Army Guest House at Shangrila Resort, Skardu

Kachura's Best, a photo by IshtiaQ Ahmed revival to Photography on Flickr.

It was Ayesha's family, actually her mother, who insisted that I should join the whole family on their trip to Skardu. I wasn't interested in the beginning but then finally said yes.

The year was 1991, I joined Ayesha's mom and dad, her grandfather - a reired bregadier from 1970s era and an expert local driver to drive the Pajero (that was quite common in those days) to take us from Gilgit to Skardu via Hunza. The guest house above is NOT the presidential annexe, or at least it was not the one, at the time - it used to be an army guest house across from the beautiful huts of Shangrila located at Lower Kachura Lake.

I still remember, one of the best pakoray that were served with tea in Northern Pakistan were  made by the batman in this guest house. The groceries from Skardu's main bazar were handed to him along with  some other stuff to prepare our breakfast when we stayed there.

In the building above, my room's window can be clearly seen, it is the thrid window from the left. We could see snow clad mountains, right from the bed room....

We visited some of the local PTDC motels in downtown Skardu which was about 15 or 20 minutes drive Shangrila because of Ayesha's dad. The monstrous mountains in Skardu, that surrounded us, could scare anyone. I have NOT seen such mountains, yet -they were really touching the sky and were  scary.

Those were wonderful times - Pakistan wasn't facing internal instabilty to the extent that it does now and terrorism was non-existant at the time.

A lot has changed and sadly, not for the right reasons.

I'll visit this place on my next trip to Pakistan , Inshallah.