Islamabad Serena Hotel

... was very hot, around 40 degrees C. We did however undertake a few walks to a really interesting local supermarket. The tandoori chicken, sliced boiled egg and coleslaw sandwiches were wonderful. And we thoroughly enjoyed beer at long last from the guest house.

One afternoon, Ishaq Ali and his colleague Amin organised a trip to one of the Islamabad local bazaars and showed us a great bookstore, the Saeed Book Bank. The store was probably one of the best ...

... usually interesting! So onto my flight, I went to the PIA office and was told that there haven't been flights for around a week - I had been warned of this because it's a difficult route and the weather is notoriously bad over the high passes. Still I booked the next available flight and kept my fingers crossed. On the morning of the flight I left at the crack of dawn, made my way to the airport, checked in and waited anxiously at the gate with the other passengers ...

... to Islamabad on an overnight bus, which I just heard from two guys who just arrived had taken them 32 hours due to 3 landslides blocking the roads. It was not a journey I was looking forward to. It appeared I was lucky as it only took 12 hours, although I didn't get much sleep on the bumpy road. I didn't really have much I wanted to see in Islamabad as it was a relatively new suburban town with no history. It was only built in the 1960's to replace Pakistanis ...

early we packed our rucksacks and start our trek to mukspuri. this is a trek of about 8km and easy to go with. it is known as one of the most beautifull short family treks of pakistan. we start the trek from khanuspur, reached Ayubia, bypasses it ...

... in F6 which was Super Market and found this nice internet cafe in LP. There isn't really much to see in the capital. I didn't want to go to the administration centre in the east as it's a ticking time bomb. No plans for this evening, just gonna take things easy...get some snacks and get some cold drinks and maybe walk to the mosque to have a close-up view of the biggest mosque in Asia. Going to Rawalpindi tomorrow. The only reason I want to go there is to see the truck workshop.

... and ordered lunch and spent the whole morning drinking chai (tea) and watching TV in the hotel's dining area. As I was sitting there for too long many people (pakistani) sat down to talk to me. They said I'm the first Malaysian tourist they saw this year. The jeep driver of the hotel (actually Madina hotel is the HQ of Madina Tour) offered to bring me to Garga Buddha. From what he ...

... branches came from the same Asiatic nomads. This branch of about 50,000 families headed to south Asia where they swept through Taxila burning and destroying everything in their way. The White Huns settled out without much culture except their separate villages; and that is how we get the Pakistani hill tribes of today. Taxila never recovered from the Huns and the sands and grass covered it all up until Sir John Marshall started excavating in 1913. The existence of ...

... amp; Mrs R. A loud explosion and a  scattering of debris had us fearing the worst. As Mr R's thoughts  turned to the end of the cricket, the team being sent home and us spending the  remainder of our 2 weeks avoiding terrorists in the back of a rickshaw, a police  officer appeared behind us, brandishing his stick and uttering the mysterious  words, "Pepsi gas overload". And very perceptive he was too. After 15  minutes of chaos around the crime scene - Trescothick and ...