3. Gurikot – A Dream Come True!

ya ya .. it’s just NOT perfect

I can start well while having this yummy taste of that one piece of pizza still in my senses and my mouth still watering, being one of my initial tries I baked only one regular size pizza and there are four of us to eat; being the host I let my hubby and his friends eat the rest. Sadly so, I plunged to bake one today as I got chedder and mozerrella cheese all the way from Islamabad, 18 hrs of drive away, after the wait of one month as the cheese available here, in the only visible shop, in my neighbourhood is the ‘happy cow’, processed cheese, which can happily make me a cow but not so happily a yummy pizza. Yup, this is Gurikot to you.

A feeling known to all of us is a feeling of dreams coming true, yes, very seldom, but dreams do come true, in my case,  they do more often, as I always say and the people around me can complete the sentence before I do is that I feel I have given God my own script and so he has made my life exactly like that, well, now I believe that’s a little exaggeration because I so want something for a year and I’m still waiting for God to answer my prayer. He must be planning to add the adjective ‘amazing’ to that ‘something’ so it’s taking longer to come.

Huts surrounding the beautiful Shangrilla lake, Skardu

Coming back to dreams, when I got married to my dream man we came for holidays to a place called Skardu, one of the most beautiful places in Pakistan. I wished then, around four years back, to have our posting in a similar place, where I would have a beautiful wood cottage, surrounded by the snow peaked mountains, a wide lawn, an orchard full of fruit trees, a river running right in front of the orchard, where weather stays pleasant 24/7, and you can witness some good amount of snowfall in winters. Coming from plains of Punjab, snow is a heavenly luxury for me. Well, this is also Gurikot to you.

The last snowfall of the season, now its lush green.

 

After two months leave, on completion of our deputation in KSA, Kingdom Saudi Arabia, we were told about our new destination, ‘Gurikot, Astore’. It was the first time when I heard this ‘Name’. The first reaction was of course a relief as I was going to be with my husband. It was a dream come true, because after a long period of deputation we were expecting either a war zone or at least a non family station, although work here’s very hard for my hubby yet he’s loving the place. The first thing that I did right after receiving the posting order was to Google the place, and the information I found was so huge, so plenty that I could grasp that in less than a minute. There are so many beautiful things about our country but to all my sadness, the world only knows what’s bad here. Today you go Google about it and you will find that stuff, and it’s actually so huge, so plenty.

Road to Gurikot – Does that remind you of the show on TV, “The Deadliest Roads”??

Anyway moving back to the dream place, there’s no airport over here, of course there’s a helipad. If you are coming here from the capital, Islamabad, you land in a city called Gilgit and from there you find an HMT, hired mechanical transport, if you are not some high official or something something you definitely cannot get a helicopter, dream on. You can also come by road to Astore through a bus with an adventurous driver who loves to risk his life and delightfully yours. Weather here is akin to Pakistan cricket team, predictably unpredictable, conditions do not allow regular flights, and sometimes plane has to go back without landing. Moving on the curvy crooked road, on one side of which are mountains and on the other, deep down, the ferocious river Astore, this road definitely is a marvel of creation. I salute the people who work here, clear the roads, maintain communication, and protect the border. Sometimes the road gets so narrow that you feel that u will move right into the river and sometimes the snow clad peaks are so close that you feel that you will stretch your arm and touch them. You probably will also feel, sometimes, that this is the last journey of your life. Well that’s Gurikot … ahem … road to Gurikot for you

On my arrival I was served with ‘trout’, that’s found in freezing cold waters and it swims in the opposite direction of the water flow. I’d never eat fish even in my dreams but that day I loved it, and now eat it quite often. I’ve heard it’s one of the best fish, probably it is also the cook who does wonders with the recipe, please don’t be envious, it’s the only thing that he cooks good. So, as soon as I could, I got over the kitchen myself, now he only makes me fries, cuts veggies and helps me with other chores in the kitchen. One thing he also does great, being a local, he owns a cow, so he can provide us with some fresh milk, two glasses of hot milk daily which he says will not last longer especially not in summers. Yea we asked for it, and to our surprise he said it cannot be arranged as here they do not consider it as a good gesture to sell and buy milk, they give it for free to friends and relatives but never sell it. It was quite strange to me and sad too because my only source of fresh milk is gone on leave, and I can only have it in my dreams. I created a little controversy recently by putting a picture,  on my Facebook profile, of cooked Markhor ( Himalayan Ibex, you can call it), it’s a goat like animal found in places like these,

Markhor Cooked

national animal of Pakistan, and an endangered species, hunting it can cost you loads of money in fine. Still, some people get this extremely costly licence to kill it. The money is used in their care and protection. I told my friends, had it come alive to me, I would have given him some grass to eat and some water, but poor Markhor came to me in cut cubes and I had limited options. Now this is specifically Gurikot to you.

My husband is terribly busy, we cannot even complete a single sentence of our conversation that his official phone rings, he also has to go ahead to detachments for days and I have no single lady in my neighbourhood, yup not a single woman or any neighbour as such. A good number of helpers at my service,  a baking oven that I gifted myself once, my books, my prayer mat, my Quran, this centuries old dial-up connection, a land-line, a satellite dish T.V with majority of Indian channels showing advertisements of products like ‘Shakti Prash’, trust me you don’t want to know what it is, and some Ayurveda medicine for knee problems, and ‘HBO’ and ‘Star Movies’ have always ‘Rocky’ and ‘Mummy’ to show, and the likes, yea these were good movies in their times but it’s not that you can watch them like forever. I have some unwanted guests too, every day I meet a new one from their family, they are called beetles and flies. I am happy I have not yet encountered the alive rats, but yes, I had arranged the funeral of the two dead ones I found. My first project was to get all the holes blocked in the house, because I cannot bear such creepy creatures even in my dreams. So, that’s my Gurikot to you.

And hey did I tell you, you see ‘Nanga Parbat’ on your way to Gurikot, ‘the killer mountain’, 8^th highest peak in world and deadliest, and you can see it from Gurikot as well, but all the mountains seem so similar to me so I could not find it, probably it was hidden behind the clouds . Yes this Gurikot is in the northern areas of Pakistan where Karakoram and Himalayas exist and where K2, the second highest peak in the world, also happens to exist.

one of Khurram’s OFFICIAL trips

My husband is quite successful in making me jealous of even his ‘boring’ official trips which he has around the town like visiting Deosai, the second highest plateau in the world, after the Tibetan Plateau, on snow vehicles; these are closed for tourists now and open in summers once all this snow is cleared up. Then, going for a VERY tough job at Minimarg, a beautiful small village. He has promised to take me to the neighbouring places in summers and I hope to share some more tales of this place called heaven.

Let’s keep our fingers crossed and keep dreaming because dreams do come true, sometimes.

2. A Bird Out Of Cage!

A girl living in a small Barbie doll house, with her parents and brother, with decent living, has a normal life, playing with dolls chatting and giggling with her girlfriends, helping her mama with the house hold chores, doing her school work and dreaming of becoming a doctor or teacher suddenly enters from a carefree childhood to a youth full of fancy. The ideals in her society make her believe that the ordinary life she is living will suddenly transform into a fairy tale when a prince charming will come and take her to a land though alien and distant yet promising blessings uncountable. It’s not due to the fairy tales like Cinderella that she had been reading but the verbal prayers of her distant aunts and the naughty bugging of the elder cousins and everyone else she encounters growing up that she believes that the ultimate goal of her life is meeting her prince charms.

She gets ready, all prepared in her exotic dress and heavy jewels at a tender age, her prince charms comes with promises of keeping her like a ‘china in his hands’ takes her away, away from the chirping and giggling and her parents and siblings, from her Barbie doll house to a land though fulfilling a part of her dreams being alien and distant but, full of blessings uncountable? She’s yet to find.

Aware of all the possible consequences; compromises, patience, sacrificing ego, hurting self esteem, giving, she sticks to the belief she had grown up with. She enters this land whose identity is still ambiguous, considering herself to be a princess not less fragile than ‘china’.

Innocent and youthful, she takes the leap of years, in all this process of first longing for the prince charming and then finally becoming his china princess she forgets that she is not mere china, she is a human possessing a heart, and not mere heart, a mind too. She encounters reality which is far away from her understanding and she finds herself tracked in this net. No escape!

Dwelling in her comfy home, a girl is pampered and protected in her mother’s arms, in her father’s advice and in the playful teasing of her brother. She is taken care of, she is taught to live in shelter. She is never alone; she has never experienced the sour taste of the outside world. Now her prince charming is her cozy home, her companion, her love, her centre. She longs for him, his care, looks at him as her benefactor.

She has listened to the sweet melodious songs of birds under the blue sky and rock music of the honking cars, she’s amused by the exuberant city life and has wondered how life would have been if she had the feathers to fly, if she had the courage to plunge into the big sea of world, her own, yet distant from experience.

She has an observation, an opinion, a macro look at the affairs, but the filthy lot in the outside world has a taste alien to her. A day, stepping out and wandering alone leaving behind the world of her cozy home, the centre of her life, encountering the waves of the big sea, encountering the society people all alone by herself, in the bazaars, in the offices, in the  streets, she tastes the bitterest of all tastes. She seeks protection of her home not the breeze outside, she seeks dependence not independence, she seeks shelter not feathers.

She comes back, comes back to her home, her companion, her love, her centre, to his cares and blessings.

1. About Me!

Well currently I’m at  home, have been working and have plans to work in future as well, married to an army officer so one thing that I cannot escape is moving to new places, meeting new people and having wonderful new experiences. This is something that excites me and makes me enjoy my life to the fullest. I have travelled about a dozen countries and wish to visit plenty more. I have recently shifted, with my husband, to a small, pleasant, far flung beautiful town in northern areas of Pakistan from the dusty capital, Riyadh, of Kingdom Saudi Arabia. I love travelling and meeting new people but my motivation behind coming here is writing. I have never given it a serious try before but now I’m inclined to learn to express my feelings, thoughts and opinions through writing and getting some response too. I love drawing, taking pictures, arts and crafts, interior decor, little bit of reading sometimes, playing Call of Duty Modern Warfare and cards (winning by luck only), have written a few poems too, these days I’m trying my luck at baking and so far the expedition has been delicious. Self-praise. I’m totally new here and have no clue about what blogging is, hope I get to learn something.

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