Hotel Elites Nathia Gali

... it's a good thing I'm indoors!<br>Read my book for a few hours. Discovered they had a washing machine out back and were washing my clothes now...<br>Went to the Internet cafe... said goodbye to the owner when I finished (I know he was sad to see me go), came back for dinner. Reminded Ashraf about getting me a lift to the airport tomorrow and eventually got my clothes just before falling asleep! FINALLY!

... I didn't like the look of my driver but he turned out to be fine.<br>Took us about 1.5hrs to get to Tenmarg where we picked up a guide called Shakeel, then drove to Gulmarg and the foot of the Kongdoori mountain. Shakeel appeared to be an honest guy, although he clearly didn't mind queue jumping. He got my cable car pass for the first half of the mountain and walked straight to the front of the queue of about 50 people waiting to get on. I'm sure at one point he ...

... and camera.<br>I managed to briefly speak to Ashraf who was up at 7am to collect the (freshly slaughtered) lamb! This was to be cooked in 29 different ways from what he said by the cooks they had hired who were busy working in the back part of the garden.<br>After a while more talking to Zahn he asked me to come and sit inside. I was a bit reluctant as I had never been invited to that area of the house but I eventually obliged ...

... side of Dal lake so took a good 40mins to get to. The garden itself was smaller than Nishat being only 3 'steps' but it had the advantage of a better view over Srinagar as it was on a hill (though not as good as Shankaracharya).<br>I once again heard lots of Guji tourists while walking around the gardens and taking pictures. After about an hour I left and asked the driver to take me to the lake. I decided on another shikara ride on this side of the lake as it seemed very ...

... why I was not taken here before!<br>We have some tea and Bashir orders us some somosas even though I am not hungry. He then negotiates a rickshaw for 200Rs to take us to the top of the hill and then on to a museum he wants to take me too which will apparently have good photo opportunities for me (he's cottoned on to the fact I like to take pics so uses this to encourage me). He also mentioned earlier that he was going to take me to his friends ...

... staying in money.<br>Anyway, Bashir came to collect me around 11am to take me to see the old town. We caught a not so packed local bus and stopped near the old town outside a Gurdwara. We took a look inside and then walked to see the Hari Parbat Fort which sits atop a hill in the middle of Srinagar. We were not allowed right to the top of the hill as it was under military guard but we walked up part of it and got a good view over the old town and more ...

After a very large breakfast I headed into the garden to warm up in the sun and chat to Ashraf and Sohail.<br>My tour guide, Bashir, a old looking 40 year old who speaks broken English comes to collect me around 11am. We walk to the main road and hop on a fairly packed small local bus. By the time our stop comes, it's packed way beyond capacity and we manage to squeeze off. The buses have a tendency to never quite come to a stand still ...

After a few hours sleep after a late night, I woke early with the knock on the door for breakfast. I said thank you and goodbye to MA and met A, who whisked me straight off into a rickshaw and then bus to Abbotabad. He said he really wanted to show me some more of Pakistan before I left and this was a beautiful place. To be honest, after all the travel the day before I was pretty tired and the last thing I wanted to do was to sit on another bus for 6 hours or so but it ...

... locals chose outside. But the toilets had no plumbing and as I releived myself I could see and hear the distant sound of pee hitting a mound of excrement that had been piling up in the basement below amongst concrete rubble. Pakistan is filthy! After this experience I was happy to spend the rest of the day in the Serena Hotel swimming and scoffing on a Pakistani buffet before heading back to our hotel, past open sewers and piles of rotting food. After Quetta we headed first Southeast to ...

... gain I had to climb 200m. The sun blazed. From about an hour after sunrise until sunset the heat was unrelenting. And there was no shade. For the first couple of days villages were fairly regular; streams waterfalled in cool showers onto the roadside, providing the only relief (and wash) available until Gilgit. The upper section of IK was bare, baked rock. Absorbing and re-emitting the scorching heat of the sun, reflecting it's blinding light and offering no ...