March 18^th, the tour begins. Im at the airport on my way to attend a cousins wedding in Lahore, the wedding is on the 19^th and valima on the 20^th. I took a weeks leave from the office just to be there. It seems as if I only get to go to Lahore for weddings cause the last time I went there, it was to attend another cousins wedding and that was more than 3 years ago. Anyways I reached Lahore early morning and spent the afternoon & evening at my cousins place. I did went to my khalla’s house for a short time in between and to Liberty aswell (went with my mom and went there to roam around and kill time). A dholki was also planned for that night which was okay but the real fun was after the dholki when we all sat down and talked and talked for hours and than went to Purani Anarkali for kulfis and that after 2 am. We came back home after 3 and I straight away went to bed.

The wedding was next day and I ended up spending most part of the day at home and hardly needed to do anything as far as the wedding arrangements were concerned (they were all taken care off). The nikkah was scheduled for the afternoon after Zuhr and my afternoon was spent there. The guy who gave the khutba was really impressive. Hez a professor at LUMS and came only cause my cousins requested it to him. Let me tell u, the guy was really impressive he holds a degree from Columbia University and has spent the greater part of his life in the US and came back after graduating and spent 7 years in a Madressah and learned about Islam (and here we are who take this religion of ours for granted). That guy surely has the knowledge and the commitment towards Islam. Anyways back to the wedding, the venue was nearby and it was good (I mean the whole wedding was good) and I played the role of a driver to some extent and let me tell u one thing, the traffic there sucks…seems as if the city is filled with jangli’s with no road sense…and people say the traffic here in Karachi is bad…lets see them drive in Lahore and say that again. The food at the wedding was damn good. People say that therez something in the water there which increases ur appetite and that’s exactly what happened with me, I ate a lot more there than I usually eat here and those who have seen me know that Im not a big eater and have a less than average appetite (don’t count my appetite for Pizza’s). Therez a strict ban on serving meals at weddings here in Karachi but no such strictness seems to be in place over there and serving food at weddings is a common spectacle there. I have nothing to complain cause I enjoyed eating those meals J.

Monday 20^th March: The valima was tonight and again I spent the whole day doing nothing while I should have been out roaming the city. I couldn’t do that cause didn’t have anyone who falls into my age group to go with, the only cousin of mine who could do that was busy with his studies. Finally the sun and valima time was approaching. We all got dressed and went to the valima, all had a little chit-chat and again fed our self to the delicious Lahori meals and again the food was damn good especially the kabab’s.

Tuesday 21^st March: The wedding scene ended and my mum and sister were going back to Karachi in the evening. This was the first day I really went out, went to LUMS with my cousins and was totally impressed with it, the campus is just too good and u don’t really need to check out the studies there, u can hear applauses about it from everyone in the industry. My cousins gave me a tour of the campus which lasted for more than hour including the time spent at the lab burning the pics taken from my camera to a CD. Once that was all done I was back on my way home. After an hour of getting home I went to drop off my mom and sister to the airport. Oh I forgot to mention that there was another dinner at my mamu’s place (that’s where I was staying) and I after coming from the airport that’s where I was.

Wednesday 22^nd March: There was nothing much to do and I spent most part of the day at home watching TV. Later in the evening I went out for dinner with my mamu, mami, cousins and their kids. We all went to the food street, not the Gwalmandi one but to another food street at Purani Anarkali.

Thursday 23^rd March: I had a long bus ride waiting ahead of me. I was going to Islamabad through Daewoo Bus Express at 12. I reached the bus stop at 11:45 and just imagine my luck, I got the last seat on the bus which was at the end. There goes my comfi ride…well that’s what I thought but it wasn’t that bad. The trip from Lahore to Islamabad took 4 and a half hours. I was in Rawalpindi by 4:30 pm and from there I had to catch a shuttle to Islamabad. I ended up waiting half an hour for that cause I missed the first one. By 5:30 I was in Islamabad and my chachi picked me up from there. I went over to my Taya’s house. I saw their new home for the first time and it deserves every praise u get to hear about. The last time I was in this city was 7 years ago and back than I was just too young (and stupid) to enjoy being there. Even though I was born in Islamabad and spent the early years of my life there, I never enjoyed being there however this time it was different, I loved being there. Anyways back to thursday, my cousins at whose place I planned on staying were in Karachi (my home town/city) but luckily another cousin of mine reached Islamabad from Lahore, a few hours after I came so I went over to their place and spent the night there, watched a movie and stayed there.

Friday 24^th March: I woke up early (11 am is early for me on an off day) and after breakfast went with my cousin to pick my chachi & cousins (they were also in town from Karachi) and had a fun time teasing my cute little cousin who was just shocked to see me (wish I had my camera with me to capture that look on her face). After that it was Namaz time and I was on my way to the Mosque (don’t give me that shit about using the word mosque). Once we were back from prayers, we had dinner and it was after that when the real trip to Islamabad started (all thanks to my cousins). We went for a drive in city and I took loads of photographs (thanks to my bro for sending me my own digi-cam). We first went to Quaid-e-Azam University from where we picked up another cousin of mine (yes I have a lot of cousins). After picking her up, I was showed all the major buildings and monuments that are in Islamabad and I took a picture of each and everyone including the Margalla Tower (the building that fell down in the tragic earthquake that struck our great nation last year). We also went to Damn-e-Koh (that’s a mountain / peak) in Islamabad and that’s where I took a lot of photographs.

Later that night we went out for dinner and till that time, I had it all planned out… I was going back home to Karachi early morning from there but as soon after that I got a call from my cousin in Lahore, who came by road all the way from Karachi in her car, that his son is sick and she’l be going to Karachi by air and someone has to bring her car back with her husband and that someone is me…so I immediately cancelled my seat and started planning for the morning. Went to bed early as I had to catch an early bus to Lahore.

Saturday 25^th March: Woke up very very early at 5:30 am… my cousin dropped me off at the bus terminal and I took a 6am bus to Lahore… it wasn’t full so I got a seat in the middle and spent half of the trip sleeping and half of it watching a movie which I had already seen it… I reached Lahore at 11am…took a shower, had a breakfast cum Lunch and we were on our way to Karachi by road. This was perhaps the most adventurous part of the whole trip. I drove almost 40% of the trip and the road was better than okay, the average road speed throughout the trip was more than 100kmh. It rained heavily on the way for almost an hour and only because of that we lost 3 hours of the trip in the flooded streets of Multan. Once we were out of Multan things went smoothly as u can expect, we didn’t cover as much distance as we were expecting.

Sunday 26^th March: The road trip continues… at 2am we were in Rahim Yaar Khan, we were 4-5 hours behind schedule (didn’t have one). Over there we had a cup of tea and finding a place for that was tough, everything was closed at that time in that small city. We also planned on spending the night there but instead decided to drive at night as well but people there advised us not to travel at night as the area from Sadiqabad to Sukkur is very dangerous to travel on at night. That’s because a lot of robberies take place over there at night. We decided to listen to there warning and stopped over at Sadiqabad. Since we only had to sleep for a few hours as it was already past 3am and sun was about to rise, we decided not to get a room and instead spent those hours sleeping in Mosque adjacent to a Total’s Petrol Station. We only slept for a few hours and were back on the road at 5am…covered a lot of distance in the morning and crossed Sukkur, Hala, Hyderabad and a few other places and reached Karachi at 2:30pm. It was good to be back home, the dugged up roads, garbage dumps, hot weather, etc. were all the sites I had missed over the past week.

The conclusion: The trip was more than an adventure I could have dreamed about…had a fun time in Lahore and Islamabad. The only regret I had while in Islamabad was that I didn’t get to drive my Taya’s Mercedes but don’t worry will do that the next time Im there. The drive from Lahore to Karachi was the best part of all…Iv decided that Im going to do this one more time and will drive from Karachi to Lahore and beyond…soon