Day 4: Islamabad to Hunza
I arrived in Rawalpindi on the bus the day before. Across the street from the station, a tall, wiry figure waved at me – Omer, Tahira’s friend. He quickly took me to his house in I-8 Islamabad, where he had relocated from Lahore. There, I met his wife, Sabrina, and their son, Rayan, who eagerly showed me the games he was playing. I would also meet their daughter later that evening.
Dinner was a delicious spread of meal with ghee daal, which Rayan jokingly explained as “90% ghee, 10% daal.” We all laughed. Sabrina, who had been working in education, designing online curricula in Lahore, had since joined Omer in his app development company. Over delicious food, our conversation meandered to how AI is transforming content creation and reshaping marketing. Gone are the days of painstakingly crafting designs for broad appeal. Now, you can instantaneously generate hundreds of designs and target them to specific audiences to see what resonates – a modern-day search for a needle in a haystack. Times are indeed changing.
This morning, I woke up with a growing sense of adventure. The apartment was quiet, with Rayan engrossed in one of his many games on the sofa. Today, I would embark on a 16-hour journey to Gojal, Hunza. Restless from the anticipation of my trip, I decided to go for a quick walk.
The I-8 sector was peaceful this Sunday morning, with just a few cars zipping by and hardly anyone else on foot. I started trading smiles with the man who was taking his ice-cream cart in circles around I-8 and passed me every 15 mins. After a loop around 33rd street, I found a small market complex offering generic daily supplies. Nestled into the inner courtyard, there was a cafe named Quetta Tea. I had a cup of strong tea, watching men talk and stretch before getting ready for their work. The patrons were mostly Balochi, and I found myself thinking of the civilian protests in Balochistan that had been growing in intensity over the past year. Later, during my stay in Pakistan, I would hear of more militant violence in Balochistan – a recurring thread woven into the complex political fabric of modern Pakistan.
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