The Roads of Chitral: A Disappointment for Tourists

A friend visited Chitral from Karachi recently and he was utterly disappointed with the road situation. Of the many ways of expressing his disappointments, he exclaimed “Are these actually roads or are we off-tracking” and at one point he went on to say that this is the most remote and underserved region of the world. At the end of the trip, he requested me to not invite him to Chitral for my wedding because there is no way that he will come again to Chitral. While I am sad that my friend will miss my wedding, I wanted to use this opportunity to raise the issue of bad roads in Chitral and to inform tourists to never visit Chitral with an expectation of good roads like other places. We visited Bumburet valley, and Garam Chashma valley and our trip to Boroghul valley was cut short due to a roadblock in Upper Yarkhoon. Everywhere we went, we saw tourists regretting their visit to these places and promising to never return back or letting anyone they know travel to Chitral. The hotel owners and people affiliated with tourism are upset because inflation has already disturbed their earnings and now people are not visiting due to the bad road situations. All the governments that come to power see the northern areas as beautiful places and promise to make Chitral and other places a hub for tourism but never provide the basic infrastructure for it. There is a false marketing of Chitral for tourism and it is time that we face the reality that Chitral is not a place for tourism yet unless proper roads and infrastructure is built. 

Now that I have got your attention with tourism, as marginalised communities are not helped by the state based on their own needs, let us now talk about roads from Chitrali’s perspective. While Chitral is known for its hospitality and we would love to see tourists visit us, our demands go beyond a national utilitarian agenda. We have lost many precious lives due to road accidents on these roads. Many of our mothers and sisters have passed away on these roads before they get to a hospital while giving birth to a baby. We have lost hundreds of patients on these roads before they get to a place where they can be treated. Our children are taking hours to reach schools on these roads in this heat as they do not have a proper transportation system due to these bad roads. The farmers cannot bring their products to the market to earn a living because their products go bad as it takes days on these roads to get to Chitral town even. These are our problems and every time we have elections, we are told that Booni-Boroghul/ Shandur / Torkhow road will be blacktopped but we have not seen this turn into reality. The road is our basic right and it will clearly save many lives as mentioned above. I would also urge all Chitralis to take this issue up as a top priority in the next elections- as that is the only time our leaders come to us. The issue of roads is such a major problem that common people do not know where to start and who to approach for such a crucial issue and this challenge of bureaucracy is a continuous hurdle for the public. Furthermore, it is my request to all tourists who have visited Chitral to be our allies and share the word and tag relevant people in the government to get us this basic right. Unless there are roads, I would warn other tourists to not visit Chitral.