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Page 1: Hiking in the Panjpir Rockies

Hiking in the Panjpir Rockies Page 1

My 3rd trip to the Danoi Rest House off Panjpir

Rockies in the Punjab

(Shaikh Muhammad Ali)

“For my part, I travel not to go

anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s

sake. The great affair is to move.” –

Robert Louis Stevenson

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Overview:

Travel is the best thing that could ever happen to anyone. With the advent of

October 2012 and summer long gone; I and my hiker buddies decided to revisit

the Danoi rest house and subsequently the Panjpir Rockies close to the Kotli

Sattian village at a distance of some 1.5 hour’s drive from Islamabad.

I decided the hiking trip to fall on 20th October, 2012; of course a Saturday. We

usually go hiking on Saturdays so that we can slog it out on the mountains, return

home early or late and take a good rest on the next Sunday so that we could

face the ‘Back to work – Manic Monday’ syndromes; rejuvenated.

Reminds me of the famous song by Bob Dylan, ‘Tell me why I don’t like

Mondays’. Amazing lyrics. I wake up as usual early i.e. at 5:00 a.m. Wake my

wifey up by 5:10 and then the kids followed suit. We all said our usual Fajr prayers

by 5:30 a.m. and while the kids and myself heard a beautiful recitation of the

Quran on the Idiot box, my better half prepared a sumptuous breakfast and the

snack for our hiking trip. Yes, the habit of hiking forces you to wake up early and

since you do get up early therefore there is no excuse left for you not to say your

Fajr prayer. And thank you God that through hiking, you have introduced me to

the Fajr prayer.

We leave home by 6:18 a.m. and reach the decided rendezvous i.e. the HEC

parking lot whereby we were all expected to gather and proceed on our hiking

escapade through a hired Coaster (A small vehicle bigger than a Hiace van

and smaller than a full-fledged bus which could seat about 25 passengers). We

were here by 6:32 a.m. and slowly and gradually the other hikers started pouring

in.

Iqbal Hussain (HEC House Manager), Salman (Manager Ufone), Ahtesham Ali

Raja (HEC Coordinator, NBEAC), Dr. Zia (Doctor @ RMC) and Waqar Hashmi

(Manager @ Fauji Foundation) could not make it although we waited for them

till 7:00 a.m. We thus left the parking lot @ 7:00 a.m. sharp and while taking the

Lehtrar road, reach Danoi around 8:30 a.m.

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(Dr. Abdul Shakoor, an ophthalmologist from Khushab takes the center stage)

(I, being the team lead; sitting up front with Mohsin)

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(The Captain of our coaster, whose name I continue to forget)

As usual, Tanveer, the caretaker of the Danoi guest house was not informed by

the Sawan camp office of the Punjab Forest Department; through whom I had

got the booking done and thus I had to call the Assistant of the District Forest

Officer (DFO) i.e. Tabassum to straighten out the matter. Thank God for the Cell

phone signals (which usually are nowhere to be found at such moments in life)

were strong enough for me to carry out this conversation otherwise the 18+

people who I had brought along would have roasted, toasted, fried and

chewed me in no time

We settled down by 8:45 a.m. and took this group picture before we started the

hike.

(The hikers getting ready)

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It was planned that Sabeen (My wife), Khawaja Sahib’s wife. Dr. Fahim Hashmi’s

wife along with Ayesha would stay at the guest house while we could scale the

Panjpir Rockies since this particular hike was a little strenuous for the ladies.

(The Shaikh family posing in the front garden)

Just we were about ready by 9:15 a.m. to start our hike, God greeted us with

rain and thunder. The hike being long, the weather turning its guns towards us;

there was no way we could have initiated the hike.

(Khawaja sahib and Kashif Khan exercising, just to keep the adrenaline running)

This is what my friend and an avid hiker Omair Hassan says about Danoi and

Panjpir on his travel blog:

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“Just a handful of people in Islamabad know about this exciting hiking

opportunity very near to them. Panjpir is the highest point of the Danoi Ridge in

Kotli Sattian/Kahuta. It is called Panjpir because of a shrine it has at the top.

Locals believe this was a place where five saints came and got settled. It is at an

altitude of approximately 1800 meters. In winters the top gets a few ft. of snow

each year”1.

“Danoi hike starts from the Lehtrar rest house on the Lehtrar Road. This road links

Islamabad to Bagh via Kotli Sattian. Total distance between Islamabad and

Lehtrar town is around 40 Kilometers. Rest house is behind the petrol pump just a

little ahead of the main bazaar. The hike starts behind this rest house and is

actually an abandoned jeep road. In a couple of hours, this path reaches Danoi

rest house while passing through a beautiful pine forest. Danoi rest house is at an

approximate altitude of 1300 meters”2.

“If you have lesser time, another option is to skip the first part and start the hike

right from Danoi rest house itself where a metalled road joins from Lehtrar. To

reach rest house on a vehicle, follow the Lehtrar road for a further few kilometers

towards Kotli Sattian till a place called as Thun Mor from where a road turns right

towards Baba Saeen Matka Sharif shrine in Kamra. There is also a sign board

indicating this shrine. Total traveling distance from Islamabad to Danoi rest

house is around 60 kilometers. If you are coming on your own vehicle, you can

park it here. Tell the rest house guards to take care of it, and they will do it well.

The rest house was built in 1928 and is right in the middle of the beautiful pine

forest. You can also spend the night here through an advanced booking from

the forest department office near Sawan station, Rawalpindi but they are

generally reluctant to entertain people without reference”3.

Back to the main story:

We were able to somehow convince Tanveer (The care taker) to prepare us a

hot cup of tea while the rain continued to lash the surroundings and our dreams

both.

1 http://dashtnavard.wordpress.com/?s=Danoi+rest+house 2 Ibid. 3 Ibid.

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(Tea when served hot can add color to life)

Since we did not have much to do, thus we waited for the rain to stop.

(The plaque at the Danoi rest house)

We ended up having discussions on varied subjects while the ladies had their

own chat sessions in one of the rooms. Out came the snacks, the dry fruit, the

biscuits, the juices and we all prayed God to have mercy on our souls and allow

us to come nearer to him through scaling the mountainous peaks.

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(Discussion, discussion and more discussion)

The rain finally stopped around 11:45 a.m. and without wasting any further time,

we packed our bag packs and got ready for the ascent.

(The hiking team is ready for the ascent)

We were a total of 14 hikers. Two groups were formed and off we went to

Panjpir. The faster group included Khawaja Sahib (Consultant @ Interactive

group), Sajjad Baloch (Reporter at Capital TV), Kashif Khan (Asst. Professor @ Iqra

University), Dr. Shahzada Alamgir (Sr. Manager, PTCL Academy), Dr. Fahim

Hashmi (Professor @ NUST), Ahsan Mumtaz (ERP Specialist @ PTCL), Shahid

Hussain (Lecturer @ AIOU), Farrukh Azeem (German Press Agency) and Adil

Shaikh (My older of the two sons).

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The slower group consisted of Mohsin Shaikh (My younger son), Dr. Abdul

Shakoor (Ophthalmologist @ Khushab District hospital), Atif Khan (CEO, BB

Support services), Rizwan Khan (Project Director, HEC) and myself.

(Mohsin and I trailing the pack while enjoying the scenery)

Within an hour of trailblazing, we had already lost the forward group since they

all had a tendency to walk faster while I had to accompany the slower

members of the group.

(Mohsin and I thoroughly enjoying the scenes around us)

This was bound to happen and we are used to walking in two or three groups.

The scenery started to change within an hours’ time of our walking.

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(I am posing in front of a huge boulder)

The strangest thing about this particular hike is that within an hour and a quarter

of a hike from the rest house, you start to encounter huge boulders and the

mind boggles as to where these must have come from and when.

By 1:30 p.m. we were at an altitude of around 1,500 meters and the weather

turned extremely cold while the clouds surrounded us. The temperature

dropped to below zero and the five of us could feel the chill in our spines.

(Rizwan took this picture for us)

The air became clear and the quiet of the mountains became too loud to be

ignored. It just dawned upon me that how many countries have perennially

snow-capped mountains, sprawling deserts, miles of green fields, unspoilt

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beaches, historical buildings and monuments, jaw-dropping excavation sites

and friendly people, not to speak of a wide variety of mouthwatering cuisine?

God was talking to me already. I could feel him all around us and my heart and

mind left my body and I started to fly. This is why I come to the mountains. The

peace, the serenity, the silence of it all. The out of body experience.

By 2:15 p.m. we had thoroughly lost our way but we were still ascending.

Sometimes being lost itself is fun when you don’t know where you are going but

somehow the path that you tread is where God wants you to be.

(We are contemplation our next move at the village which discovered us)

We had come across a village and we met an old man and asked him as to

where we were and how far was the Panjpir peak. He had a strange aura, the

look in his eyes was like lightening and he looked at me and smiled and

confessed that we would still have to walk another two hours if we wanted to

reach that particular peak. I was a distance of about a minute from the rest of

my group and thus had a solitary minute with this man. He asked the dreaded

question as to why I wanted to scale that peak. Why I wanted to know as to

who were the five Saints (Panj-Pir) and why did I want to meet them?

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(Resting on one of the boulders)

I tried and searched for the questions within me and sooner than later had all

the answers. We ourselves were the Panj-Pir. Atif, Rizwan, Dr. Abdul Shakoor,

Mohsin and myself. We did not have to look elsewhere. The legend has it that

the five brothers i.e. Pandava from the Hindu mythology were these five pirs.

They could have been the Panjatan-e-Pak i.e. Hazrat Muhammad, Hazrat Ali,

Bibi Fatima, Hassan and Hussain.

Since there was no way that we could have further walked for two hours and

then returned before dusk, we thus decided to stay put at this village. We did

our ablution here and said our Zuhr prayers at the small mosque of the village.

(We parked our bags and decided to have our picnic here)

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Our host, a young Haseeb Satti from the village brought us homemade tea and

made us comfortable with his stories about the village.

(Posing at the village Sattian peak with the Kashmir Mountains at our back)

We spent a good quarter to two hours here and enjoyed the crisp wind and the

serene views around us. Suddenly, all went silent; then a group of eagles shriek

above me. The wind whispered something in my ear. I smile and shake my

head. I take in as much of the breeze and the view as I can.

If this place was magical, the name no less so! Everywhere you turn, there is

beautiful scenery waiting to captivate your senses. Thankfully, the villagers here

are generally helpful and point travelers like us in the right direction.

(Mohsin posing with our host Haseeb)

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We said our sweet goodbyes to Haseeb, packed our backpacks, said our Asr

prayers and left for Danoi at 4:10 p.m. sharp and reached base camp right

around Maghreb prayers i.e. 5:50 p.m. While on the way back we were over

taken by Dr. Alamgir and Farrukh Azeem who swiftly were descending on faster

slopes and reached the base camp a good ten minutes before us.

(Rizwan throwing me his backpack)

We hurriedly offered our Maghreb prayers and started worrying about the last

group of six hikers who had reached the Panjpir peak all the way. We were

initially able to keep in touch with them on cell phones but later lost touch. Since

Adil (my older son) was also with this group; his mother started worrying since the

evening was becoming darker.

I picked Tanveer and we went on top of one of the close by hills to figure out as

to where they could have been. This was the first time that one of the hiking

party got lost and the evening was turning darker. All of us at the rest house

were tired, we had not eaten and were worried about the safety of our other

comrades.

I always make it a point that we carry three sets of ropes, torches, extra water,

whistles for my two boys and myself. It was a solace that at least the group that

was lost comprised of six people with Khawaja Sahib and Dr. Fahim Hashmi

leading the gang. They somehow managed to get down from another hill and

went astray. Lucky them that they found some people in an encampment who

guided them back on the path but it took them another hour to ascend a hill

and then come down in our direction.

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Tanveer had left me on one of the hills and went further in their pursuit. He was

finally able to track them and bring them back; safely to the guest house. They

finally reached the base camp by 7:45 p.m. Without further waiting to have the

lunch that we were supposed to have together after the hike, we rushed home

quietly at 8:00 p.m. An eerie silence engulfed our coaster and we reached the

parking lot of HEC by 9:45 p.m. extremely tired and exhausted.

We reached home by 10:15 p.m. and feasted on the dry food that we had

prepared for the hiking picnic. After dinner we enjoyed a hot cup of Qahwa

and after saying our Isha’ prayers, we slept like logs.

This was a wonderful experience of getting lost in the woods, going through the

trauma of losing our friends and then the joy of finally meeting them again and

not losing our cool during the entire process.

Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass…………It is learning how to dance in

the rain!

Shaikh Muhammed Ali ‘The Wandering Dervish’

E-mail: [email protected] Cell: +00-92-321-5072996

Sunday, 14th April 2013, 06:12 p.m. (PST)