A Road Trip to Gawadar

By: Shazia Yousuf

My friends and I had been craving for a road trip adventure. Not being able to take too many days off from work; we had to come up with some place not too far from Karachi, yet worth the experience.

After some planning and research, we discovered that Pearl Continental Hotel at Gawadar popularly known as Zevar PC Gawadar, was offering rooms at fairly cheap rates and that it had water sports facility available. Gawadar is a small sea port in the province of Baluchistan at a distance of about 632 km from Karachi towards the southwestern Arabian Sea coast of Pakistan.

Hence we decided on taking a road trip to Gawadar; the main attraction for us was jet skiing at the beach.

We were a gang of sixteen people, so we hired a thirty two seater Toyota Hiace van, booked rooms for a night at the Zevar PC Gawadar, and set out on the much awaited adventure.

We started off early in the morning. The drive is supposed to be 8 hr long in an SUV, but it took us around 12 hours.

Our first pit stop was Kund Malir, about 145 km from zero point on Makran Coastal Highway that runs primarily between Karachi and Gawadar along the Arabian Sea coastline.

The beautiful sandy desert beach of Kund Malir was something we had not expected to experience.

The soft, dry sand dunes created suddenly by the winds along the huge mountains on the Makran Coastal highway were simply breathtaking.

The heat usually makes the sand extremely hot, but we were lucky, there was a cloud cover, and hence the sand felt cool to the feet.

We started off again, spirits elevated with the Kund Malir as a starter.

The Makran coastal highway is long, with mountain range on either side. The entire area looks dry and barren, with very little greenery. The mountains, however, left us awestruck.

We could see the Divine art in those dry barren mountains. Some of them were extremely sandy…

with silky smooth folds...

 and then there were some that were hard and rocky…

especially carved out by nature…

into masterpieces …

of Divine art…

We finally stopped at Ormara beach. It was almost lunch time. The beach was calm and quite refreshing after the long drive.

The tour company had arranged for lunch boxes, so we stretched our legs at the beach while we ate the sandwiches, fruits and samosas with warm chai (tea) from the beach side dhaba (small hotel).

After relaxing for about an hour, we set off again, this time in a bit of a relaxing mode. We sat back in the van and enjoyed the mesmerizing hills and mountains on the way listening to the hindi filmi songs that our driver played for us…

Most of the trip now was a quiet one, since we were somewhat tired. But we enjoyed the different shades of browns…

And greys….

We finally reached Gawadar at 9 in the night.

Tired from the long drive, we didn’t do much that night and we all retired after a little bit of snooker and table tennis at the hotel.

Pearl Continental Zavar, seemed like a blessing. The five star facilities at such cheap rates made our trip a total paisa wusool (worth the money spent)!

Our day started very early the next morning. Right after a very early breakfast, we headed to the Gawadar beach.

Our van wasn’t expecting us to be ready this early, so we decided not to waste time and walk to the beach!

And our jet skis came along with us from the hotel.

The beach was nice and inviting so we made a plunge into it. The Jet Ski experience in the open sea was totally amazing!

Riding the wave was an awesome experience!

Jet Sking in still waters is fun, but experiencing it amongst the wild waves is adventure.

We packed up by afternoon, and checked out from the hotel right after some afternoon snacks. The journey back home was tiring, but travelling in a group made it easier.

Before starting off on this road trip, we had no idea that the dry barren land with scanty vegetation could actually be so breathtaking. The road trip to Gawadar is highly recommended!