KARACHI: “I don’t work for anyone in particular. I work for Pakistan,” said Moin Khan, a free spirit with wanderlust, at the first official screening of his documentary Rediscovering Pakistan: the untold tale, part of the Ethics and Culture Hour lecture at the Sindh Institute of Urology and Transplantation’s (SIUT) Centre of Biomedical Ethics and Culture (CBEC) here on Friday.

“I was always confused about what I wanted to do in life. In university in the US, too, I changed my major some seven times,” said Mr Khan before playing his documentary.

Another thing he added about himself was his fascination for motorbikes. Then one random day, he decided to ride home to Lahore from San Francisco on a motorbike. To save up for the trip he sold everything he owned and left his apartment to move into a garage where he slept on a cot for 18 months and ate only boiled rice with ketchup. “I crossed 22 countries, travelled 40,000 kilometres to, finally, reach my parents’ home in Lahore,” he said.

Once here Mr Khan bought for himself a Vespa scooter for Rs9,000 and on it he explored the Northern Areas. “I travelled for 19 days during which Pakistan took me by surprise. It was just amazing,” he said.

Being on various motorcycle forums, Mr Khan posted pictures from his travels there. That’s how other people on those forums started approaching him. Some wanted him to show them Pakistan so in 2013 he organised a tour for four people. “But back then after coming to the UK, where we were assembling, two of those four backed out after hearing about the 11 tourists slaughtered near Nanga Parbat. Then in 2014 I arranged two more tours, one for four people and the other for nine comprising eight Americans and one Malaysian. The documentary is about our trip to the Northern areas with those nine,” he explained, adding that he had planned six more tours for 2015 all with foreigners because he wanted them to see Pakistan.

He doesn’t charge the tourists anything as he arranges for the motorbikes, regular 125cc motorcycles, to ride on the tour and everyone spends their own money with some sponsors helping out here and there. The hospitality of local people also made things easier on the way.

The nine tourists who travelled with Moin Khan from May 23 to June 7 earlier this year watched polo matches in Gilgit, visited schools in remote areas to give talks to children, played cricket in the mountains, met interesting people, camped under the stars, ate exotic foods, met with accidents also, while riding on dangerous terrains and even through shallow rivers in which they bathed, too.

The documentary of the group’s travels, specially its ending where this American girl while speaking about her impressions of Pakistan breaks down in sobs at the prospect of going back home to America, is simply beautiful. Mr Khan will now be screening it in 21 US states before posting it on YouTube, Vimeo, etc.

Briefing on the ‘Ethics and Culture Hour’ earlier, Dr Aamir Jafarey, associate professor at the CBEC at SIUT, said it was an event which they organised every quarter or so where personalities from every walk of life came to share their experiences with the audience. Of Mr Khan, he said while introducing him that he might have done everything as an amateur but had done it all to perfection.

Published in Dawn, December 6th, 2014