Friday, December 28, 2007

Benazir Bhutto Assassinated, Pakistan in chaos

Yesterday evening, the tragic event occurred and the supporter of the Pakistan People Party (PPP) supporters went crazy with the event.

Yesterday night most of the cities were in chaos situation with people were protesting on roads and due to that, most of the transport mechanisms were not functioning properly.

In our guest house also, there were many people staying for yesterday night because they cannot leave for their towns from Islamabad. Today morning news said that flights flying out of Karachi airport will be postponed (or cancelled?). It seems like the internal flights are not working properly.

We were expecting seats in Sri Lankan Air flight from Karachi to Colombo today. But, still nobody is certain about the travel schedules with new situation yet.

Our returning date is postponing due to one reason or another from last two weekes. It seems like we may not able to return before 2008.

Tuesday, December 25, 2007

Murree, Hill resort city

Last weekend was a long holiday with Thursday and Friday were Eid holidays in Pakistan. We planned a visit to Murree hill city to get rid of boring feeling of staying whole weekend in guest house.



Murree is nearly 40 Kms from Islamabad and it takes around one hour for a car to get down there. Snowy mountain tops in Kashmir range are visible to Muree and that a marvelous view to see.





We went to a place with chair lifts and cable cars to take us to higher mountain top in the region.



It was not snowing (infact, it was a sunny day). But there were remaining snow from previous days’ snow. That was a real good experience for all of us.




From left to right-Me, Amila(our photographer for the tour) and Hemantha

Thursday, December 20, 2007

Travelling Across Pakistan

In our current visit to Pakistan, we are implementing a distributed sales information system across the country for one of our client. The first part of the implementation was completed with a successful boot camp and a proof of concept. For the second part, our team had to travel to the four major cities in Pakistan.

First region of implementation took place in Rawalpindi. Rawalpindi is a very much crowded and busy city adjacent to Islamabad, capital of Pakistan. I really don't like Rawalpindi very much.

After completing the Rawalpindi region within one week, we flew to Karachi. Karachi is too crowded and dusty city with population around 16 million. Good thing about Karachi is the variety of foods available. Once we went to a very good BBQ place with regional office staff one day and food was really very good, so we alone went to that place again to taste the BBQ.

Next region was Multan. Just after landing in Multan, we felt the difference. Multan is a very old and small city. It attracts people for it’s charm and calm. Also the people are very much friendly. On the very first day we have landed on Multan, we went to see remaining of Multan fort, few very old tombs and drive through the older section of city. Even we walked in mid night to shopping malls. Walking night is a rare commodity in most of cities we visited. We managed to finish our implementation within the week days and the Saturday was a rest day for us. Multan regional office staff was very helpful for us in arranging a visit to Rohi desert.








Transport in Rural AreasDerawar Fort


From Multan we traveled to Bahawalpur and then turned to a road leading to Derawar Fort located in Rohi desert. Even though I was suffering from cold, we all enjoyed the trip very much. One thing I must mention about the Pakistani farmers is they are very hard working and they have cultivated lands very next to the desert also. Mainly in Punjab area each inch is covered with cultivations and it is a very pleasant view to see.


On Sunday, we flew to Lahore. Lahore was getting in to winter with colder weather and I was facing my first winter season. In Lahore we mainly concerned about the implementation and finished it within week days. Even though we had a chance to visit Kasur on Saturday, we thought to return back to Islamabad and have a good rest. Best thing about Pakistan is their road network, especially motorways. We traveled on M2 motor way from Lahore to Islamabad and returned to our usual guest house.






Lahore International AirportM2 Motorway near Kalar Kahar mountainous region


Islamabad is very cold these days and unfortunately our stay got extended for one more week. Finally I had to buy few winter cloths to survive in Islamabad winter. Again, we are in a long holiday season and it is very much boring for us.

During the weekend we are planning to go to Muree, very beautiful hill town north of Islamabad. One colleague who traveled to Muree on last weekend said it was snowing. So we are willing to see snow there. But it will be dead cold for sure.