3 men show how to successfully mix business with pleasure

Abandoning jobs mid-career is something that the less adventurous abhor. After all who would want to leave the safety of a job with a decent salary, in the bank at the end of the month. But a trio from professions as diverse as a mid-career banker, a dental surgeon, and a marketing man did opt for going on their own and getting into tourism business – hitherto a no-go area, but now seemingly thriving, with immense potential to grow further.

Indeed impressive are the statistics, quoted by Chaudhry Abdul Ghafoor Khan, managing director of Pakistan Tourism Development Corporation (PTDC). In the year 2016 alone, the global tourism industry added $7.6 trillion to the world GDP – contributing 10.2% to the global economy, and producing 292 million jobs!

Flourishing by leaps and bounds:

Meanwhile, domestic tourism in Pakistan has also started to flourish. The top man at PTDC forecasts: the number of domestic tourists for the year 2018 would be well over 50 million – a far cry from four to five years ago when terrorism and not travel weighed heavy on people’s minds – in the Northern and Southern parts of the country alike.

And the sheer weight of statistics proves that Ghafoor’s optimism is well-founded. The number of international tourists in 2017 saw nearly 60 percent increase, to 1.75 million from 1.1 million of the previous year.

For nearly a decade and a half post 9/11, the scary security situation kept foreign and local tourist at bay – the risk involved in the North and and the South alike being too high for people to venture there with tourism on their mind.

While the North also has places that are still unexplored, but quite a lot about the many destinations there is rather well-known and widely photographed. But Balochistan and Sindh have remained almost entirely out of the public radar, security being only one of the reasons, the other, access being difficult.

With the security situation improving, and the construction of Makran Coastal Highway having been completed along with the port of Gwadar, it is now open to travel and tourism, and as the previously unvisited spots galore, many are headed in that direction.

The trio changes course:

Only two years back, Fahd Vohra was assistant vice-president serving as manager at UBL Karachi’s Shahrah-e-Faisal branch in the Nursery area.

In what was a surprise to his colleagues and friends, Vohra resigned from the bank to the astonishment of his colleagues and joined his friend Ghazanfar Sheikh, another banker, who was previously UBL’s Head of Credit, to enter into tourism business and forming Rocket Tourism, with Ghazanfar Sheikh joining him later.

“This is a growing industry and I wanted to be among the early movers. It not only offers you livelihood but while you are working, you’re having fun too,” said Vohra.

What Vohra had been earning after 12 years of service at the bank, he matched it in just about two years in his chosen vocation. The middle-ranking officer of a status similar to Vohra’s at the bank makes around Rs150,000 a month.

Having ditched his job in newspaper Jang’s marketing department, Hammad Shakeel formed Josh Tours, and never looked back. He said, he was financially better off now. “Now I have no trouble paying my rent, which previously was not the case.” Hammad’s wife also working at the venture – mostly at the backend, booking clients.

Vohra also wizened up Profit about a dentist, who worked with him for a few months before operating tours on his own.

“I stumbled into dentistry. In Karachi for some reason, I coincidently got an interview call from Dow Medical College and went over to kill time without even giving a thought to the possibility that I might pass the interview,” said the dentist, requesting not to be named.

He belongs to Mirpurkhas and works at his family’s farms during winter and in the summer operates tours mostly for K-2. “Travelling has always been my passion. And now I am doing what I like the most.”

 The lure of the South:

“The adventure is in Balochistan… at places like Kund Malir and Ormara. Another favourite is Churna Island – where the season is limited to between March and May due to choppy waters.

I don’t consider the northern areas as adventure, as you get most facilities there. And that’s not adventure to me,” said Hammad talking to his patrons on the return trip from Ormara back to Karachi as some people complained about the lack of facilities, like proper washrooms etc.

Hammad takes groups to northern areas between March to November, but for about three years now as the winter sets in, he mostly operates in the South – in Balochistan and Sindh.

With snowing and extreme cold making the high northern altitude well nigh impassable from November onwards, for the citizens of Karachi as well as foreigners in that neck of the woods, the South becomes the destination of choice.  “When you are on the way towards Ormara from Kund Malir, it would seem to you as if you were in Egypt. It’s amazing,” said an excited Rashid Qureshi, a couple of medical stores and investments in real estate being his major sources of income. He has recently developed a taste for travelling within Pakistan.

“I would recommend you to go there. You would really enjoy and on return if you show selfies to your friends, you could easily trick them into believing that you went to Egypt rather then made a trip within Pakistan,” said he.

The natural beauty of our northern areas is breathtaking for the local as well as foreign tourists. Naran, Kaghan, Saiful Malook, Murree, Nathia Gali, Azad Kashmir and list goes on. But the beaches of Balochistan – especially Ormara and Kund Malir, to mention just the two so far explored – have largely remained outside tourists’ radar. However, travelers have now started frequenting these places.

Day trips:

Qureshi’s trip with his friends to Ormara couldn’t be considered as tourism as he left in the wee hours from Karachi and later return the same day. It would rather fall into recreational activity. But if these spots are developed and if hotels and restaurants are established then certainly time period of tourists’ stay in the area would increase. For the longer the tourists remain at a place the more the economic benefit to the locals.

“Certainly I will stay if there are some hotels around in a place like Kund Malir or Ormara. It is very hectic to travel more than 700 kilometers to and from those destinations in a day,” said Qureshi.

However, camping is the new ‘in’ thing and operators like Hammad are offering this option to their clients. Kund Malir beach is the place where camps abound, with bonfire and music.

Social media playing its part:

Few kilometers before zero point, there’s a hotel in a small town Windar, where busses carrying tourists stop for 20-odd minutes for people to refresh themselves with a cup of tea or make a toilet call.

“Now and then, we talk to hotel owners about this. On winter weekends, we guess, around 1,000 tourists visit these areas,” said Ghazanfar Sheikh, who works alongside his friend Fahd Vohra.

But that is the low point. During the summer, the tourist traffic inflates by about 50 times, to over 50,000 a week. “It’s our conservative estimate. In one recent summer, I counted around 150 buses, all 52-seat coasters, at a time on the Kund Malir coast alone. So, the number hotel owners give us was not an inflated one.”

Whatever the exact number, the trend is obvious. People are indeed headed the Ormara and Kund Malir way. The social media also has a role to play in this new-found enthusiasm for these spots.

“In popularising these areas, social media has definitely been a major catalyst. Not even five percent of the people now visiting these places would have ventured there before 2013. Since then the visitors to these Makran coast spots has increased by at least 30 times. All these years, both the federal and provincial governments have done nothing to promote these places. It’s the social media that has made everyone sit up and take notice,” said Vohra.

Virgin beaches beckon:

The more adventurous among the natives and tour operators – who incidentally are dependent on social media for their marketing – charging reasonable fees to take them there combined to popularise these destinations. And once the pictures of pristine shores and lovely desert sites were posted on social media the number of takers catapulted.

Then there are activities unheard of: such as at Churna Island, close to Karachi in Kemari Town, offering scuba diving in a scenic setting.

“My agency takes around fifty people to these places every month”, said Vohra, who plans group as well as private trips. There were seven to eight other agencies involved in the business. Many people though hit the road on their own, in cars or even motorbikes, as Qureshi and his friends do.

“These places are visited seasonally. Between May and July, the tides are high and generally people avoid going to the sea or island spots. Other than that the number of visitors remains consistent,” Vohra said.

“All these are virgin beaches and possess immense potential to tourist attractions,” said Commander Kaleem Ishaq, the head of security at Byco Petroleum Single Point Mooring (SPM) facility near Churna Island.

“However, volatile security issues arising now and then wouldn’t let these places become in-demand tourist destinations. People definitely won’t risk their lives no matter how highly scenic natural beauty they might be missing.

“A retired major, who started adventure sports like paragliding near here but since very few people took interest, he went bankrupt.

“I believe people were not heading towards these beaches only because of security apprehensions,” Ishaq said.

With spirituality the guiding light:

Then there are many who would travel many a mile to pay homage to the saints, in Sindh especially to the shrines of Lal Shahbaz Qalandar at Sehwan Sharif and Shah Abdul Latif Bhitai at Bhit Shah. With spirituality their guiding light, people flock to these places from far and wide.

Devotees throng these shrines throughout the year but on the occasion of annual Urs (the death anniversary of a saint), the surge must be seen to be believed.

Such tourism, however, remains a neglected area.

Visits to these shrines are not restricted to only Pakistanis or Muslims. For instance, a Sri Lankan tourist was taken to Sehwan as he wanted to listen to sufi music, said Vohra.

Then for the Hindus, Nani ka Mandir near Kund Malir in the South and Katas Raj in the central Punjab, both said to be more than a thousand years old, are high-value tourist destinations. Meanwhile, thousands of Indian and local Sikhs visit Guru Nanak Sahib every year.

Last year more than 30,000 from around the world came to Karachi to attend Ashra Mubaraka, a Dawoodi Bohra holy event with the 53rd spiritual leader Dr Syedna Aali Qadr Mufaddal Saifuddin in the lead.

The families that come to him ask for tours to sufi saint towns, like Sehwan, said Hammad, adding, “roughly 10 percent do want to go to these places exclusively.”

With so many Hindu, Sikh and Buddhist holy sites in Pakistan, the PTDC boss Abdul Ghafoor believes that Pakistan’s potential for religious tourism is immense.

“Personally I give it top priority, because religious tourism largely remains unimpacted, regardless of security situation etc. In order to promote it, we have also been approaching various countries. In fact, Uzbekistan and Iran are ready to sign the MoUs on the subject with us,” he said.

All this indicates towards much to cheer about as far as tourism in this country is concerned, and as acts of terror are obliterated and the culture of intolerance subsides, replaced by a spirit of coexistence and bonhomie, it is likely to blossom further.