"Baber K. Khan" (beekay)
09/01/2015 at 15:27 • Filed to: None
5
1|
"Baber K. Khan" (beekay)
09/01/2015 at 15:27 • Filed to: None | 5
| 1 |
Weekends are long and boring, money and resources are scarce, needs and wants are unlimited. That’s economics 101, enter South Asian ‘jugaar’, we run both India and Pakistan on infinite jugaars. The term jugaar has become so effective (debatable) and popular that it is steadily entering the business jargons.
So the five of us decided, we’re gonna go there, and we’re gonna cook steaks with mashed potatoes, onions, pour some BBQ sauce on them, and eat like we’re supposed to eat steaks. With knives and forks. Properly. At our camp site. Except that we only took steaks, coal and bought potatoes and onions from our rally point. And borrowed the ice box on our route out to keep the steaks preserved. And ate steaks like kebab roll. They were great though.
Pakistan has many beaches, many beautiful beaches and many beaches which are no more than a gutter. We also have a beach where you can only take a picture of your family on one side, because on other is the national atomic power plant -1, besides it is the site of another one. Yeah. We’re like that.
The popular beaches of Karachi are nothing but ruined. Not in the environmental sense but they just have too much public so the solace that we may seek, the quiet from the daily chaos that we we seek can only only be found in what we call the most beautiful beach of Pakistan. The Kund Malir Beach. Its in Balochistan, where the sunset is purple, the landscape towers over the beach like a scene of Mordor from Lord of the rings while the sands flows all over the Makran Coastal Highway like it drapes the highways in UAE. Its part Desert, its part beach and partly the most exotic landscape you will ever see.
Even at Kund Malir, we don’t go stop at the main point, rather move along 30 minutes more and experience the landscape to reach a point where you can park your car on the side of the road, take a slide down the steep sand dune trying to escape. (Picture from the road of our beach from my last trip)
We are not this disorganized, we’re okay-ish organized but it was the last weekend and the payroll was yet to run so everyone was tight on budget and no one’s car was on their name so we took the one which was on a friend’s name. It was 1996 Suzuki Cultus with a three-speed auto transmission and with the air-con on; turning which off felt like you’re pushing Nitrous to gain extra power.
We had to put our sleeping bag and towels to make the seat comfortable and not feel the chassis on our butt. At the end of the trip, we felt completed broken down as if we took one week hike through some harsh mountain ranges. This isn’t exagerated one bit.
The road is nice, there’s desert, there’s mud plains and countless mud-volcanoes on either sides of the roads if you have a car capable enough to drive just 15 minutes on the dry-mud bed to the mud-volcanoes. But for the first time, we experienced a sand-storm on that particular stretch and it was quite good actually. The car didn’t break down in the middle of it nor did the air-con stopped working.
So while we’re listening and breaking down Slipknot’s Killpop drum notes, there occurs to me that the car is like the optional requirement that you often miss out on to save out on costs. It isn’t necessary, but having it, only improves on the experience. Its all about the people who dont’ say no, and just think of getting there and then decide what is to be done.
The main Kund Malir beach (above and below)
Even towards the end, our very own James May (due to his sense of direction) got us into a troubled neighborhood where we shouldn’t be just because our guy with the Google Maps app didn’t zoom out to see which road did Google took to our destination. Always zoom out to be sure to know well.
The trip was very little about the car even though the last 150 kms were done on broken ring of the rear left shocker, it was never about it. We abused the car, we continuously drove it on 4-5K RPM and it did vent its anger by churning a lame 8-9 KMPL out of that puny 1K cc engine. But its all about the folks you go on a trip which make you over look the error of your trip. Of course, having a Mercedes Benz G500 square would definitely increase the amount of fun but it is an option.
I managed to take out about an hour or two to reflect on the trip and write it, in that limited time and effort and with little documenting, I could not put together the words perfectly to bring you this trip because work drains the humor. Cheers!
Some pictures are current, some pictures are old, some are taken by me and some by my good friend Ali Umair Jaffery.
View from our camp atop a small mountain some 20 minutes away from the beach.
Makran Coastal Highway:
MonkeePuzzle
> Baber K. Khan
09/01/2015 at 17:06 |
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this is good oppo
this if FP worthy oppo