Kindness Rules in the Mountains of Pakistan

A Hair-Raising Flight To Northern Pakistan

All photos by author.

Swapping The City For The Mountains

In the past 17 years of travelling around the world with my boyfriend Craig, we’ve never received a text message at 10:30 pm the night before a flight to tell us that the plane would now be departing two hours early. But that’s exactly what happened one evening in Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan.

A stunning mosaiced mosque nestled between buildings in Islamabad.

If we’d gone to bed slightly earlier, we’d have missed the message, and the flight too. Luckily, we made it to the airport in time, and after passing through security, we spotted a kids' toy shop called ‘Kaboom’, which we thought was a rather interesting choice of name for an airport shop.

It looked like everyone managed to get the early departure notice because the gate was packed with people.

On an almost full flight, we managed to get a whole row to ourselves, which meant we suddenly had a window seat for what’s considered one of the world’s most scenic flights.

It was only an hour’s flight to Skardu in Northern Pakistan, but I was nervous. Pakistani…