Chair Lift Ride at Malam Jabba, Swat, Pakistan

Tourists from across the country are enjoying a ride on the chairlift, installed after eight years of long wait at the 9,200-feet high Malam Jabba tourist resort. The previously installed chairlift constructed with the financial assistance of the Austrian government was destroyed during insurgency in 2008. However, in 2014, the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government announced to reconstruct the Malam Jabba ski resort featuring a four-star hotel, a chairlift, a cable car, snowboarding and ski slopes for national and international tourists. This season, the cable car started operations to transport tourists to the peak of Malam Jabba offering panoramic view.

Abdul Samad Khan, a tourist from Shangla, said he frequently visited Malam Jabba, but was astonished to see the addition of chairlift and some other development works. “With the newly built facilities for tourists Malam Jabba has become the most attractive part in Pakistan,” he said. “Though the road from Mingora to Malam Jabba is only 45 kilometers long it took us three hours to reach here because of its bad condition. If the government reconstructs the road more tourists will come,” said Samad Khan.