Iran out of the car with my cousin, Zainab as soon as I saw the water, green as an emerald and as clear as glass.

As soon as my legs touched the water, Zainab casually said, “Why are our parents so exited?”

I turned around and saw all the elders of my family running like crazy towards us apparently shouting! I didn’t understand what was happening so I got out of the water quickly.

My mother was her overly ‘dramatic-scary-traditional’ motherly self, scared that I might hurt myself! Why did she have to ruin it all because of “safety”? I mean I only tripped and choked once!

I am going to tell you the story of how, during my spring break, I traveled to Gwadar, on Makran Coastal Highway and came back the same way. The distance between Gwadar and Karachi is 631km.

The first stop on the nine-hour trip was Kund Malir. We stayed there for the night. It was where I ran into the sea. The first thing I learned about the entire coastal region was that they had literally nothing available to eat but seafood. At first it was great, the food was pretty good, but having it all the time! Either way, it was nice. The weather was lovely; it felt like I was a sail on a boat. I loved the feel of the salty sea air.

Our second stop was the Princess of Hope. It’s a statue of a woman that was carved by the wonderful Mother Nature. We wanted to climb all the way to the actual statue, but my overprotective mother stopped us, saying we were too young and we would get hurt! While the adults were climbing to the Princess of Hope, we climbed the mountains next to it. Later we found out that it was Angelina Jolie who named it.

On our way, we drove through the Hungol National Park. There were mountains on both sides. The mountains looked man-made, they had lines and designs on their top as if hundreds of thousands of artists had climbed on them and made those designs. However, there seemed to be an endless ocean of mountains and they were huge! They were all as dry as dust.

Finally, after what seemed like five years (actually five hours) we reached the port city of Gwadar. It was beautiful. I fell on my knees and wept with joy! Okay, maybe I’m being a little dramatic (a trait I clearly inherit from my mother).

It was definitely impressive, but the thing is, with all the rage about CPEC, I expected it to be better. If you looked at nature, the virgin beaches, the hills, the atmosphere even, it was magnificent. However, the economy, the development, the financial situation, it was dismal. Not to mention the people, who there seemed underprivileged and poor.

The tourists and the business men have money and are profiting from the land, but the locals are clearly not. This is capitalism. The business men who have only come for one trip would most likely make more from the area than the locals would make in their entire lives. It is unfair, but it is what I had been seeing my entire life.

We were staying at the best hotel there, on top of a mountain. The view from our room was really something to behold. It looked just like in the property commercials and billboards.

The moment everyone settled in, me, Zainab and her little sister Maya started bugging the adults to take us to the beach. After all, that was what we came there to do, right?

However, the adults were not on the same page as us. They seemed to already have decided what to do — without us.

An hour after our arrival at the hotel, we went to explore Gwadar. We went on a boat and it was nice, but then when we got on the motorboat, it got much better. Just getting off the boat was great, there was an unstable ladder hanging on the boat and we had to climb down. Eventually, the motorboat took us back to our hotel. After that we went to a place, whose name I forgot, to see the sunset and, most importantly, take selfies.

My parents don’t know this but me and my cousins stayed up all night that day.

The next day we went to see the famous Jiwani sunset — that Queen Victoria missed (as you will soon learn). Honestly what is it with these adults and sunsets?

Okay, maybe it was my fault we were late, but come on, it’s practically illegal to leave the house without lip gloss! My uncle drove there in a rush, but it didn’t matter because when we reached there, the sun had already set. My aunt heaved a sign and said, “The sunset was said to be so beautiful that Queen Victoria herself came to watch it.”

“Well, don’t worry, she was late too,” replied my cousin Moeed, Zainab’s little brother.

The next day, we finally went to an actual, playable beach. It’s called the Ormara beach. We played there for hours on end, until finally we became hungry. It was definitely one of the best parts of the entire trip.

That was our last day at the amazing city of Gwadar. Overall the experience was great.

Our way back, however, was not so great. It turned out that the petrol in our cars was not too clean, so it affected the engine and we were about two hours late due to the car trouble. Other than that, the trip was as I stated earlier, great.

Published in Dawn, Young World September 16th, 2017