Greetings Friends.
I'm here in the beautiful Swat Valley in Pakistan.
And I think most foreigners will know Swat
from the few years of brutal Taliban rule that was here.
And also this is the city, Mingora, where the Taliban tried
to assassinate Malala on her school bus.
A lot of people know Swat from these bad years.
So we're going to explore Mingora today.
And let's see, what's it like here now?
And I think the first thing locals would like me to tell you would be, don't worry.
The Taliban has been sent packing.
About ten years ago, the army came in and kicked them out.
Let's go and let's explore Mingora
here in the Swat Valley.
This is Mingora.
It's a beautiful little city of 330,000 people
set on the picturesque Swat river.
The river is fed from glaciers, which start in the surrounding Hindu
Kush mountain range.
The entire valley is known as the Switzerland of the East.
And while you won't see its extreme beauty in this video,
you will see that in my Pakistan ski resort video.
And besides its natural beauty, the Swat is rich in ancient
Buddhist history and home to Pakistan's world famous emeralds.
And outside of the mines,
you will find people mining for emeralds at the river.
While I filming this intro, I stumbled upon them, and a man showed me
he actually was finding very small emeralds here.
Just on the way to our next destination now.
And one surprising thing is the driver can't speak Urdu.
He only speaks Pashto.
I didn't expect to find that here.
Before we hit the city,
try some local food, and then head into the mountains,
you are not going to want to miss that,
I took a walk around to important Buddhist sites.
The Swat Valley is a very important place for Buddhist pilgrims
because of their many stupas
monasteries, caves and rock carvings spread around the region.
It has a very rich Buddhist history.
I'm definitely a mountain person.
I love being up in the mountains, the fresh air, the cold weather.
I dunno if you can hear, but it's it's lunchtime at the schools.
I can hear kids all around the valley playing.
And so that reminds me about Malala and her story.
So back in 2007, the Taliban invaded this valley
and they weren't kicked out by the Pakistan army until about 2009.
But even after that, there were still some instability.
There was still there were still some of them around
because a couple of years later, they targeted Malala.
She boarded her school bus to go to school that morning and two Taliban
guys came on the bus, asked for her by name and shot her.
And as we all know, she survived.
And she's still campaigning for the girls' right to education.
And she's the youngest person ever to have won the Nobel Peace Prize, too.
So, yeah, this is her town where she's from.
She came back a few years ago in 2018.
But I don't think she's been back since.
Walking through Mingora is main bazaar now
and it's a really, really common KPK bazaar.
You got like green tea, you've got gem dealers, you've got hat dealers,
you've got a lot of firearms being sold here, mostly shotguns and rifles,
but there's some AKs and some M-16s around and
a lot of cloth to make traditiona clothes.
And then like home appliance goods as well.
Now, what I'm looking for is some local food to try.
So let's see if we can find something
This guy is buying chicken.
So this guy is selling.
He's selling beef.
And we've got the vegetable market.
This is like a side street of the main bazaar.
And, yeah,
more meat, more vegetables.
This whole street will be like meat and vegetables.
And this is probably the busiest street in the entire bazaar.
And what you can hear everybody yelling out the prices of things,
the price of the meat.
Alrighht, I'm hungry now, so let's go and eat some Chapli Kebab.
I was looking for a special rice dish that they have here.
It's like rice and vegetables kind of cut up into this,
what looks like a kind of like a vegetarian biryani, but I can't find it.
So, yeah, let's go and eat Chapli Kebab.
This man here is frying up
the beef patties, basically,
and we're going to eat these with bread
and sometimes a fry and add on top as well.
And see what just at the very end of the fruit and veggie market here.
So, you know, the food is going to be super fresh.
Dining room over here.
And another dining room in here
where I'll sit now and let me just show you.
They cooked with the
they cook wood fire.
So this is the Chapli Kebab and they've cracked
an egg on top, and then inside...
it's just beef.
Just like that. Pretty simple.
And there's a few things in there.
So there's chili, there's tomato,
there's black pepper, there's onion, and there is salt.
It's not spicy, though,
but it's very, very tasty.
And it's basically like, it's a burger patty.
That's what we'd call it in New Zealand.
It's just a burger patty.
And you're having it with bread, which you can call the bun.
Yeah, taste exactly like a burger patty.
And I'm just setting of these two lovely men.
And life is very communal here.
You'll always share tables and everything and talk to people while you're eating.
It's one of the nice things about Pakistan and India as well.
Wherever you are,
you can chat with people and enjoy food or tea together.
Living is very communal.
And the best thing during the cold months is to be sitting by a tea maker
or a chapli kebab maker
next to the fire, it's just so warm.
I got the best seat in the house, right here!
Just gonna have some tea,
and then I'm going to try to go somewhere really beautiful.
Let me try and show you some of the scenic beauty here in Mingora.
And so these guys, they won't take the money.
So, I tried to give it to them, but they like
They're really nice guys.
That's the kind hospitality you find here in Swat.
My walk through the market then brought me here,
a place I'd read about in the newspapers.
This bustling junction was once known
as Khooni Chowk or a Bloody Intersection.
This is where the Taliban would display the bodies of their critics
and enemies to spread fear amongst the locals.
Today, it's back to its original form and original name, Green Square.
Before we head back into the mountains,
I still had one question about the Taliban's occupation,
"Where did all their supporters go?"
And the next day,
I happened to meet a subscriber at breakfast
while I was eating my bread and lentils,
and he told me,
"They're still here.
They just went back to normal life."
That's kinda what I guessed because I did notice
that this region in particular is
is more conservative than the rest of Pakistan.
I found a driver for Marghazar.
This is Syed and we are going to go to Marghazar together.
We're just in his Suzuki, and a Suzuki
in Pakistan means like a small truck that you can load with goods
like, I don't know, what ever you want to carry around the city,
whether it's like vegetables or something else.
So we're going to swap this at his house for a car and head
to a cute little place called Marghazar.
At least I hope it's cute.
I heard it's cute. Let's go find out.
So, I just met Syed at a truck stop actually.
I was looking for a driver. I'm like, "If it's gonna be a driver,
it's going to be at one of the truck stops." Because I could not find a taxi.
It's all rickshaws here.
Like, just rickshaws everywhere.
So, yeah, we went back to his house and we picked up a very nice car,
a very nice Toyota.
We've reached Marghazar.
I was saying it wrong before.
You can just hear how peaceful it is. You can just hear the water running.
We're in the mountains.
You can see like the snow on top of the mountain.
It's really, really beautiful here.
Just look...
down into the valley.
Love it here.
There's a lady walking from the mountain all the way up there.
She must be a local.
Alright, I gotta cross this.
I've totally lost the driver.
He got stuck back there somewhere, just walking up into the mountains.
See what we find.
Lots of little stalls passed that little tourist area.
Guy's selling
chai here, water, everything I sell American.
Nice guy.
Don't you just love that sound? Like just the water.
I'm happy in the hills here,
in the mountains, man.
It's really nice here.
It's cold,
it's peaceful, it's beautiful.
Except there is quite a lot of rubbish.
And you do get that
in these touristy places.
Unfortunately, it's not pure.
There's a bit of rubbish.
This guy is just living in the mountains here.
He's got his farm here.
He's got his house here.
Fires on.
And there's people living all over
the ridge side here.
Someone up here.
A person up here.
These people are really off the grid.
Greetings.
I'm a big fan of you, Sir! - Aw, thank you, Bro.
I've seen your videos.
See that's the thing about YouTube.
I can be in the middle of nowhere, you know, had Marghazar and like,
honestly, nowhere, like
just walking on a random dirt track and and meet a subscriber. - Hi!
Nice to meet you. - Nice to meet you too. Come here, Bro.
Zimmam.
Good to meet you.
My name is Muhammad Siddiq.
I've seen all of your videos.
Especially I've seen your video on YouTube
where you are vlogging in India.
Yes.
Thank you. - I really like your videos.
And enjoy it really much. - You're from here?
Yeah, I'm from here.
Nice.
Now I'm here enjoying, man.
Oh, are you alone or with?
Oh, I got to driver down the bottom.
I lost him but he's down now.
I just started walking.
Ok.
I saw you from far.
I told him, "I know, I know him!"
I've seen his videos on YouTube.
So who's living around here, man?
Oh, there's a, there's a lot of people like local from Swat.
Yeah. - Yeah.
And especially from those areas like from,
Malam Jabba.
From those areas. -Yeah.
So these are all locals. - Because this would be hard to live in, right?
Yeah, yeah. - He's got power though actually. - Yeah.
I can see the power lines.
They've also, God willing, be a road here.
Because you can, you can see for like yeah it's like a cutting.
Yeah.
In the mountain.
It's nice and peaceful out here.
These people are living a nice life, man.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
Cool, Bro. I'm going to keep going this way, but
nice to meet you guys.
Selfie maine le liya.
So, why don't you be my guest?
I can't. I've got to go to Kalam tomorrow.
Oh, really? Yeah.
Oh, my God.
No time.
I'm running out of time.
Actually, I'm in a bit of a rush.
I have to go to Dubai and get back to India
Oh, I lose.
Thank you. - Oh, it's so nice to meet you. You guys, too.
Bye. God be your protector.
See ya!
See, that's so nice!
Wherever I am, there's always a subscriber nearby.
I can't believe that I met someone out here though.
Honestly, like, seriously, that's epic.
That's just epic.
This is a donkey.
They use this for carrying things around when you can't bring like a car
or truck up here.
So you have donkeys.
Chickens.
This is the meat shop.
When you want chicken, you get it fresh and it's a little vegetable store here.
He's selling vegetables.
And a little general store in here too.
Greetings.
Very good, very good
Ok, bye.
And just being here is just confirmed that yeah, I'm going to go further into Swat.
Into the smaller places away from the big cities
and just just to hang out in the mountains and be with the beauty here
because I'm a this is where I feel good, not at beaches.
I'm definitely a mountain guy.
And yeah.
So happy be here walking around, I better go frind the driver now.
He's probably worried.
"Oh, no. I lost the foreigner. I lost the foreigner!"
So yeah,
I guess my tip from this video is
don't spend time in the in the cities.
Right?
Get out to
the hilly areas,
to the small towns and just come here and enjoy, drink tea and just explore.