then slept. Just beneath the shadow of our legs. Free from all the fears. The feeling one gets only under the shadow of one's parents.”


      




So THE lunch we walked for quite surprisingly spilt the class into two; the burger bachay and the roti bachay. Roti bachay were a lot less than the burger class, and were better off because the chicken karahi was awesome.

And Sir Izhar with another brilliant idea of his to take to the highest point of Nathiagali came and we took the steepest road there was. With our bus unable to make a sharp turn, the girls jumped out of the bus in midway and walked the rest of the way.

The hotel that awaited us was rich in its lawns and a trekking pathway that we took to carve our names on the stones at the bottom of it. 

Having been told to walk the way down to Nathiagali instead of taking the bus, while the whole class took to the road, we made our own way through the mountain.

Ain’t nothing better that a life risking adventure, I tell you.

Back in buses, back to Lockwood.

    

THE BONFIRE

The bonfire was one of a kind, it kicked off with a lonesome bundle of logs in one of the many cosy lawns of Lockwood , with people reluctant to leave their chairs and sit on the ground , half the girls still locked in their rooms smearing on glosses and half the guys having dinner down on the ever famous, ever cheap Mall road.

        

The actual dhakka-start was the moment the little log pile toppled over and sent sparks flying through the dark night. Hooting marked the beginning of an awesome night with the “chitta” ablaze.

                     

With the “wow” and “alif” stealing the show , everyone came up with their most innovative of songs. While Haroon Rashid Gill enthusiastically sang the PTI anthem ,  Hafsa sent everyone roaring with laughter as she began her “yay” try with “YO YO Honey singh!!!”

Sajid Rehman stole the bonfire with two jaw-dropping performances , back to back.

                                       

i got the moves like Jagger.

With Hamza Aftab making good use of himself as a laptop holder , Sajid set the bonfire ablaze first with the perfect imitation of Madhuri and later with his “Fevicol”.

Fahr began his famous welcome wala “Aey khuda meray abbu …” , only to find out that the girls had already sang it.

Yumna’s “gallan gorian dey wich toye” that was applicable to almost every letter we got.

Gondal’s daring “Mein hoon maghroor lela” in her hooting-cum-shrieking-stricken awaaz to someones request of having a Gondal performance also induced huge shouts.

The annoying Pindi Boyz$s ( and girlze$ too , which btw our classfellows took quite a fancy to) decided to gate-crash our bonfire but were sent back disappointed by the matchless performances by our very own legends Hafsa Ashfaq and Sharoon Samuel.

Aftab acted yet again as a laptop holder as Arsalan  was urged to do his famous Gangnam style , truly not even PSY can move like he can.

Finding the courage to sing between the already established singers, Asad and Amir performed two awesome numbers.

While others went inside to watch “The law abiding citizen” , the rest of us stayed up till five in the morning playing dumb charades.

Day 3 began as THE Bodla declared his team the winner and as the sun made our sunken eyes( from having stayed up all the night) twitch.

Day 3 – Sunday
They say that only the most comfortable of people can sit together in silence and this we experienced as our group of six sat in utter awe as we watched the sun slowly yawn awake from its quiet slumber and push aside its blanket of morning yellow over the pine trees on the mountains.
After watching the sunrise we went to sleep.
Packing our bags was the hardest ordeal , nobody wanted those perfect three days to end.
The plan was to go to Patriata first and take the chair lifts and the cable cars all the way up and then  head to Islamabad and have lunch on the way back.
The chair lifts were a unique experience.

We had the most hilarious comments shouted out from the opposite end of the chair lifts as we were pulled up. 

With the fattest, ugliest , macho-est , cheapest guys perched on the chair lifts coming back , some of the comparatively decent comments were as follows,

    

“Baaaji aap ney vote kis ko diya?”

“Mein idhar hoon, neechay kis ko dekh rai ho , scenery tu yahan hai !” “Oye bhains” “Islamia university ka hun , bas pyar chhaiye” “Hamari bhi photo ley lo , soni jai” One last comment made our day as we came back. “Saari pyari bachiyan tu neechay ja rahi hain, ham upper kis ko dekhnay ja rahey hain?” Patriata has to be the one place with the cheapest of the lot , a guy with an orange beard sang out the entire”Aaj Kaala Jora Pa” to my friend who had made the obvious mistake of wearing black. ROFL.

 With our C.R, waving “3bje, 3bje” from outside our cable car window, we made the journey to the top and back in less than half an hour just to make it to the buses in time. The slight stolen glimpses we got only left us with a message that “get your lazy ass on the chair lift as early as possible.”

The saddest part of the trip was to get on the buses to go back to the life we had forgotten; k.e. still, fun never leaves you when you have the slowest bus and you want to dance but the driver insists on driving past the boys bus every two minutes, with boys shrieking needlessly at the girls only to have them not respond.

Home. Hostel by 3 am.

Sad yet serene.

Happiest trip in the history of epic trips. 

SPECIAL THANKS TO
GONDAL
            

HAMZA PARAS

Hamza Paras- our "phoolan devi's"

SIR IZHAAR
SIR SOHAIL

          

MAAM ANIQA
MAAM SIDRA.

Pointing homewards.