Reminiscing an experience laden journey WheneverI recall the time of my first ever longest road trip, from Quetta to my hometown Sahiwal, five years back, it brings soothing feelings of intimacy,freshness, revelations, and novelty.
Itwas the time when my husband was DS in Infantry School Quetta after his MCC.After so many hurdles like unavailability of MOQ and renovation delays, wefinally managed to reach Quetta and for the very first time started living as afamily with our 1 year old daughter. Thethought of living with husband in a stable station is very fascinating. So Istarted to plan my beautiful future ahead with my husband and daughter. Butnature was planning something else for us. After shifting we ordered furnitureand other required things but the very next morning my husband called me fromhis office that Begum there is a bad news for you that I have to go on UN missionin Congo after 15 days and we have to leave Quetta in 5days. For many peoplegoing on a foreign mission is a wish but for us it was a bad news at thatparticular frame of time because we wanted to spend time together.
Tocut long story short we started our journey back and to make it memorable we chosea road trip. For me it were the most memorable, cherish able and pleasant two daysof my entire life. We both husband and wife purposefully enjoyed the whole journey.We set our journey at 8am in the first week of April. It was very cold inQuetta at that time so we wore winter clothing.Thosetwo days were special for me not only for the company I was accompanying butalso for the first time not only I was travelling through Baluchistan, Sind andPunjab but also I was going to experience the beauty of differences in physicalfeatures, temperatures and weathers in different parts of our country,Pakistan.
Inthe start I sighted and eulogized the beautiful mountains ranges, smallwaterfalls and twirling roads of Baluchistan. After that we entered Sind wherethe landscape and culture changed gradually from Balochi culture to pure Sindiculture. There were no more mountains, flowing waters and; winding and sloppyroads, instead vast spread wilderness occupied the most of main roadsurrounding areas, with episodes of petrol pumps and small bazaars, occasionallydisturbing the monotony of barren roads. There were patches of sandy roads too at manyplaces which took much of our time to cross. Once our car stuck in sandy patchbut due to the helping people of Sind we went through that problem. Then Around2 pm in afternoon we reached at PSO petrol pump to refuel our car and to refreshourselves but that again brought a problem. After refilling the car my husband parked the car on a side of the pump.
While I was sprinkling my face with water with a water bottle to refresh myeyes, my finger hit my gold earring and it flew in the air and went in thedrainage pipe nearby the car. I got very shocked and told my husband but hesuggested leaving it and moving forward but on my insistence he talked to pumpworkers who were all from Sind region. The people were so helping that theysent one of the worker with a torch in the empty drainage pipe and hesuccessfully brought back my earring.
We tried to give some money as a token ofthanks to the worker but he consistently refused and said that it was theirduty to help us. We found them very helping and being from other province theirattitude really comforted us and made us feel at home.Thesetrivial concerns were not bothering us both; instead we were enjoying andconsidered those things as part of our adventure. We reached Kashmore Cantt at8 pm and stayed there for the night in Mess to refresh ourselves for next day’sjourney.Notonly had the landscapes changed from one province to other but also theoutlooks of people too. In addition to this temperature also changed from quitelow to very high. We had started our journey with sweaters and gradually removedthem and came to simple single dresses which ended in changing with summerclothes in Kashmore Cantt, where the temp was very high.
We started withheaters in the car and ended with air conditioners in the car.Nextmorning we left Kashmore in the early morning around 6:30 for further journeyto reach our destination but the morning too was very hot. We entered Punjabregion and landscape changed dramatically from dry to green fertile lands alongthe roads. Roads were smoother and better. Raised Number of population was alsoa different feature. Because we met almost no people in our road journeythrough Baluchistan, very few people in Sind and almost crowds in Punjab.
Because of green fields and trees temperatureof Punjab was comparatively lower than Sind. We crossed the mango gardens ofMultan and reached our destination at 2:30 pm in afternoon. Now I was missingthe great weather of Quetta as it was quite high in Sahiwal too.
Thisjourney of my life is treasured and cherished because, for the first time aftermarriage, I continuously travelled with my husband for such long hours and inaddition, for the first time in my life, not only I could experience some ofthe striking variations of our beloved land but also I could make out that howblessed our country is.
