The Roadtrip!

I had a great weekend...

All the way through friday evening, when i went out with my friends from good ol' khi and planned out our excursion to isloo the next morning, decided the alto would probably not be the best option for a 4 hours journey across the motorway and chose to retain our nice new city rent a car and then our rent a car driver decided to drop himself home in defence Y block and handed over the car to two karachi born FEMALES completely unschooled in the art of Lahori driving not to mention having a complete and utter lack of any remote sense of direction... Lets just say the one hour journey back to Gulberg & Fortress was about as interesting as any night time driving experience in a new land could've been. I've heard it usually doesnt take less than 15 minutes to cover the distance. I guess we were taking the scenic route.

:) Considering that I was the brilliant person driving while my fearsome friend had a remote bit of road sense... we managed quite well. I used to burst out screaming with the sheer joy of driving a BRAND NEW HONDA CITY... only 4000 Kms on it... * Silent scream of joy... IT WAS THE COOLEST FEELING IN THE WORLD... after driving around in my amazingly lovely yet gracefully old and a bit rickety '86 Charade and my '81 Toyota which ROCKS to date... any car that can make it over the Karakoram Highway in one piece has my undying respect for life.

But mAAAAAAAAAAAANNNNnnnnhhh... ohhh man.. that car drove like a bloody dream.. lol... every time the feeling of sheer unadulterated joy used to overwhelm me i used to end up screaming with the mindblowing happiness of it all, and all the directions used to fly out of salaina's head.. so we ended up going in circles quite a bunch of times before finally making to the correct highway... :) sighhhh.... the joy still pervades my soul...

So we started out bright n early (* gaffaw).. at 9am... as opposed to the planned 6 am as per our original plan.. my chacha from Isloo called up to find out if we'd left at around 8am and stated with deepset certainty that he'd told my chachi he'd be completely surprised if we managed to make it out of the house before 9am. :) turns out he was right. Anyway, we piled our luggage and ourselves into the car, and the merry 5 started off on the road trip of a lifetime lol...
it was unbelievable from the word go.

1. I was driving.
2. We were navigating Lahore with a MAP... lol..
so we finally managed to make it to the Motorway. Might I add i am a damn fine driver :).. and right before the first toll booth, the car went silent and then started bleeping teeroun teeroun.. like an ambulance.... lol... turns out the rental people forgot to tell us it was a Lahore only vehicle.. So after laughing ourselves hoarse over the irony of it all.. and considering the fact that my hororscope from msn alerts that morning had stated that i may experience mechanical difficulties on long-distance journeys... freaky!!... we called the rental people and they sent us a car with absolutely no chor lock or any other type of mechanisms.. :) i guess they understood that the poor car would be in the hands of novices and decided not to take any chances with anything we would abandon halfway down the motorway...

All in all, the whole motorway driving experience was pretty damn good.. especially since i was driving.. :) *huge grin... initially i was very careful to slow down in front of all the little phone box poles.. coz i thought thats where the little speed radars were... lol.. but 25% of the way down the road, we threw caution to the winds and averaged 160km/h... we covered the whole motorway in 3 and a half hours instead of the regular 4hrs 15 minutes. The entire stretch consumed one full tank of gas.. so by the time we got into isloo we were frantically looking for a Petrol station. :) found one early on in and heaved a sigh of relief...

After that it was one long eating fest... i got to my chacha's house and my chachi who is certifiably the worlds best chef.. had cooked up a storm for the dinner that night... yummm... so me n my 3 cousins ate to our hearts content and crashed... the next morning was pretty much the same.. an awesome breakfast... an even more scrumptious lunch... with my all time favorite home made concoction the Italiano.. pasta, mince, boiled eggs, potatoes, cheese & white sauce all together ... its the most heavenly experience in the world... sighhhhhhhhhhhhh.. * big satisfied smile stretched across face. The crowning glory was my three younger totally adorable cousins, who always manage to evade me everytime im in isloo, also came over so we had a good kashmiri.com mushfest ....

In the interim, we also met up with ':)', bunny and umy in isloo so now when we miss one another we'll actually have phycial entities to attach to the thought... lol ... they're all so unbelievably cute and bubbly... if i wasnt so young at heart ;) i'd feel like an 80 year old hag... it was awesome meeting all of them... our conversation basically centered around how 'deprived' some people were.. hehehe... but it was amazing... and i loved every minute...

The drive back, we again opted for the Motorway over the GT Road. We figured we'd save that for the next time. Listened to City 89 FM for a bit and when that died, we shifted to the 3 song collection of Kal ho na ho... we'd tried finding the entire soundtrack at the Daewoo stopover the day before but we only found the 4 movies in one cassette collection and decided to settle... so.. side B the beginning three songs.. 'kuch to hua hai', 'time to disco', and 'kal ho na ho'... were played, rewinded and replayed umpteenth times, til salaina threatened to clobber me from the back.... :) and we reached lahore city limits and got our FM 89 back on track...

I got this one amazing shot of the setting sun. Once i get some freaking photoediting software into this comp i'll upload it.. But certifiably awesome road trip...

*smile... love you guyz...

Princess of the GemWorld

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I dare to dream... so sue me.. :p
GemWorld

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