Islamabad to Naran Valley | Exploring Northern Areas of Pakistan

So it is Monday morning and we all cousins made a plan last night to visit the Northern Areas of Pakistan. We all packed our luggage and started our journey from Islamabad on our private vehicle. Northern Areas of Pakistan are very famous because of their matchless beauty and their people/residents who are very kind and hospitable. They never let the tourists to think that they are at some new place. Even they take tourists to their homes and serve them with their traditional food. They are very loving.
It is our first day of tour and we planned to reach Naran Valley on our very first day. Naran Valley is a town and popular tourist destination in the upper Kaghan Valley in the Mansehra District of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan. It is located 119 kilometers (74 mi) from Mansehra city at an altitude of 2,400 meters (7,900 ft). We all are very excited to see and discover the places.

For me, I don’t have any kind of height-phobia but I was a lil bit scared of land-sliding in rain or some sort of accident. The journey of Naran Valley from Islamabad is of 14hours. After few hours of drive, we reached Balakot.

Balakot is a very beautiful place which is surrounded by lush green mountains and a river which is passing between them. This river is known as River Kunhar. It has a very loud and roaring voice because of fast flowing water and this water comes all the way from the melting of glaciers. Because of the melting of glacier, the water is cold enough that one cannot even put his hand or foot in the river for a single minute.
A local told me a true story that once a boy tried to put his foot in the water for few minutes. He put his foot in the river for 3-4 minutes and his foot swelled and got frostbite.🥶

I forget to told you that we didn’t eat breakfast. So we took our first stop at Balakot and had a healthy breakfast.

Then we took strong tea and restarted our journey towards the Naran Valley. There were bridges, waterfalls and river flowing on every turn of the road.

The day was sunny in Balakot but cold wind was blowing and I was feeling a little cold because I was wearing half sleeves shirt.

As soon as we are getting closer to Naran Valley, the weather was changing from sunny to cloudy.

When we entered the Naran Valley, the valley welcomed us with rain.😍

The rain removed all the tiredness of the day. We reached Naran Valley in the evening and we were amazed and surprised by the nature and beauty of Naran Valley. It was just a piece of heaven on earth.

We parked our cars and started searching for a hotel. Finally, we found a clean apartment in a very reasonable price. We changed our clothes and wore jackets because it was cold outside. We started exploring the bazaar of Naran and we were hungry as well. We went to a restaurant and had a delicious meal.

After getting free from Bazaar, we returned to our room as we were tired. We all slept early because our charging was low enough.😅 And we also promised to wake up early in the morning to witness our first sunrise here.
See you all in the next episode!