HARIPUR: An adventurous young man claims to have discovered an unexplored tourist destination in Hazara region with eight waterfalls in the close proximity of 400 meters.

Hasan Nisar, a student of BS (Economics) in the University of Haripur, told Dawn that he had the passion of hiking hilly areas to discover tourist sites.

He said he earlier explored the tallest Ichaar waterfall of Hazara region in Data village of Mansehra and Makhniyal area bordering Islamabad.

Mr Nisar, who bought a drone from his pocket money to reach new tourist spots, said he had been visiting the Jab Mountain, locally called Jab Dhaka and covered by a thick forest of wild olive trees and pines, for over a year and that his every journey to the mountain, which overlooked Khanpur Dam, Haro River and neighbouring countryside areas, remained restricted a few meters to the majestic waterfalls.

According to him, he flew the drone in Jab Dhaka a couple of weeks ago that, to his excitement, located eight waterfalls in the cascading shape prompting him to go there. He named them Hazara Waterfalls. The young man claimed that the place had the potential of attracting tourists from across the world due to its ‘rarely amazing beauty’.

He said the Jab Mountain was named after Jab village, which was around 80km from Islamabad via GT Road, 30km from Khanpur Dam and 17km from Khanpur Interchange of the Hazara Motorway.

According to Mr Nisar, the Jab Mountain is 3600 feet above the sea level and is inaccessible as there is no road. The difficult hilly terrain requires a tourist to walk for 15 minutes to reach the foothill from the carpeted Jabb-Khanpur Road. The 400 meters long distance of rough passage out of a total one kilometer distance to the last waterfall is made of carved stones by the locals that help the visitors to reach the first four waterfalls without much trouble.

“To have a beautiful view of the remaining four waterfalls, one has to cover 600 meters of tough hilly terrain. And the picnickers should at least be young, energetic and bold enough to defeat the fear of falling from the height of difficult terrain or becoming a target of naughty monkeys, whose herds welcome aliens with deafening chatters just to herald that their population is yet not endangered in Jab hills because their habitat is out of the reach of human beings,” he said.

The young man said the residents of a half dozen houses situated at a distance of a few meters in scattered form used water of waterfalls. He said having unmatched natural beauty, the discovered site could contribute billions of rupees to the exchequer through development.

“If the provincial government incorporates Jab waterfalls in the list of the Integrated Tourism Zone programme, it will help generate jobs for hundreds of villagers, who sought to earn livelihood by going either abroad or urban centres in the country,” he said.

Published in Dawn, October 24th, 2021