Aug 30 / Nabeel

Murree – A City in Clouds

Chair lift, entertainment, hill station, Kashmir Point, Mall Road Murree, P.C.Bhurban, Patriata, Pindi point, River Neelam, valleys

One of the most visiting hill station of Pakistan, Murree, and I name it “City in Clouds”. For those who live in Lahore or downwards to it till Karachi; Murree is like a fantasy city. Mountains covered with lush green trees, cold atmosphere, fresh air, beautiful valleys and most importantly clouds on the roads hugging you with full of happiness.

Reason of being most visiting hill station is its approach. It is almost two hours drive from our capital city Islamabad. Roads are broad and safe. It is 7500 feet above sea level and besides the beautiful natural environment to enjoy, it has other stuff of entertainment too.

The Mall Road:

A road full of life, hotels, restaurants, handicraft shops and happy faces. It needs a separate full length post but in short most of the people who visits Murree, get their rooms on Mall road. This is the place where people just walk till 2am or 3am in morning and enjoy the beautiful weather.

It has bazaar downstairs, like 10 feet below the main Mall road. This is a place of shopping for visitors. Mall road is used to walk around and to have food (Oh I love this part)

Pindi Point:

Pindi point is 15 minutes walk from mall road. It has a beautiful view of valleys and mountains. You can see Pindi city from there. There is a chair lift at Pindi point which we friends don’t use to ride on. We friends go to Patriata for chair lift ride which is lot more entertaining and safer.

Kashmir Point:

If we leave Mall road from other end and walk for fifteen minutes then it will lead us to Kashmir point. It has a beautiful sight seeing. You can see Kashmir mountains from this point. It is the highest spot in Murree and due to increasing rush on Mall road; this point is taking visitor’s attention day by day.

Now it has a long bazaar, a joy land and lots of eating places. Most of the visitors came to ease down and relax in Murree and need a quite place to live so they prefer to book a room in Kashmir point instead of Mall road.

Patriata:

This is famous due to chair lift, which worth a ride. A ticket of Rs. 200/- gives you first a chair lift ride from one point to another. From that point you sit in a cable car which took you to another mountain where you have much stuff to do. Look at the picture for all stuff available there. Then after spending beautiful moments with nature’s beauty have a cable car and then chair lift ride back.

You can’t stay there for long. I think last cable car is at 5 pm which take every visitor back. At that time a person goes all the way whistling to check if there is any one left and then take last cable car. I asked him what happens if someone missed it, someone left behind, ain’t there any space to spend night there? so he said ‘it never happened before and there is no place to spend night over there’. However I’ve seen some huts but it would be for those local people which have shops on that mountain.

One more entertainment there which most of people love to do is horse riding however we friends prefer to walk with nature.

River Neelam:

It is a nice place to have a picnic. People use to have snack and lunch at the corner of this river or sometimes in it like in the picture. One can feel the cold wind and cool water which tends to be the best thing in summer. This part of river neelam is considered in Azad Kashmir. This is how far I’ve seen Azad Kashmir till now, I’ll go further soon INSHALLAH.

We also enjoy the journey to this river Neelam: Mountains covered with lush green trees and high slopes of mountains creates an eye catching view. One don’t get to know the time if enjoying this cool wind and water there.

Bhurban:

People use to visit Pearl Continental Hotel Bhurban which is on beautiful location. It has rooms starting from Rs. 10,ooo/- per day which changes according to season. It has an entry fee of Rs. 300/- which you can spend in the hotel in any activity. I do on eating food but you can also watch movie in their mini cinema. There is also a open air theater and a Helicopter Pad which has a beautiful valley view.

Good Bye Murree

In summer season it is like the best place to visit. We friends definitely go to Murree in every summer to get away with this sweaty atmosphere of Lahore’s July / August and feel the fresh cold air at its most. We try to fill our lungs with this freshness so that we can remain fresh for rest of days but sadly to say that it longs until we don’t take a road down to city. From that moment on we start missing Murree; its freshness, its cold atmosphere, its happiness and overall ambiance of this fantasy city which is in clouds.