I’m excited for a future where one could take a Tesla on a tour of the Karakoram Highway. I’m also wondering how well a Tesla handles driving through water in a city like Karachi, where it can flood pretty bad.
I wonder how viable this business model is without a 747, which will be ending it’s production run soon. I’m sure used 747s will be around for a long time, but at maintenance costs go up, parts availability goes down, etc. Eventually the 747 will not be viable, and I’m not sure there’s a suitable replacement.
Yup. $12 for 4 days, driving 8 to 14 hours per day. I had to cover his food and lodging, but we just shared a hotel room I was gonna rent anyway and food was cheap.
For comparison , I talk to a Kareem driver who nets $10 per day after expenses, and he drives 13 hours a day, seven days per week to support a family of 4. And my friend hired a part time for maybe 60 hours per month and she asked for $40/month.
My rear never felt raw. I used almost no TP during my entire trip to Pakistan. Basically I just took a targeted shower many times a day, and didn’t need to rub my bum raw.
I googled “rental car Islamabad” and found a rents agency. I called them and worked out a deal to pay cash upfront with any special security deposit or insurance. They put me in touch with the driver. Basically I just went for it.
I’m an American, and I visited Pakistan on a whim back in September. I was able to spend a few days in the north. I can only say the north of Pakistan is incredible. There’s nothing that prepares you for seeing 8000+ meter mountains for the first time.
There’s no shortage of people offering tours, but I made my own plans. I rented a Toyota Hilux 4x4 for 4 days at $50/day, and they insisted I hire a driver because they didn’t trust me to drive solo (which in retrospect was wise of them because of language barriers, road conditions, police/military checkpoints, etc.). The driver quoted me a rate of $3/day (not a typo). I drove from Islamabad to Hunza and back in 3 days (I could only get one day off work, lol). It was way too much driving, but the trip was still incredible.
To make the trip extra fun, I had the worst case of food poisoning w/ diarrhea that I’ve ever had for the entire time. I developed that the night before I was scheduled to drive off. So in the morning I picked up some Imodium and baby wipes, and just stopped every hour or two. I somehow managed to avoid shitting in my pants, but I don’t know how. Nearly every bathroom in Pakistan, which might just be a hole in the ground, has a handheld bidet, which is a power washer for your backside. No matter how messy it got, I also walked away from a pit stop with a fresh backside.
Here’s some pictures of the traveling, sans pit stops...
I learned not to use Dropbox for things like Git repos. I'd have a fresh copy on one computer, and then have an older copy on a different computer. Sometimes I'd accidentally overwrite the newer code w/ autosaving on the older code. Now I'm skeptical that I'll be able to keep everything properly in sync on any sort of network-ish file system that is wrestling for control with my local file system.
https://youtu.be/9coptltk27s