Work on clearance of Saiful Muluk Lake Road begins

MANSEHRA: The Kaghan Development Authority (KDA) on Saturday kicked off removing the snow and glaciers from the Saiful Muluk Lake Road.

“It will take almost a week to clear the snow and cut glaciers from this artery, which links Naran with snowcapped Saiful Muluk Lake,” Assad Shahzad, the KDA’s deputy director, told reporters. He said that as the Mansehra-Naran-Jalkhad Road was cleared to traffic up to Naran, the KDA’s chairman Aimal Zaman directed them to move machines and clear this artery, too, to traffic so that tourists coming to Kaghan valley could also visit snow-wrapped Saiful Muluk Lake.

“We can reopen this artery most surely within a week If the weather goes sunny. We and tourists travelling through four-wheelers could visit this highest-altitude Saiful Muluk Lake, situated at over 10500 feet above sea level,” Shahzad said.

The deputy director said that tourists coming to the scenic Kaghan valley mostly prefer to visit Saiful Muluk Lake, which originates from the water melted from the snow of the nearby Malika Parbat, a high-altitude mountainous range stretched across Kaghan valley.

Meanwhile, the National Highway Authority, which had reopened the Mansehra-Naran-Jalkhad Road to all sorts of traffic up to Naran, continued clearance of the artery beyond it.

An official of NHA told reporters that removing landslides and snow from Mansehra-Naran-Jalkhad Road was well underway beyond Naran and it could be cleared to all sorts of traffic up to Babusar Top within the next two to three weeks.

“Once this artery is cleared up to Babusar Top, the traffic between Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Gilgit-Baltistan, which was suspended in November last year, would also be reopened,” he added.