I took a bus from Lahore to Islamabad on February 16th. It started raining that morning. but I hoped it would stop soon. It rained all the way to Islamabad. I left Lahore at 9 am and arrived in Islamabad around 1:30 pm and visited some old family friends. Then one of them dropped me off at the Margalla Hotel, where Rafiq had just checked in after arriving from a training he had conducted in Peshawar. The next morning we knew there were no flights flying to Gilgit/Hunza as it had not stopped raining for one moment. Rafiq called up the guy who was going with us. He said that he had made some calls and that the roads were open so he was coming over with a Toyota Land Cruiser. We left Islamabad around 8:30 am. There were 6 of us guys in the Land Cruiser. On the way we saw buses from Gilgit, which was encouraging as it meant that the road was open. It never stopped raining for one moment so I was limited to taking photos and some videos from within the car. We stopped in Bisham (which is about halfway) for lunch. Just as we were leaving Bisham, we ran into a van that was coming from the north. We asked their driver how the road was and he said he was only coming from a short distance away, but that he had heard that the road was blocked up ahead. We went to an FWO (Frontier Works Organization, which maintains the roads) office and had them call ahead to find out the condition of the road. Sure enough, the road had gotten blocked by falling rocks at about 8 in the morning. That's why the buses from Gilgit had made it through as the road was still ok when they were going through in the night.

FWO was not planning to send out a crew until the next morning (maybe not even then as they might wait until the rains stopped) to clear the road so we decided to turn back. On the way back, we saw many rocks on the road, but they were not enough to block the road. Then there was a huge fallen tree that was blocking the road. Four of us, including me, got out in the rain and tried to pull the fallen tree to one side but we couldn't do it. So we started breaking off branches and then we held the rest of the branches back enough so that the Toyota could pass. Of course we were soaked. After about another hour of driving in the dark and lashing rain we came across another fallen tree. This one was so huge that we didn't even try to get out to move it. A villager came up to our car and said that about a mile back there was a small road that circled around and met up with the main road up ahead. He volunteered to go with us if we would drop him back on the other side of the fallen tree. The little road turned out to be under construction with mounds of gravel, stones etc lying on it. Fortunately the Land Cruiser was able to go through, around and over all obstacles and we made it back to the main road. We dropped the villager back at the fallen tree and gave him Rs.100 for we would never have found the road or the way around to the main road as there were so many off-shoots off that road and he had to guide us as to which turns to take.

We finally made it back to Islamabad around 10 pm at the Margalla Hotel. Rafiq went straight to bed while I ordered some soup as I wanted something warm in my belly. The next day, due to continuing rain, flights had been cancelled to Lahore so we took a bus back.
Later we read about the devastation that had been caused by the rain all across the country, killing 29 people. Even a week later that there were 700 people stranded in the northern areas so our decision to turn back was a wise one.

After seeing the road and the scenery (even in constant rain) I am determined to go to Gilgit/Hunza some day by road and not by plane.

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