Trip to Islamabad-Muree Chairlift .06

It’s May 1, 2008, afternoon and we are on our way from Islamabad to Muree and I saw the Muree Chairlift and Cable Car signboard. Out of curiosity I asked the driver to pull over. I had never been on such a chairlift before so, I thought I may give it a shot.

Now as I saw the chairlift, It was amazing to see that there wasn’t much people around. Just as I asked the guy “are three people allowed on one chair” he said “stand here”, I never knew what happened and all the three of us were on one chair, the chair was rocking like hell, which never stopped. I did not know that the chairlift is a twin sister of the busses in Karachi. I took a look at the top of the chair to see how it was attached to the cable, it was constantly making cracking sounds and swinging from right to left and to and fro. What I realized was that the cable was thick but I was highly at doubt on the quality of the joint. There were supportive poles at every few meters having the rollers attached to support the cable, each time the chair moved through it, it felt like we are on some broken road in Karachi and the metal of the chair attached to the cable could snap anytime.

As the attendants never briefed me how it is going to work (which they should, to everybody) I was in such a position that I couldn’t move, If I moved the chairlift cracked a bit more. In the open air chairlift people are most likely to drop things so I had to take care of my bag and my cell phone. I tried to reach for my cell phone in my pocket to take some pictures but, I never was able to take it out of my pocket and take the pictures.

Anyway, we had to jump and then run away from the moving chairs in all other directions to get off. It was pretty darn stupid and scary. We kept moving towards everyone was moving and were talking about how dull we found it just because no one guided us about what it’s all about and how it works. I seriously found the lack of guidance there which made our amusement into a wondering of life and death. :)

I continued my way on the stairs, and found that a lot of people were just sitting on the stairs, It was odd for me to see them just sitting like that, but it was all clear after climbing just a couple of more stairs. I took a picture for a couple who stopped to take a breath, they seemed happy but exhausted.

Just as we restored our breath we started to move up again, and we realized that it was all that was it. The top was also an entrance point, you could have either entered from the top and gone down via chairlift and then back to top, or the vice versa. We realized that the ride was all there was – for us which got messed up due to lack of knowing what’s going to happen.

Now we decided that we should go back and reach Muree as it will get late if we stick to this one point. Now again, we were to use the chairlift for our journey back. The most important thing, I forgot to mention was the chair also halted in mid air on our way up, I feared that it’s a malfunction as it was all what was going in my mind at that time. Some guys from the opposite lane were shouting and telling everybody that the lights have went out and the generator will be switched on just in a bit. The next thing for me to worry about was how it was going to take a start as it never stopped, would it be a jerky start or what. Finally after just a few minutes later the power was restored and it was time to see how it works. It wasn’t a jerk, oh no, what it did was that it started to move downwards rather than upwards which really freaked me out as it could be cue to the elasticity of the cable. But then it again got up and continued upwards. The motion was like an italic calligraphic letter “U”.

The same thing happened when we were coming back down, now we were on the ‘tafreeh’ side and could actually see the freaked out faces of people going up, it stopped again, now the thing to worry was how it’s going to continue down. For going up it was like a “U”, for going down I was wondering and fearing it to be like an “L” or at worse just an “I” :).

This time I was much more prepared and had my cell phone in hands. But unfortunately the sun was just in front of me so the video and the pictures messed up. An interesting thing I found written on the poles was “Yahan utarna mana hai, shair aur cheetay pai janay ka khatra hai” means that it is prohibited to get off at this point because lions and cheetahs are believed to exist here. And the next pole said “Hamaisha Muskuraiyay”---- “Always Keep Smiling”. Two very different things to write next to each other :)