Khhota Qabar
 

[B]Khota Qabar [/B]lies on the Karakoram Highway about 60 miles north of Islamabad and 7 miles short of Abbottabad. It is precisely where the road starts climbing into the mountains of Mansehra and onwards into the picturesque Kaghan valley and the Northern Areas. It is a place where truck drivers coming up from the planes stopped to cool their engines and top up the radiators with cold water from a nearby stream to ready their vehicles for the climb ahead. Because of the presence of truck drivers a couple of khokha restaurants have sprouted at this spot and are doing a thriving business.

It is so small a place that you won’t find it on any map of Pakistan. However, to one's pleasant surprise, a Google search turned up the following information on Khota Qabar or Khote di Qabar: latitude 34.09; longitude 73.17; elevation 3,251 feet.

[IMG]http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3268/2914768339_6fc8559a2a.jpg[/IMG]

Khota Qabar is in the centre of the picture, the big mound of rocks with the tree growing out of it.
probably soon to be lost to a landslide from the looks of it can be made into a tourist spot, for the tourists who will not be coming here in the near future, anyway ... has not happened so far, unlikely to happen soon!


Circa middle 1831 - Syed Ahmed and Shah Ismail on their way to Balakot with their mujahideen camped at Salhad Nullah 11 km’s short of Abbottabad. The Sikhs, in order to choke the mujahideen’s supply lines, posted troops on the hills overlooking the road that led through the Salhad gorge to Abbottabad. The mujahideen, sensing the risk of sending convoys through the gorge, used a donkey without a handler to carry their supplies.
Even though the donkey has, for some reason, become a metaphor of stupidity in our part of the world, it is not stupid. One of the unique traits of the donkey is that once it carries a load to a destination it memorizes the route and does not need the help of a handler to go back to where it came from. Just a light kick in the back sends it trudging quietly to its destination. So, unknown to the Sikhs, this dutiful donkey trudged back and forth in the darkness of night carrying supplies to the mujhideen.
It wasn’t long before the Sikhs found out who the secret courier was. They shot the donkey dead one night as it carried a load of goods through the gorge. The mujahideen mourned the loss of the donkey and honored it by burying it in a grave. The place came to be known as Khota Qabar.
A couple of years ago someone decided to change the name to Muslimabad, but the people in the area still know the place by its old name.
sources:[url]http://www.flickr.com/photos/tango48/2914768339/[/url]
[url]http://wondersofpakistan.wordpress.com/2009/04/28/khota-qabar-the-story-of-a-lost-battle/[/url]